Two passenger trains collided at Chenzhou railway station in Hunan province, China early Monday. The collision drove several carriages off the tracks. This accident has caused at the least three people dead and over 60 people injured. Among the injured, 6 of them are in critical condition.
The two trains that collided were K9017 (from Changsha to Shenzhen) and K9063 (from Tongren to Shenzhen). The K9017 locomotive and its first five cars as well as the K9063 locomotive and its first two cars were derailed. A conductor with K9017 said that the train was about to pull in when the accident happened. “I don’t know why it didn’t stop at the station,” said the unnamed conductor. “Instead, it rushed into K9063, which just started.”
One of the trains crashed into two nearby houses, causing them to collapse. The fourth car of the K9017 was the most seriously damaged, rescuers said. Electricity supply at the station was also cut, rescuers said, giving no information about when it would be resumed. Services in one direction of the rail line resumed at 10 a.m. and the other resumed at 14:30. Thousands of passengers had been stranded in Chenzhou Railway Station. More than 50 buses had been sent to transport them to their destinations. As of midday, almost 1,000 passengers had been transported by 26 buses to Guangdong Province, the official said. The accident delayed several trains on the Beijing-Guangzhou line. Two trains were cancelled, said a staff with the Guangzhou railway station. A task force by the ministry and the Guangzhou Railway Group is set up to investigate into the cause of the accident.
A fatal train collision happened on April 28 last year in east China’s Shandong Province when two passenger trains collided, leaving 72 dead and 416 injured. The railway was interrupted for more than 21 hours.