Italy remained divided in two for a long time due to the derailment in the middle of the night of a freight wagon which, after going off the rails, hit an electricity pole and blew up the power supply to the railway in Florence Castle. a strategic node for the entire national network. There were no injuries in the accident, but hundreds of trains were cancelled: both high-speed trains and those using ordinary and regional lines. A chaos that has caused inconvenience to thousands of people and protests from travelers from north to south.
The accident and the stop to the trains
The accident happened around 2 in the morning. An initial restoration of the network by Rfi was possible around 12, but it was not enough. The return to normality is very slow and still ongoing. The line failure has thrown programming into a tailspin because the same repair, which involves dozens of technicians, takes time. For over 12 hours the high-speed trains were therefore unable to pass between Florence and Bologna and only in the late afternoon did they resume circulation, but with insufficient numbers compared to the request. Dozens of trains piled up in the stations, with delays and then inevitable cancellations from Milan to Rome Termini. So elsewhere in the rest of Italy on the route to the Lombard capital and also on the one to Venice. Since dawn, travellers, including many commuters, have been stuck in the stations.
The local transport situation
For regional and ordinary trains the situation is even more difficult: the Florence-Bologna and Florence-Viareggio lines still have to be restored and the slowdowns on the network are not resolved. FS is confident of being able to restore the Florence-Prato line for part of the regional convoys tomorrow. During the day Trenitalia and Italo temporarily suspended the sale of tickets on the sites, a measure adopted to have seats available to re-book passengers who have seen the trains they had booked canceled and then returned. So there are those who have chosen to fly across Italy, above all from Fiumicino, but there are those who have given up on traveling and many requests for damages are expected, with Trenitalia having already announced that those who have given up on trip will be fully refunded.
The previous incident at Castello
The FS group has reacted to the inconvenience by arranging replacement buses, besieged by commuters, not only in Tuscany. It had already happened that Italy remained split in two in a striking way like today due to an accident always in Castello; it happened on 23 March 1998 due to a collision between a Pendolino and another train. A worker who was going to the factory died and there were about thirty injured among the passengers. This time, fortunately, no injuries and no victims were recorded.
Insights:
To receive Sky TG24 news:
- The newsletter on the most read news (click here)
- Notifications on Facebook Messenger (click here)
- Audio news with news headlines (click here)