A derailment of a passenger train occurred on 18 February 2017 at , Belgium. One person was killed and 27 were injured. The cause of the derailment was excessive speed through a set of points.

Accident

At 13:13

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(12:13 UTC), a 3-car passenger train operated by a single Class 80

electric multiple unit An electric multiple unit or EMU is a multiple-unit train consisting of self-propelled carriages using electricity as the motive power. An EMU requires no separate locomotive, as electric traction motors are incorporated within one or a numbe ...

No.326 was derailed shortly after leaving . The front carriage fell on its side, the centre carriage was derailed and the rear carriage remained on the tracks. The train had just left Leuven for

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

, and . It had travelled when the accident happened. One person was killed and 27 were injured, three seriously. Fourteen of the victims were taken to hospital. A further 57 passengers were uninjured. It was initially thought that the victim was not on board the train, but this theory was later discounted and it was confirmed that he was a passenger. Belgian Prime Minister

Charles Michel Charles Michel (; born 21 December 1975) is a Belgian politician serving as the president of the European Council since 2019. He previously served as the prime minister of Belgium between 2014 and 2019. Michel became the minister of Developm ...

visited the site. He

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his thanks to the emergency services for their rapid intervention following the accident. Following the accident, trains between Brussels and

Liège Liège ( , , ; wa, Lîdje ; nl, Luik ; german: Lüttich ) is a major city and municipality of Wallonia and the capital of the Belgian province of Liège. The city is situated in the valley of the Meuse, in the east of Belgium, not far from b ...

were cancelled, although they were able to run between Leuven and . One track was reopened to traffic by 18:00. The three carriages of the train were removed from the site during the night of 19–20 February.

Investigations

The Railway Accident and Incident Investigation Unit, Belgian police, and

SNCB french: Société nationale des chemins de fer belgesgerman: Nationale Gesellschaft der Belgischen Eisenbahnen , type = Statutory corporation , industry = Rail Transport , foundation = 1926 , founder = Government of ...

have opened investigations into the accident. The police investigation revealed excessive speed through a set of points to be the cause of the derailment. The train was travelling at where the speed limit was . According to the Railway Accident and Incident Investigation Unit final report,Rapport d'Enquête de Sécurité : accident du 18 février 2017
(in Dutch and French) the driver was distracted and accelerated too soon and the

train protection system A train protection system is a railway technical installation to ensure safe operation in the event of human error. Development Train stops The earliest systems were train stops, as still used by the New York City Subway, the Toronto subway, t ...

( TBL1++) was not designed to monitor the speed and apply emergency braking in this particular sequence of events (Green Yellow Horizontal signal). Also may have been confused by the complex track and signal layout and by a misleading speed sign meant for another track, which was promptly removed.

References

Railway accidents in 2017 Derailments in Belgium Derailment 2017 February 2017 events in Europe Accidents and incidents involving SNCB 2017 in Belgium 2017 disasters in Belgium {{DEFAULTSORT:Leuven derailment