The Jokela rail accident occurred on 21 April 1996, at 07:08 local time (04:08 UTC) in

Tuusula Tuusula (; sv, Tusby ) is a municipality of Finland. It belongs to the Helsinki sub-region of the Uusimaa region. The municipality has a population of () and is by far the third largest municipality in Finland after Nurmijärvi and Kirkkonummi t ...

, Finland, approximately north of

Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the Capital city, capital, primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Finland, most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of U ...

. Four people were killed and 75 were injured when express train P82 from

Oulu Oulu ( , ; sv, Uleåborg ) is a city, municipality and a seaside resort of about 210,000 inhabitants in the region of North Ostrobothnia, Finland. It is the most populous city in northern Finland and the fifth most populous in the country after: ...

, bound for Helsinki, derailed in heavy

fog Fog is a visible aerosol consisting of tiny water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air at or near the Earth's surface. Reprint from Fog can be considered a type of low-lying cloud usually resembling stratus, and is heavily influ ...

. The overnight

sleeper train The sleeping car or sleeper (often ) is a railway passenger car that can accommodate all passengers in beds of one kind or another, for the purpose of sleeping. George Pullman was the American innovator of the sleeper car. The first such cars s ...

was carrying 139 passengers and five crew members. The official investigation into the accident revealed that it was caused by overspeeding through a slow-speed turnout. It is estimated that the total cost of the accident was over

FIM FIM may refer to: Organizations and companies * Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme, the International Motorcycling Federation * Flint Institute of Music, in Michigan, United States * Fox Interactive Media, now News Corp. Digital Media * ...

26 million (

€ The euro sign () is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the eurozone and unilaterally adopted by Kosovo and Montenegro. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists o ...

4.3 million).

Causes

Railway maintenance work was going on near

Jokela railway station Jokela () is one of the three administrative centers in the Finnish municipality Tuusula. It has a population of around 6,000 residents. The Jokela School Centre and the Jokela railway station serve the community. Many residents commute to the ca ...

, and the usual southbound track was out of service. Because of heavy fog and high speed, the driver was unable to see the distant

signal In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The ''IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing'' ...

that warned about a divergent routing with a turnout speed limit of ahead. The visibility was a few dozen metres. Before the accident, drivers of passing trains had reported that the visibility of signals was very low. Moreover, the printed notice about the track diversion, the so-called weekly warning, was confusingly written. When arriving at the home signal, the train was still running at , having missed the distant signal imposing a limit of . Upon noticing the signal, the driver made an emergency brake application but could only decrease the speed to before the train entered the turnout. During the journey, the driver had slightly oversped a number of times to maintain the schedule.

Aftermath

The Accident Investigation Board produced 18 recommendations, which included improvements over railway signalling, better seat fixing, improvements on communication and accelerated building of the

automatic train control Automatic train control (ATC) is a general class of train protection systems for railways that involves a speed control mechanism in response to external inputs. For example, a system could effect an emergency brake application if the driver do ...

system. However, the

Jyväskylä rail accident The Jyväskylä rail accident occurred on 6 March 1998 in Jyväskylä, Finland, when the Sr1-driven express train P105 from Turku bound for Joensuu via Pieksämäki derailed. The train left the tracks after coming in too fast on a switch near the ...

happened only two years later, showing that more improvements were necessary.

Similar accidents

;Finland *

– overspeed through turnout ;Australia *

Waterfall rail accident The Waterfall rail accident was a train accident that occurred on 31 January 2003 near Waterfall, New South Wales, Australia. The train derailed, killing seven people aboard, including the train driver. The accident is famously remembered by ...

– overspeed through sharp curve ;Germany *

Brühl train disaster Brühl or Bruhl may refer to: Places ;Germany * Brühl (Rhineland), a town in North Rhine-Westphalia ** Brühl station, a railway station * Brühl (Baden), a town in Baden-Württemberg, near Mannheim * Brühl (Leipzig), a street in Leipzig * Brü ...

– overspeed through turnout ;United Kingdom *

Milton rail crash The Milton rail crash was a crash in 1955, at Milton, Berkshire (now part of Oxfordshire). A passenger train took a crossover too fast and derailed. Eleven were killed, and 157 were injured. Overview The crash occurred at about 13:15 on Sund ...

– overspeed through turnout *

Bourne End rail crash The Bourne End rail crash occurred on 30 September 1945 when a sleeper train from Perth to London Euston derailed, killing 43. The cause was driver error, possibly compounded by ambiguous signalling regulations. Overview The train was the 15- ...

– overspeed through turnout *

Goswick rail crash The Goswick rail crash occurred on 26 October 1947 near the village of Goswick, Northumberland, England. The '' Flying Scotsman'' express from Edinburgh Waverley to London King's Cross failed to slow down for a diversion and derailed. Twenty-e ...

– overspeed through turnout

References

{{1996 railway accidents Railway accidents in 1996 Railway accidents and incidents in Finland Tuusula 1996 in Finland Railway accidents involving fog Derailments in Finland Accidents and incidents involving VR Group April 1996 events in Europe 1996 disasters in Finland

Causes

Aftermath

Similar accidents

See also

References