The Midnight Express?

[FJ and G]

Old tracks blamed in Turkish rail tragedy
Last Updated Fri, 23 Jul 2004 05:45:57 EDT

ANKARA - Engineers repeatedly warned that Turkey's rickety tracks were not up to the job of carrying new high-speed trains in the weeks leading up to Thursday's derailment, which killed at least 36 people, Turkish newspapers reported Friday.

Between 60 and 80 other passengers were injured, some very seriously, when four cars of a train derailed and overturned near Pamukova, a small town in the northwestern province of Sakarya. The train was travelling from Istanbul to the capital of Ankara when it crashed about 180 kilometres into its journey.
Rescuer at the crash site after a new high-speed passenger train derailed in Sakarya, northwestern Turkey
(AP PHOTO)

Experts had begged the Turkish government to modernize the rail infrastructure before giving the go-ahead for the speedy new trains to travel on the tracks. Some of those tracks date back to the late 1800s.

That modernization did not happen before the trains went into service with much fanfare on June 4.

Aydin Erel, who teaches engineering at Yildiz Technical University in Istanbul, said he tried again on July 14 to tell the government that the tracks couldn't handle the fast trains, which cut the journey time between Istanbul and the capital of Ankara from eight hours to five.

"Our infrastructure was not suitable for such speed," Erel told one newspaper, Hurriyet. "Our warnings were ignored."

Banner headlines reflected the country's outrage Friday, ranging from "Serial Murder" in Hurriyet to "They Died For the Sake of a Show" in another daily newspaper, Milliyet.

The distraught mother of one of the victims shouted at Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as he visited survivors at local hospitals Thursday night.

"Prime minister, this train was bad. This was bad train," she cried in an incident that was broadcast across the country.

Aides quickly rushed Erdogan away from the woman.

On Friday, paramilitary police arrested the train's conductor and his assistant for questioning as the crash investigation continued.

State railway authority deputy head Ali Kemal Ergulec insisted that the train would not have been using its high-speed mode when it derailed, because the tracks at that spot were not geared to carry such cars.

However, survivor Muhittin Anik said that five minutes before the crash, he noticed a speed indicator within the train was showing it to be travelling at 136 kilometres per hour.

Railway officials had said Thursday night that the train's speed was only 75 to 80 kilometres per hour.

Written by CBC News Online staff