Brétigny accident: the report that overwhelms the SNCF...

Again the logic of costs and profitability. My apologies to those young people whom I had pointed out, and for an accident, how many did not take place, whereas, according to what I have read, we can deduce that similar conditions seem to be met on the whole network. This is not going to reassure travelers, and it is a shame for the SNCF which endangers the lives of its customers for cost reasons. However, the train ticket has not decreased in price... In short, the next time you want to scare yourself, don't bother taking the train from the mine to Euro Disney, there is the SNCF and its employees... Well, by the way they are on strike tomorrow, too much pressure at work certainly...

Brétigny-sur-Orge (Essonne), July 12, 2013. On the Paris-Limoges route where the accident that killed 7 people took place

and 32 injured, 154 bolts were checked. A third of them were loose, broken or missing.

In a report submitted to the courts, an independent expert points to the erratic maintenance of the Paris-Limoges tracks. He considers it to be the cause of the derailment which killed 7 people last July.

This is the first report independent on the accident. The most worrying too. Appointed from the early hours of theinvestigation, the legal expert Robert Hazan gave his first conclusions on the derailment of the Intercités Paris-Limoges on July 12th. The drama, which killed 7 people and injured 32 others, well been caused by the tilt of a splint -- the part connecting two rails on a switch area -- around its bolt.

But the accidentologist reveals above all that this negligence hid others, much more alarming: of the 154 bolts checked by the expert on the sector, 59, i.e. more than a third, were loose, broken, or completely missing from their housing !

Present on the scene the day after the tragedy, Robert Hazan asked that the junction in question be cut with a chainsaw in order to examine all the bolts. Its conclusions, communicated to the three examining magistrates of Evry (Essonne) last February, are edifying. On the first part of the sector checked, which includes 77 bolts, 18 of them were loose, including 1 completely, and 3 missing. It was these last three missing bolts that led to the tilting of the splint at the origin of the accident, according to the expert.

But that's not all. On the second part examined, which also includes a total of 77 bolts, 25 were loose and 13 missing. On both sectors, the rail fasteners, supposed to keep the track on the ground, were not spared: of the 92 fasteners present, one was missing. The 52 fasteners of the the heart -- the central metal "X" part of the switch system -- included about to them 2 bolts broken "prior to the accident", says the expert. On the strength of these incriminating elements, the judgment of the accidentologist is severe with regard to the SNCF, obviously not very attentive to the maintenance of its tracks. "We remind you that given the frequent passage of trains on the rails, the bolt-nut system must be present and regularly tightened", he underlines as obvious. However, given the state of the tracks "during the passage of the Intercités 3657, theaccident is then inevitable “, he concludes again. Worse : the inspection reports carried out by the SNCF technicians on this junction in the months preceding the accident, and of which the expert was able to obtain a copy, do not reveal any major failure. The specialist nevertheless recommends a metallurgical expertise on the parts in question to determine their condition before the accident. “We know that this track is in poor condition, comments a railway worker from the public company specializing in maintenance. If the expert had gone to the site of the Gare du Nord or that of Saint Lazare, he would have noticed the same thing. “The technician nuances despite all the risk for travelers. “That's not why the route is dangerous. A missing bolt does not derail a train. And then nothing says either that these bolts did not come off following the accident. Afterwards, we must not hide our face. We know that the means given to maintenance have decreased in recent years. »

Contacted, the SNCF, “not having access to this document, is not in a position to comment on it”, but explains that it created a “commission of experts on bolting” last March. Composed of six specialists from outside the public company, it will "analyze the level of control of the bolted assemblies on the tracks" and will submit a first series of recommendations by the summer. "The investigation can not be done on the faith of a single report taken out of all other considerations", added yesterday the SNCF.