Impatience between the Pines: The 1980 Otłoczyn (Poland) Train Collision
Background
Otłoczyn is a town of 396 people (as of 2022) in central Poland, located in the Voivodeship (comparable to federal states) of Kuyavian-Pomeranian 8km/5mi southeast of Toruń and 134km/83.5mi northeast of Posen (both measurements in linear distance).
The town lies on the “Rail Line 18”, a double-tracked electrified main line connecting Kutno with Piła via 247.5km/154mi of track, serving 46 stations. The line opened between 1851 and 1862, at the time being in the Kingdom of Prussia, which was part of the German Reich. The line sees everything from regional to long distance passenger services and freight trains, allowing speeds of as much as 140kph/87mph (as of 2018). At the time of the accident the line was already double-tracked, but not yet electrified.
The trains involved
Train number 11599 was a freight train meant to take 16 empty open-top freight cars (allegedly intended for coal) from Otłoczyn to Wrocki. The train was pulled by PKP (Polish State Railways) Series ST44–607. The ST44 is a six-axle diesel locomotive intended for heavy freight trains. Introduced in 1966 the locomotive was made in the Soviet Union by the Luhansk Locomotive Factory (LTS) as the M62, with minor changes for the PKP (such as the characteristic large headlights). Each ST44 measures 17.5m/58ft in length at a service-ready weight of 115 metric tons. They have a maximum power output of 1471kW/1973hp but, since they’re intended for freight services, are limited to 100kph/62mph.
At the time of the accident the train weighted 247m/810ft at a weight of 436 metric tons* and was staffed by the 43 years old driver Mister Roschek and his 23 years old assistant, Mister Bogusz.
Coming the other way was passenger service number 5130, a southbound regional service from Toruń to Łódź. The passenger train consisted of five standard single-level passenger cars along with two sleeper cars at the back which carried a group of schoolchildren on their way home from summer break. Pulling the train was PKP Series SP45–160. The SP45 is a six-axle diesel locomotive intended for passenger services including express trains, introduced in 1968. Each SP45 measures 18.99m/62ft in length at a weight of 102 metric tons and can reach 120kph/75mph. Being intended for passenger services saw the locomotives equipped with a system to heat train cars, which freight-locomotives like the ST44 lack.
At the time of the accident the train measured 190m/623ft in length at a weight of 452 metric tons* and was staffed by four people. Mister Przyjemski (39) was driving along with his assistant Mister Głowiński (28), with the passengers being tended to by two conductors, Mister Różański (54) and Mister Szymański (age unknown). The exact number of passengers is unknown.
*Note that the given train weight and length are estimates
The accident
On the 19th of August 1980 workers at Otłoczyn station are coupling the recently arrived ST44–607 to a waiting row of freight cars at approximately 2:00am. The freight service meant to take the freight cars to Wrocki is not present in any schedules for the day, the local dispatcher wants to use the pauses between scheduled services to move the train from station to station whenever time allows. Mister Roschek had been on duty since 1:00am the previous day, it’s unknown if this went unnoticed or was wilfully ignored. Following the coupling the train was parked on a siding while the crew waited for clearance to head to Toruń. It was a mostly clear night, with temperatures around 11°C/52°F and some fog hanging over the rail line as it cut through a pine-forest.
A few kilometers up the line passenger service 5130 departed Toruń southbound at 4:18am, being delayed from its scheduled 3:47am departure time as the two sleeper cars that were added to the back of the train arrived late. The train was intended to proceed to the town of Aleksandrów Kujawski, 4km/2.5mi south of Otłoczyn. The posted speed limit was 90kph/56mph.
An employee in the signal box at Otłoczyn was alerted to an unauthorized motion by a set of points in the station at 4:20am. The freight train had departed the siding without permission, forcing the points which were set to “straight ahead” for the incoming passenger train to shift to the siding. “Cutting” a set of points by brute force of the wheels passing through it in the wrong direction leaves permanent and easily identifiable markings on the rails, which in this accident would later help prove the sequence of events. To make matters worse the freight train, since it hadn’t been meant to depart yet, didn’t have a path set for it and thus left Otłoczyn station on the oncoming track. The one used by the southbound passenger service.
The employee of the signal box notified the station’s dispatcher, Mister Woźniak, who in turn contacted the Brzoza Toruńska checkpoint 8km/5mi down the tracks from Toruń station, informing them that a freight train had departed the station without permission and was travelling northbound on the southbound track. It was while the two men were talking that the employee at the checkpoint received information that the passenger train had entered the southbound track towards Otłoczyn. None of the people involved in this conversation had any ability to contact either train, as there was no onboard radio system installed on either of them. And with the passenger train having passed the final signal ahead of reaching Otłoczyn there was also no way of stopping the trains some other way. In what must’ve been a horrifying moment the workers at both the signal box and the checkpoint realized they could do nothing but wait for the inevitable collision to happen.
The passenger train was two minutes past the checkpoint when Mister Różański spotted the freight train heading for him. He triggered an emergency stop and retreated to the engine compartment, at which point the trains were approximately 150m/492ft apart. Moments later, at 4:30am, a deafening crash echoed across the pine trees as the two trains collided head-on. The passenger train was still travelling at 85kph/53mph on impact, the freight train’s speedometer read 33kph/20.5mph. The freight train’s locomotive lost a third of its length as both ends were crushed, while the leading passenger car was utterly obliterated as it broke apart on the back of its locomotive. Aboard the freight train Mister Roschek died on impact, along with 62 passengers, one conductor and the driver’s assistant aboard the passenger train. Another passenger survived the initial impact and died at the hospital, as did Roschek’s assistant, bringing the death toll to 67. Another 64 passengers survived with injuries.
Aftermath
The first alarm went out at 4:45am, due to the scale of the accident and the expected number of victims responders from several surrounding cities were supported by the Polish People’s Army from the start, providing manpower and transportation. The first responders to reach the site would later describe a nightmarish sight, talking about pieces of the trains and the passengers being strewn all over. Little but the steel wheelsets were left of the leading passenger car, the second and third car had overturned and suffered severe damage as well. Rescuing the surviving passengers was a slow and painstaking process, which took so long that some initial survivors passed away before they could be accessed or freed from the wreckage. The firefighters were told not to use any tools that created sparks as it was feared that they might ignite the leaking fluids from the destroyed locomotives.
There was no on-site triage for the survivors, doctors treated those who they figured had the best survival chances first, getting them to hospitals before continuing with the next survivor. Soldiers set up a makeshift morgue to get the victims protection from the elements and prying eyes alike. Mister Przyjemski, driver of the passenger train, was pulled from the remains of his locomotive by 8:30am, severely injured but the sole survivor of the locomotive crews. While the collision had crushed both ends of the locomotive he had been protected by the rigidity of the engine, creating a survival space. He was the last person rescued to survive the accident. He almost wasn’t rescued, with firefighters being certain that the locomotive crew was dead and unwilling to work their way into the engine compartment for, likely, nothing. If a police officer wouldn’t have heard faint cries for help from inside he may not have been found until after succumbing to his injuries.
Three separate investigations were launched after the accident, one by the PKP, one by the traffic ministry and one by the local public prosecutor’s office. At the time Poland was seeing the “August-strikes”, large-scale striking involving thousands of workers which would eventually see the formation of Poland’s first independent trade union along with a large nonviolent anti-communist movement, and by 1981 the movement led to martial law being declared in order to get it under control. After the accident various rumors quickly circulated claiming among other things that the collision was the consequence of sabotage on the rail line, or that the freight train had been hijacked to kill opposition leaders onboard the passenger train. Other rumors claimed, likely due to the involvement of the army in the response, that the freight train had been carrying tanks or other weapons to suppress a strike at the Gdańsk Shipyard. Thirdly, people claimed that the passenger train was a victim of mistaken identity, with an express train passing the site hours later being the target of a deliberate crash of some sort (by a hijacked freight train or one used by its driver as a suicidal weapon).
The accident also saw plentiful dramatization and falsification in the media, from claims of a high speed crash to “several tens of thousands of tons of steel” creating the wreckage when, in reality, both trains together fell short of 1000 metric tons.
Employees at the signal box, at the checkpoint and the dispatcher on duty were all checked for drugs and alcohol after the accident, along with the surviving train driver. When no such substances were found and their statements showed no sign of errors the investigation narrowed in on the freight train and it’s driver. “Sneaking” freight trains through gaps in the regular schedule wasn’t unheard of, but in this case it had clearly gone wrong. Damage to the points merging the siding into the main line proved that the freight train had departed without a set path, supporting such statements by the dispatcher and signal box crew. There was no train control system in place at the time, thus departing without a green signal didn’t lead to an automatic emergency stop. Obeying signals and instructions and thus ensuring safe operation was the responsibility of the driver and their assistant.
With the Mister Roschek dying in the accident and his assistant never regaining consciousness before dying at the hospital neither could be questioned regarding the hours ahead of the accident, but the investigation still managed to construct a fairly precise timeline of his work ahead of the accident.
According to the official report he had reported for duty on the 18th of August 1980 at 4:00am after 55 hours off-duty. The locomotive he was initially meant to drive was unavailable due to a technical defect, leading to Roschek being given a different locomotive and starting work by fetching his assistant, Mister Jeliński, and driving a lone locomotive to Racławki, where the two men picked up a waiting row of freight cars and headed back to Chojnice before taking a different freight train from there to Piła Główna, arriving by 12:05pm. Instead of using the following 4h45m break to sleep or otherwise rest Roschek went into town, returning to take a freight train from Piła Główna to Toruń, arriving by 11:55pm.
Arriving at the Toruń depot he told the depot manager that he had started work that day at 8:30pm, explaining that he had picked up the locomotive at Bydgoszcz and only being meant to swap out the assistant at the depot. He supported the claims by providing official paperwork from both Bydgoszcz and Toruń station proving the claims. After being confiscated by the investigators it turned out that Roschek had falsified the paperwork he presented, using forms he was given for the eventually defective locomotive he had never departed Chojnice with. He had been handed the empty forms, which were used to log a driver’s working hours to calculate payment, before being sent out to the locomotive. After switching from the defective locomotive to ST44–607 the old forms were not repossessed by the staff at Chojnice, it was figured that he’d throw them out as they were unneeded.
The depot manager trusted the claims and presented paperwork, concluding that Roschek was still well below the 12h maximum duty time, and paired him up with Mister Bogusz as his new assistant to take ST44–607 to Otłoczyn where freight cars were waiting to be taken to Wrocki. There is no evidence of Roschek, who was past 20 hours on duty at that point, objecting to the instructions.
Mister Roschek and his assistant arrived at Otłoczyn at 2:10am on the 19th of August 1980, coupling their locomotive to a row of freight cars waiting in a siding. Once the dispatcher gave them a departure-signal they would leave the siding, cross the western southbound track and head northbound on the eastern track. But instead of waiting for the signal to turn green Mister Roschek started driving at 4:20am, running the red signal and forcing the points at the end of the siding to switch for his train to pass through. Since his train wasn’t meant to depart yet the points hadn’t been set for his train, leading to the freight train entering the southbound track instead of crossing it and entering the northbound one. Mister Roschek had become the train-equivalent of a wrong-way driver on the interstate.
Investigators now knew how the accident had happened, but why Roschek had acted the way he did was still somewhat unclear. A common theory is that he faked his hours to be paid more and in the process became excessively fatigued, forgetting that he was to wait for clearance to depart. Other theories claim that he knew the schedule and since the passenger train should be through the station by that point there’d be no harm in getting his train going already after waiting for about two hours. However, in recent years the theory of working excessive hours for more pay has been disputed, since the falsified paperwork would have either led to him not being paid for a lot of his hours or being found out about and getting fired.
Theories that Roschek didn’t notice that he was on the wrong track or fell asleep shortly after starting to move were disproven by investigators riding an identical PKP ST44 in comparable conditions, making it obvious that it was clearly visible which track the train was on. Furthermore, the locomotive’s data-logger showed several changes in the throttle-input by the driver including a hard application of the brakes moments before impact, too late to actually slow the train. Roschek had also confirmed his alertness six times by using the dead-man’s switch, a pedal that needs to be pressed and released by the driver at regular intervals. The last operation of this device was recorded less than thirty seconds before impact. A sleeping Roschek would have failed to operate the pedal, causing the train to stop on its own. This, along with documentation found in the wreckage showing Roschek entering the 4:20am departure into the night’s protocol, proved that he was in control of the train throughout the minutes leading up to the accident.
The investigation concluded that Roschek purposely departed the siding at his own discretion, running the red signal and entering the oncoming track. By 4:20am he was in his 25th hour on duty, more than twice the legal limit, meaning while he was still controlling the train his psychophysical capabilities were severely limited by exhaustion and fatigue. In simplified terms, his body was in control of the train but his mind wasn’t in control of the body anymore. It’s unknown if his assistant objected to his actions or tried to stop him, with the assistant’s remains being found behind the remains of the cab inside the engine-compartment he may not even have been in the cab as the train started moving. And even if he did object, strict hierarchy among train crews would have made it easy for Roschek to disregard Mister Bogusz’ objections.
In the end it’s somewhat irrelevant why exactly Roschek departed the siding, if he truly believed to have seen a green signal or if he just got fed up waiting for a train he thought had already passed him and wanted to get the train going already. With him being blamed as the sole responsible party there were never any legal consequences to the accident.
A repeat of the accident today is unlikely, with all trains carrying onboard radios and duty-time limits being more closely observed by people other than the employee in question. Furthermore, more and more rail lines are being equipped with train control systems that automatically force a train to stop if it runs a red signal.
As of 2023 the ST44 has largely been retired, aside from 40 units which were extensively overhauled and fitted with new engines. Any other units have since been retired, being slow, loud and having an unreasonably high fuel consumption. The SP45 has met a similar fate, with retirings already starting back in 1975. 191 units were converted to electric train heating in the early 1990s, of which 1 remains in operation today (owned by a museum), all non-converted units were retired by 1999.
The Memorial Situation
Originally local residents set up a simple wooden cross near the site of the accident, a short 200m/656ft walk off National Road 91. A few years later workers from the city of Toruń worked through one night setting up a small boulder carrying a metal plaque which read:
A tragic railway catastrophe took place on the 19th of August 1980 at 4:35. In memory of the 67 people who died.
A few years later the memorial was changed yet again, on demands by Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, the then-acting Primate of Poland. The change saw an expansion of the memorial in the shape of a flowerbed along with a short length of railroad track, ending with a stylized buffer stop. The base of the cross was fitted with a metal plaque quoting the “Book of Wisdom” (part of the bible) while the sleepers of the railway track carried brass plates, each one being engraved with the name of one victim.
Unknown culprits vandalized the memorial several times after the expansion, with the brass plates and the plagues being stolen more than once only to show up at nearby scrapyards. The memorial was completely refurbished in 2003, with new plates, a new cross and new plaques. The improvement was short-lived, with plates and plaques disappearing yet again in 2005, this time without showing up again. Who stole them or why is unknown.
After the 2005 theft the victim’s names were listed on a plastic sign which is affixed to the base of the cross. The brass plates were not replaced as it was expected that they’d be stolen yet again. It took until 2010 for the plastic sign to be retired, when a large black slab of granite was installed on the sleepers, engraved with the victim’s names. One can hope that it will stay, at last.
Since the accident it has become an unspoken rule among Polish train drivers to sound their horn when passing the site, as a salute to the victims of the accident. A video showing the tradition can be found here.
_______________________________________________________________
A kind reader has started posting the installments on reddit for me, I cannot interact with you there but I will read the feedback and corrections. You can find the post right here.
