Background
Pécrot is a village of 732 people (as of 2023) in central Belgium, located in the municipality of Grez-Doiceau 12km/7mi south of Leuven and 23km/14mi east of Brussels (both measurements in linear distance).
The village has a stop on the Line 139, a 29km/18mi double-tracked electrified rail line from Leuven to Ottignies. Most of the line’s traffic consists of international freight services, with a few national ones and a couple of regional passenger services in between, at speeds of up to 90kph/56mph. The line is owned by Infrabel, a Belgian government-owned company, while the traffic on the line is mostly operated by NMBS/SNCB (Belgian National Railway).
The Trains Involved
An empty passenger train was running northbound from Wavre to Leuven on the day of the accident, consisting of an empty NMBS/SNCB AM/MS74 number 709. The AM/MS74 is a later version of the Classical Twin EMU, a two-car electric multiple unit (hence “EMU”) introduced in 1939, with the number in the name referencing the year the train in question was built. Each AM/MS74 measures 46.6m/152ft in length at an empty weight of 107 metric tons and can carry up to 178 passengers in a two-class configuration at speeds of up to 140kph/87mph.
Coming the other way was a double-traction of NMBS/SNCB Class 09 (also referred to as the AM/MS86–89 depending on their date of manufacture) units, a type of two-car EMUs introduced in 1988. Each Class 09 measures 52.8m/173ft in length at a weight of 106 metric tons and can carry up to 198 passengers at up to 120kph/75mph. They are easily recognized by their large windshield with a protruding frame, which got them the nickname Duikbril (“Diving Goggles”).
The Accident
A signal box worker at Wavre station watches an EMU depart on the 27th of March 2001, just after 8:40am. He realizes that the train is departing northbound under a red signal and contacts the signal box at Leuven station, 24km/15mi up the line, at 8:42am in order to warn them of the incoming train. The signal box worker only speaks French, though, while the person he contacted at Leuven only speaks Dutch, making the former unable to effectively warn the latter. The worker at Wavre thus decides to cut power to the track the train is on, since guidelines demand that a power cut of at least 20 seconds requires the driver of the affected train to trigger an emergency stop rather than trying to “coast” through the outage.
The power supply for the overhead wire can only be shut off from a central control center at Brussels, so Wavre’s worker contacts them. The worker at the central control center tries to radio the driver of the unpermitted train, failing to establish contact. He then, at 8:46am, also tries to radio the driver of another train which has just departed Leuven for Wavre on the same track, but similarly fails to establish contact. Neither driver carried a cellphone, so both were effectively unreachable once the onboard radio systems failed to receive transmissions from the signal box workers or central control center.
The worker at Brussels proceeds to shut down the power supply to the overhead wire at 8:47am, but his efforts come too late. The two trains both start coasting as power is lost, but it’s unknown if the drivers get to trigger the emergency stops before, at 8:49am, they collide head-on at the town of Pécrot. The northbound train obliterates the leading car of the oncoming train as it is propelled upwards, losing its own driver’s cab before it comes to a stop atop the crushed forward end of the second car, pointing upwards at a steep angle. Both drivers are killed in the collision, along with 6 passengers in the southbound train. Another 12 passengers survive with injuries.
Aftermath
Locals who have their backyards up against the rail line are the first people at the site, soon followed by professional responders from further and further away as it becomes clear what occurred on this random spring morning. The leading car of AM/MS74 towers above the wreckage like a marker visible from afar, franky looking as if a bomb went off in its forward end. Its condition still pales compared to the leading car of the southbound train, which was so utterly destroyed it just about vanished. Little clues responders in on its existence from the ground, with its main recognizable leftover being the peeled-back roof which lies flat atop the train’s second car. It’s clear from the start that the drivers never stood a chance, leaving the responders to cut their way through the wreckage to try and rescue as many passengers as they can. The northbound train hadn’t had any passengers at all, the Class 09s had been barely occupied, somewhat limiting the scope of the tragedy. It still was Belgium’s worst rail disaster in 25 years (since 1976).
Investigators initially zero in on the driver of the northbound train, which departed under a red signal (meaning: without permission to depart). The driver had been new on the job, making him fairly inexperienced. There is no evidence that he purposely disregarded the red signal, but interviews with witnesses point to him stopping the train later than intended when reaching the station, putting his cab past the exit-signal. He was thus unable to see the signal’s status and likely assumed it was green when he was given the “all clear” by the dispatcher. In reality, this message (usually given by the dispatchers or a conductor) does not permit the train to depart, merely meaning the train can depart once the signal is green. It usually refers to actions like the boarding of passengers having finished. The rail line had no automatic train control system that would force an emergency stop if a train runs a red signal, so once the train was in motion there was no system to stop the train if the driver didn’t realize their mistake, which he apparently didn’t. Of course, there can’t be 100% certainty since the driver didn’t live to give input on the investigation.
The bigger problem was the complete breakdown of communications which drastically delayed outside measures like the overhead wires being powered down. This started with the signal box worker at Wavre station being unable to sufficiently communicate with his coworker just a few kilometers up the line. The reason for this lies in a very special characteristic of Belgium. You might have noticed that I have used quite a lot of “/” when naming things in that article. That is because nearly all of Belgium is split into two regions. The northern third (approximation) of the country, Flandern (also referred to as the “Flemish Community”), has Dutch as the official language, while the bottom 2/3 make up Wallonia (“the French Community”), where people speak, well, French. There’s also a tiny German community in the east and the area surrounding Brussels where both languages are used equally, but that’s not relevant for what happened at Pécrot.
Line 139 happens to run between those two areas, meaning workers at different points along it live and work with different languages as their native and daily language. The split languages are quite important to Belgian citizens, with many treating the other region similar to a different country altogether. This split is also why the rail company is referred to as “NMBS/SNCB”, because “National Railway Company of Belgium” translates to “Nationale Maatschappij der Belgische Spoorwegen” in Dutch and Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Belges” in French. The railroad company is among a lot of things in Belgium which have two names depending on who you talk to.
Thus, when the signal box worker at Wavre (Wallonia) called his coworker at Leuven (Flandern) it might about as well have been someone from Paris calling someone in Amsterdam. There was also no requirement for railway workers in Belgium to speak (or at least understand) both languages, and thus there also wasn’t a single “operational language” all railway workers were required to know. To compare, Switzerland has a similar split with a total of four languages (German, French, Italian and Romansh), but there railway workers are required to be proficient in at least two of them. The split is also far less equal, with just 0.5% of the country speaking Romansh and 8.2% Italian, meaning a worker who speaks German and French will be understood in most of the country (Swiss-German alone is dominant in 63% of the country). The Swiss population also appears to be far less opposed to the “wrong” languages.
The next piece in the puzzle was the train’s onboard radio system, with the signal box workers unable to reach either train. This was traced to the topography of the area, which saw the rail line run through hilly, wooded terrain limiting reception at certain parts of the line. Cellphones could have served as a backup, with cellphone reception in the area being less spotty than radio reception, but neither driver carried a cellphone with them. This meant that both the primary (signals) and secondary (radio calls) safety measures had failed, allowing the accident to happen.
The NMBS/SNCB was put on trial after the accident, with the judge ruling in September 2004 that, while human error by the northbound train’s driver lay at the core of the catastrophe, he had been let down by the railway who had allowed such a simple error to turn into a catastrophe. He was thus posthumously cleared of criminal guilt while the NMBS/SNCB was sentenced to pay a fine of 100000 Euros, a sum which the court decided would be used to invest in better operational safety. The NMBS/SNCB also proceeded to equip all drivers with on-duty cellphones, allowing them to be contacted even if the radio system was not an option for whatever reason. A memorial was also installed a few years after the accident, consisting of two granite plaques on an underpass near the site of the accident.
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