Although the railway track was not damaged, the crashed locomotive and truck could not be evacuated from the site.
LIMA, Peru – A train accident occurred last Thursday night when a Transcupet Company vehicle collided with the Extra 585 train, serving the transportation of local passengers, at a level crossing on the highway to Nuevitas, in the municipality of Minas, Camagüey province.
Reports from the official press on the Island indicated that the impact caused the derailment of the five-car formation and left the locomotive in a semi-overturned position. Additionally, as a result of the accident, three people suffered minor injuries.
In an update published this Saturday, the state newspaper Granma indicates that the passage through the railway branch remains interrupted. The authorities explained on Friday that “although the railway line was not damaged, the locomotive and the truck could not be evacuated from the site.”
Currently, the truck driver and his companion have already been discharged, while the train driver’s assistant remains under observation in the Neurosurgery specialty.
Likewise, the regime’s newspaper reported that specialized teams from the Cuba-Petroleum Union (Cupet) in Camagüey managed to recover most of the diesel fuel (more than 24,000 liters) transported by the crashed tanker truck.
This new accident once again highlights the deterioration of the railway transport system in Cuba, where lack of maintenance, technological obsolescence and scarcity of resources continue to affect the safety and efficiency of the service.
In the middle of last August, the locomotive of train No. 16 with the Holguín-Havana route suffered a partial derailment while entering the yards of the Central Station of the Cuban capital around 2:05 PM.
A report of the Cuban Railway Union It then reported that the train was carrying some 984 passengers on board at the time of the incident, of which 164 boarded in intermediate sections of the route. Fortunately, no injuries were reported.
Also at the end of July, the province of Ciego de Ávila recorded two railway accidents, both with vehicles destroyed after collisions with passenger trains. Despite the magnitude of the impacts, no injuries were reported.
