C3/2007R Incident at the Tampere railway yard, Finland, on 27 May 2007

On Sunday, 27 May 2007, at 6 pm, an incident occurred at the Tampere station, in which a shunting unit passed, without authorisation, a shunting signal that was in the stop position at the south end of the Tampere passenger railway yard. Simultaneously, a passenger train was arriving in Tampere, for which a route had been provided to the station. The train driver noticed that a shunting signal in front of the train had switched to ‘stop’ and was able to stop the train ahead of shunting unit wagons that were on the track.

The cause of the incident was that the shunting foreman did not notice that the shunting signal was in the stop position. Locomotives engines standing on the adjacent track and their tail lights had ‘blurred’ the shunting foreman’s vision as the shunting unit approached the point.

The Accident Investigation Board is not issuing new safety recommendations as a result of the incident but stresses that training and guidelines should emphasise the importance of providing relevant additional information during shunting work.

C3/2007R Report (pdf, 0.94 Mt)