Former railway chief testifies in Tempe inquiry

A former railway chief has told the parliamentary inquiry into the deadly Tempe railway collision that when the general railway traffic code is not being followed by personnel, “no [electronic safety] system can save you.”

Panagiotis Theocharis, who headed railway operator TrainOSE (now Hellenic Train) from 2016 to 2018 chief and network owner Hellenic Railways (OSE) for a year, told the inquiry that the general railway traffic code must always be implemented by personnel, no matter what automatic safety systems were in place. 

Theocharis stated that the railway code had its roots in 19th-century military planning and, as an example of its effectiveness, brought up the country’s 1940 general mobilization order, which was carried through “without any systems, except the telegraph, [when] 180 trains passed through in a single day, without any derailments. This is testament to the capabilities of the code.”

When asked about organizational problems he faced during his tenure, Theocharis stated that there was a severe lack of personnel due to voluntary and mandatory layoffs.

Fifty-seven people – many of them students – died in the collision, the country’s worst train disaster, on February 28 last year.