The Canfranc International Railway Station was built as part of a project to create a border crossing through the Pyrenees connecting Spain with France. The project would join the railway line that came from Huesca to Jaca with Bedous (France) through the Somport tunnel, which was completed in 1914.
The Canfranc station began to be built in 1915 at the end of the First World War and was finished in 1925, entering service in 1928 after being inaugurated by King Alfonso XIII. It was equipped, among other things, with a restaurant, a canteen, post office, telegraph, an international hotel, police station and carabineros, infirmary, currency exchange posts, offices of the railway operators of the countries, both Spanish and French customs.
Between 1942 and 1945, after the Spanish civil war, this station witnessed several historical episodes and possibly still keeps many secrets.
The rise of this station ended abruptly on March 27, 1970 after a fatal railway accident that left one of the bridges on the route between Canfranc and Bedous unusable and which meant the closure of international traffic through Canfranc.
The connection with the Spanish section had resulted in annual losses for the French railway company (SNCF) for a few years, so, for cost savings, it decided to leave several substations that fed that line out of service, reaching the point of lowering the voltage of the catenary from 1500V that should have been at 900V in some sections.
In the early hours of March 27, 1970, a train made up of two locomotives and eight wagons loaded with corn left the Pau station in the direction of Canfranc. Shortly after passing the Sens tunnel, in a sloping area, the train began to skid due to the ice on the tracks and the lack of power of the locomotives due to the voltage drop in the catenary in that section. .
The two train operators and its only occupants activated the train's rheostatic brake (it is an electrical device that brakes the train while there is tension in the catenary) and went down to throw sand on a few meters of the rails to try to regain grip. While they were throwing sand on the tracks, disaster struck...
At the Les Forges d'Abel substation, 15 km from where they were, a circuit breaker tripped, leaving the catenary without electricity. As there was no electricity, the rheostatic brake did not work and the train, which was on a slope, began to move backwards along the track without the operators being able to do anything to prevent it. They could only find a phone number on the line to be able to notify what happened.
The train was picking up more and more speed, coming to pass through the Cette-Eygun station at 100Km/h backwards, when the maximum speed allowed in that section was 50Km/h. I managed to go through a highway level crossing before the barriers had time to activate. The train passed through a tunnel at the exit of which, a few meters away, there was a metal bridge that crossed the Aspe river (L'Estanguet bridge). One of the wagons that arrived destabilized by speed, collided with the bridge box, tearing it from its abutments and throwing both the bridge and the train into the river, thus cutting off rail traffic on that line.
In this accident, luckily, there were no deaths or injuries, since the only two occupants of the train were throwing sand on the tracks when the mishap occurred.
The Spanish and French governments did not reach an agreement to rebuild the bridge since it was a line that caused losses to the French company, so the traffic on that line was interrupted and therefore the traffic on the Canfranc station, that was limited to some trains that arrived from Huesca, leaving the station in disuse shortly after.
In 2018, the remains of the accident and the bridge were removed since reopening the line is being studied.
During the recording of the video, the Canfranc station is being rebuilt since it is going to house a luxury hotel. In addition, a new station has been built next to it with a new section of tracks to recover rail traffic and in the future a possible reconnection with France of this station.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
In this video you can see the Canfranc station and part of its surroundings. You will be able to see part of the railway route in the French part, the last tunnel through which the train passed (in which a curious thing happened to me as you will be able to see at the end of the video) and the place of the accident.
Here you have more information:
www.trenvista....
www.heraldo.es...
magnet.xataka....
Негізгі бет Canfranc Station (Huesca) drone view - 4K - [DJI Mavic Mini Drone] - Drone footage cinematic
Пікірлер: 58