Disaster at Stéblová. A mysterious green light sent 118 people to their deaths

To this day, it is the most tragic railway accident in Czech history. In addition, an accident that has so far been associated with one never-explained unexplained mystery. How is it possible that a passenger train started running on an occupied line? A flash of green light showed him the way to death in the evening mist, the origin of which could never be fully explained.

Deadly green flash

The passenger train 608 with a steam locomotive at its head set off on its last journey from the Stéblová station without the permission of the dispatcher. He arrived at the station from Liberec shortly before three-quarters to six in the evening and stopped at the first track, where he was to wait until a six-wagon motorbike passed along a single-track line from Pardubice, with which he was to pass in Stéblová.

It was getting dark, and the station lights huddled in clumps of autumn mist. Visibility was not great. Less than a minute after the stop, the older guide suddenly signaled to leave at the end of the passenger train with a white light. The signal was taken over by a younger guide in the middle of the train, followed by a train driver in a company car and a driver. A heavy locomotive pulling 12 wagons slowly started on the track, along which another train was approaching in the opposite direction.

How did this mysterious and incomprehensible lapse come about? To date, this has not been fully explained. He was supposed to instruct the older guide to dispatch, but at that moment he was demonstrably in the station building, where he was preparing for the arrival of a motorbike.

A guide who survived the accident but still claimed to have seen the narrator’s instructions. “I got a green light signal,” he declared. His statement was confirmed by two witnesses, one cyclist and one man standing on the platform at the time. They both testified that they also noticed a greenish flash in the fog.

It has never been known what source caused this mysterious flicker. The younger attendant’s lamp, which had three color filters, white, red, and green, was suspected. However, the younger guide insisted that he had a white filter set, which was later documented by expert opinions. Could it be a collective optical illusion? About someone’s stupid prank? The mysterious green maze remained undiscovered, but its consequences were deadly.

The road to death

The train started on a busy track. The frightened narrator ran out of the building, but could no longer stop him. The train driver in the company car noticed the running man, but in the fog he did not recognize that he was a storyteller. He thought it was a passenger who missed his departure. He didn’t even associate the running figure with waiting to cross the oncoming train. Although he knew about him, he thought that the crucifixion was probably translated as far as Rosice nad Labem.

The desperate narrator began to command “stop, stop by all means” with a flashlight and a whistle for two whistles, but no one on the train paid attention to him – the older guide, who was to follow similar signals, was already checking the tickets. So the narrator waved at the switchman, who had a bike, who started the train in a futile attempt, but of course he had no chance against the steam locomotive.

Everything could be saved by a heater, whose duty was to watch the departure signal. It was in the “Stop” position, but the heater was just putting it in the boiler and reporting a lack of water, so he overlooked the sign. The heavy steam locomotive easily passed the switch set in the opposite direction and drove onto the occupied track.

The dispatcher rushed back into the building and alerted the gate operator at Rosice nad Labem to stop at least the motorbike in the opposite direction. However, this attempt also failed. The man at the gate picked up the phone just as the railroad whistled past him. There was nothing more to do.

The two trains now raced directly at each other at about sixty miles. When their drivers finally saw each other in the thickening fog and darkness, they were no more than 60 meters apart. The collision was inevitable.

The crash occurred at 5:43 p.m. The operator of the steam locomotive was protected by a long boiler made of solid iron, but at the same time it meant a catastrophe for the oncoming motorbike. His front car literally flew onto the locomotive, the first trailer crashed into her side, the other three cars were completely crushed. The first passenger car of the train from Stéblová, which had the most casualties, was also completely demolished. The wagon behind him was also badly damaged.

“We went by train with my dad in the third carriage of a motorbike. I remember it only sketchyly, when two people on a stretcher carried me off the train and then a stay in a Pardubice hospital, I suffered a collarbone fracture and concussion,” five years ago, witness Petr Ulrych recalled. , who was three years old at the time of the accident (he captured his memories Hradec Daily).

The engine platoon of the steam locomotive, which escaped from the collision more or less unscathed, poured hot coal from the furnace, unfortunately into the explosion of the steam boiler, unfortunately to the places where the oil flowed from the wrecked motorbike. He immediately found himself in four-meter flames. More than a hundred victims have made the accident the worst railway disaster of its time in Europe.

The culprit identified the members of the 608 train crew, who had been sentenced to prison for a period of one and a half years to five and a half years.

“The media were not allowed to report in detail on the case in order not to damage the reputation of the socialist establishment,” the server warned some time ago in a memoir dedicated to the catastrophe. Czech Railways. Therefore, only a short report from ČTK was published about the disaster. However, a state funeral was held for the victims.

The disaster affected the whole village

However, word of the accident spread among the people, because the scale of the disaster affected entire communities. “Everyone was mourning someone. There was no one to turn to, everyone was suffering,” she said five years ago for Hradec Daily another witness Jaruška Hlaváčková, a chronicler of the village of Pečerka, who was 31 years old at the time of the disaster and lost her father, uncle and cousin during the collision.

“I was anxious that my dad didn’t go when he knew we had a party. I ran to the stop at Čeperka then. I learned about the train crash there. I was convinced that my dad was alive. He was a capable man, I believed that Unfortunately, I did not find my father until the fifth day in the building of the Faculty of Medicine in Hradec Králové, where there were thirty dead who burned in the accident and had broken bodies, “Jaruška Hlaváčková recalled.

Pečerka was one of the villages most affected by the tragic accident, as 13 people from the village died. “We have lost thirteen people we have been waiting for in love and who have never returned to us,” the witness concluded.

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