Train Crashes FULL Speed into Building | Short Documentary

playing difficult videos are financially supported by the generosity of my patreon and YouTube members members get early ad free access to videos usually in a Monday or Tuesday before it's released on the main Channel you can also get other perks depending on the pledge including your name at the end of the video right well thanks for listening to me talk back to the normal scheduled dose of well me talking emergency crews are picking over the remains of what is looking like one of Japan's worst rail disasters a seven car commuter train has derailed on a tight Corner resulting in two of the front carriages being launched into an apartment building the train have been traveling on fukuchiyama line on a semi-express rapid passenger service now the train was involved clearly by looking at the wreckage the train had left the tracks with a great force but how and why the disaster would unravel the inherent pressure prevalent but not unique to Japanese Railways it's a disaster acts as a warning for all Industries and the power that fear of failure can actually create a far worse situation my name is John and welcome to plainly difficult today we're going to look at the amagasaki derailment [Music] I must admit as a bit of a trained fan Japanese Railways have always been fascinating to me sadly I haven't been able to travel to the country yet to see it firsthand but the efficiency of the use of The Limited track space and smaller track gauge really gets my geeky side going I mean just look at their timetabling well there may be some signaling and train protection geeking out in this video just a warning before we get started background okay so we start with a brief history of the company that operated the Fatal train journey in 2005. all the way back to his birth in 1987. this was when the National Railway operator Japanese national rail was split up during privatization several new companies were formed to operate their respective area of operations one of which was J.R West which unsurprisingly would operate in the west of the Japanese island of Honshu J.R West was tasked with operating the complex web of lions and interconnected services around the city of Osaka Japan's third most populous metropolitan area they also operated trains around Hiroshima but that's irrelevant for this particular video anyways like in all busy Urban rail networks you have certain pinch points where multiple lines Join one another one such place is amagasaki just to the west of central Osaka it had been in operation since 1879 mainly as a local stop only but this would change in 1997 when the station became a busy intersection the station is where three lines intersect the Jr Kobe line takaido Mainline the Jr Terra kazuka Lion and the Jr tozai line officially it is determinist of the latter two but all services actually carry on for example a train on the tozai line would instead of terminating amigasaki transfer onto the tarakazuka line and carry on westwards or if traveling on the tarakazuka lion eastbound the train would transfer onto the tozai line to travel out towards the geckantoshi line on the East this is what many services do every day but if I show you on a map you may see a little bit of an issue here with the Topography of the area particularly to the West eastbound service in order to reach amigasaki Station trains need to negotiate a bit of a curve followed by another curve in order to be facing in the up eastbound Direction I should also say Japan has a similar line Direction nomenclature as the UK being up in the direction of the dating point and down away from it usually the date and point is the nearest biggest city anyways I think before we get into the disaster train which was a west to east service on the tarakazuka line to the tozai line we need to talk about the signaling in the area and more importantly the train protection system or lack thereof in use at the time of the disaster the rail geek stuff this is my favorite part of these videos Japanese signaling has a few similarities with British signaling but also has some similarities with European and U.S signaling for reference UK signaling is known as root signaling where just the route is indicated to the driver with speed being indicated by a fixed speedboards the other method is speed signaling where the signals themselves tell the driver what speed to proceed at this makes Japan a bit of a hybrid system but I won't be delving too much into this just a brief overview as a foundation for the Protection Systems as they approve to be a very important component or lack of in the disaster later well as you may or may not know a large portion of Japanese Railways use a smaller gauge than the standard four foot eight and a half inches used across the world it uses a three foot six inch gauge this inherently is less stable than standard gauge and even the Japanese fought this when they built the shinkansen network to stand against specs in the 1960s so Japanese signaling uses multiple aspects which tell the driver not only how far ahead they can proceed but also at what speed they use the usual suspects in signaling red yellow and green I'll only cover three and four aspect signaling here but there is a lot more depth to than what I'll talk about here but in three aspects it is proceed for green caution on a single yellow and stop is red four aspects has the additional double yellow called speed restriction which is very similar to the UK preliminary caution they also have another four aspect style which is green for proceed yellow over green for reduced speed yellow for caution and red for stop in addition to this there are also actually speed indicator boards for things like Point work and tight curves for the running line the signals are known as block signals these control the block section and are usually controlled by the movements of trains at stations there are home signals which are the final signal before the station these allow the train to enter station limits and finally for the purpose of this video starting signals these permit the train to depart the station in reality they can be many starting and home signals to protect trains from the ramifications of operating incidents a system called ATS is employed the system automatic train stop is designed to stop a drain there are many variants in use all over the Jr network but on the west there were mainly two versions ATS SW and this system was capable stopping a train if it passed the signal at danger this worked by using a transponder on the train and a coil on the track it had been surpassed in the 1990s by the better atsp which offer protection to trains that were over speeding in certain areas with the addition of loops on the track on the approach to tight corners but neither were installed on the curve at the end of the tarakazuka line near amigasaki which neatly brings us onto the disaster [Music] disaster it is the morning of the 25th of April 2005. and royujiru Takami has started his shift he shunts his train a 207 series formed of two units one free car and one four car out of the depot arriving at hanatan station at 6 51 am there he is met by his conductor for the day the conductor operates from the rear cab of the seven car train they'll be working to train westwards towards koibashi and then on to amagasaki working as a stopping local service the train then continued its Journey along the curve on the fukuchiyama line heading towards the destination city of tarakazuka just before reaching tarakazuka the train was suddenly stopped by an emergency brake application at roughly 8 53 in the morning the atsp system had intervened due to the driver passing a signal showing a red stop aspect the train was now late into tarakazuka something frowned upon on the Japanese Railway quickly the conductor and Driver changed places Takami the driver is now in the up Direction cab at 903 am the train departs on its limited stop rapid commuter service numbered 5418m the journey will take them to Doshi shame along the fukichiyama line to amigaseki and then onto the Jr tozai line and finally the gakantoshi line shortly after departing the train overruns one of its station stops at Itami by four car links the train was brought to a standby the driver applying the emergency brake the train was passed its correct stopping Mark by roughly 72 meters the train was partially out of the station requiring it to be reversed back to the quick stopping location as such the service was delayed by roughly 90 seconds which doesn't sound like much but the whole journey to amagasaki only had about 28 seconds of slack in the timetable now this incident would require a conductor to report it to the company worried the driver contacted the conductor via the capture cap radio bearing in mind this was whilst the train was moving Takami asked the conductor to not report the incident during his conversation a passenger requested help from the conductor resulting in him putting down the handset after the station stop at atami roughly 700 passengers were on board the train loading was typical for a morning Rush Hour commuter service worried of the implications of running late and now potentially the punishment of an overrun Takami took more power speeding up the train he managed to reduce the delay from 90 to 60 seconds due to the conductor having to report the overrun he contacted the Jr West dispatcher the conversation between a conductor and J.R West could be heard over the radio in the driver's cab hearing this Takami must have realized the situation and that he was now looking at two serious reprimands the conductor attempting to do the driver a solid downplayed the overrun from 72 meters to just eight but it was too late the train was heading for the tight right hand turn the curve had a speed limit of 70 kilometers an hour or 43 miles an hour the train was actually going at 116 kilometers an hour roughly 72 miles an hour the driver applied the service break but it wasn't enough as a track turned to the right the first Carriage derailed the next front-free cars do well completely the first car rammed into a parking lot of an apartment building the second car hit the wall of the same building becoming almost completely crumpled by the force of the third and fourth cars coming off the track behind it the fifth car pushed into the rear of the third and fourth the final two cars of the train stayed upright and still railed with so many busy carriages crushed into one another the number of casualties were high driver Takami being at the front Lost His Life along with 105 others local police estimated that the front Carriage was where 43 of the victims had been followed by 45 in the second and the remaining of the victims being from the rest of the Train the injured totaled 562 and they'll be sent all around the area to different medical centers the sheer size of the Carnage is almost unbelievable to imagine for cleanup repair and investigation of the line between amigasaki and tarakazuka stations would take a while with services resuming on the 19th of June 2005. but with reduced speed limits of 95 kilometers an hour or 59 miles an hour on the straight section and 60 kilometers an hour or 37 miles an hour on the curve but why was the driver so apparently anxious about running late so much so to cause the demise of not only himself but over a hundred others well we will find out after this short YouTube ad break investigation so why was he speeding why didn't he use the emergency brake and why was he not aware of the route ahead well seemingly on the face of it this disaster has a few similarities with the moorgate crash a number of instances leading up to the crash in proper train handling and Reckless overspeeding resulting in a bloody death toll and also like moorgate the key witness was amongst the victims but the differences end there as we will likely never know the cause of a moorgate crash be it suicide or my personal theory of loss of situational awareness caused by micro sleep but with the amigasaki disaster takami's actions seems like he was scared of the ramifications of running late and in Japan it sounds a lot worse than meeting with your manager without a cup of tea followed by an action plan and time of an instructor like you get on UK railways the thing Takami feared was nickin koyuku in English day shift education but why was he scared of it well he had been through his punishment slash retraining program before the day shift education usually ran between nine o'clock in the morning and quarter to six in the evening at the company offices it consisted mainly of report writing but would be undertaken in a room with other employees in an effort to try and shame the driver many tasks will be requested on top of the reports which included long hand copying of work rules writing lines on a board apologizing to work colleagues weeding tracks cutting grass and tending to flower beds as an additional punishment drivers would have their pay cut during the day shift education they are also required to ask permission to use the toilet and have to follow any instructions given from the educator in charge before the disaster tsukami had done three counts of day shift education tosling 18 days one of which was 10 months before from an overrun of 100 meters he was clearly struggling with the brutal timetable leading him to make mistakes thus leading him to more time on the day shift education the mounting pressure led him down the path of loss of concentration and situational awareness in a job that can be very unforgiving if the mind wanders knowing the punishment he would have received resulted in an attempt of trying to put right to the earlier delay it's common on the railway where drivers get caught up in chasing the timetable but it is a very risky game to play additionally why did he not use the emergency brake well this ties back into J.R West's policies at the time where any use of emergency brake would need to be explained and Justified later thus presumably into kami's mind would make a bad situation worse with his punishment investigators found that that a train traveling the curve at any speed greater than 106 kilometers an hour or 66 miles an hour would derail the disaster was a combination of speed and lack of awareness of the corner but that's not the whole picture aside from the human factors of Takami trying to claw back for delay and getting distracted the question of protection systems need to be addressed after all they are meant to be able to step in when the skin and bone combo that is a human being messes up as I mentioned before JL West used two types of ATS and on the line in question the older ATS SW was in operation although nothing was installed on this particular curve even if it was the system atssw would have not been sufficient to protect the curve now what is crazy about this disaster was that the train hit a building off of the Railway it's not hard to see why when looking at it on a map it's almost like a building was a Target at the end of a range especially as the straight section of track leading up to it had a speed of 120 kilometers an hour or 75 miles an hour Japanese building regulations don't restrict the construction of buildings near the railway as long as it wouldn't obstruct any signals or impede the railway property thus they are allowed to be built very close to the running line in the wake of the disaster changes at Jr West had to be made a number of resignations followed from the company's top bosses in July 2009 West Japan Company Co president masau yamazaki was charged with negligence but found not guilty in January 2012. even though the company were critiqued on the poor risk assessment of the Curve the building the train hit was partially demolished in 2017 leaving one corner standing as a memorial which opened in 2019 now I'm going to rate This Disaster as a dumpster fire as an accident like this was just waiting to happen due to the pressure placed on J.R West's drivers and I'm going to give it a six on the Legacy scale this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are Creative Commons attribution share alike licensed playing difficult videos are produced by me John in a currently wet and windy corner of Southern London UK I'd like to thank my patreon and YouTube members for your financial support as well as the rest of you for tuning in every week to see your weekly dose of disaster if you're enjoying this outro song please feel free to go over to my second Channel made by John to watch the video and listen to the song in full and all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr music play us out please [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Plainly Difficult

Views: 372,578

Keywords: plainly difficult disaster, plainly difficult documentary, Amagasaki crash, Amagasaki train derailment, train derailment, Japan railway disaster, derailment disaster, train crash disaster, plainly difficult, qxir, fascinating horror

Id: Grh-hkHIXuM

Length: 19min 40sec (1180 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 18 2023