Mastodawn

But first, some context.
The Tosa Kuroshio Railway is a minor so-called third sector (local government-owned) railway operating a couple of local lines in Kōchi Prefecture in southern Shikoku, the least-developed of Japan's four main islands. Its lines were all conceived over half a century ago, when Japan was rather big on building railways local lines without a clear return on investment (I believe it was supposed to feed into rural political machines)… and only partially constructed by the time the Japanese National Railways were privatized and chopped up in 1987

2/n

The relevant line here technically consists of two lines, the Nakamura Line and the Sukumo Line, which together form a branch connecting Kubokawa station, where the JR Dosan and Yodo Lines meet, with the town of Sukumo located at the south-western end of the prefecture, the Nakamura Line snaking towards the coast, the Sukumo Line taking a river valley side instead. They were originally envisioned as part of a rough ellipse of railways running around Shikoku, but in the end, only the shorter Yodo line was completed and the idea of a railway connection between Sukumo and Uwajima was abandoned completely. A remnant of the idea remains in the Sukumo Line's kilometrage, which runs in the opposite direction to the Nakamura Line (such that both end in Nakamura) - however, they are operated as a single line with "down" being south-west, towards Sukumo, at all times. Both lines are unelectrified and fully single-track - Nakamura station, located in the administrative center of Shimanto-shi, and also the company headquarters and location of the centralized control center and depot for the two lines, is the only place between Kubokawa and Sukumo where trains can so much as cross, let alone start or terminate.

3/n

The Nakamura Line was completed in 1970, while the Sukumo Line took until 1997, a decade after third-sectorization (construction was finished thanks to additional subsidies). The Sukumo line is heavy on civil works and collision-free - while it was originally planned to run in the middle of the valley, the muddy ground was judged too likely to subside and the line was rerouted through the mountainside using tunnels and elevated sections at some expense. Sukumo station at the end is located at the end of an elevated section, a terminus with two tracks, of which track 1 on the southern side has a longer platform and is thus used by limited expresses like the one here…

4/n

On the evening of Wednesday, 2 March 2005 (roughly a month and a half before the infamous Amagasaki derailment), the Limited Express train known as Nanpū 17 arrived at Kubokawa station on time and was handed off from the JR Shikoku crew to the Tosa Kuroshio crew for the last leg of its island-spanning journey as usual. The train was composed of a three-car JR Shikoku 2000 series DMU, said to be the world's first type of tilting DMU in revenue service. It was the last revenue service of the driver's first day of work after a week of leave caused by a bout of influenza. On the day before calling in sick, the driver had completed an almost 13 hour long shift, and then… gone fishing overnight. On the day of the accident, he was booked for another almost 13 hour long shift (with long breaks, but still) and seemed fine to everyone he met that day.

The ride down went smoothly, with minimal delays even by the tight standards of Japanese timetables. At Tosa-Saga, a maintenance employee boarded the train and took a ride to Nakamura in the driver's cab in order to inspect the track they would be working on later and return to the depot. They traded a few words and observed the driver's proper pointing and calling as they passed stations the train was not to call at. From Nakamura, the train continued onto the Sukumo Line. The Sukumo line is heavy on civil works, light on curves and collision-free - while it was originally planned to run in the middle of the valley, the muddy ground was judged too likely to subside and the line was rerouted through the mountainside using tunnels and elevated sections at some expense. It was thus considered easy to drive on, and indeed, the journey continued proceeding smoothly.

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波鉄 (Hatetsu)

Just before Higashi-Sukumo station (really a halt), located in what used to be the center of town, but has been losing importance to the area around Sukumo station, the line runs through the 5 kilometer long Hijirigaoka Tunnel, the latter two kilometers with a descending gradient. At the time, around 20:40, the conductor was in the rear cab, as usual on Japanese trains. She found it odd that train didn't start breaking as it came out of the tunnel, but focused on her duty of announcing the terminus arrival over the PA system. Having finished her announcement, she inserted her key into the left-side passenger door switch and prepared to open them. As the train entered the final curve, it finally started slowing down, and that reassured her for a moment. She saw the lights of town peering from below the elevated line, and a pachinko parlor close by…

In the the first carriage of the train, a passenger returning from a meeting in Kōchi was sitting alone in the standard class reserved section in the back and listening to a portable CD player. As the conductor's announcement went out, they started getting their luggage together while another passenger from the second car passed by them, aiming to get closer to the front to save themselves some of the walk along the platform…

Down below, another employee of the Tosa Kuroshio Railway had just finished their duties and was driving to Sukumo station to meet the Limited Express. While stopped at a trafic light near a pachinko parlor, they saw the train pulling into Sukumo station and immediately realized it was doing more than 100 km/h, close to line speed. Realizing the train was not going to stop in time, they hurried to the station.

6/n

The front half of the first car, where the empty "green car" (first class) section was located, was crushed almost completely. The second car was only half-derailed, thanks to the relative narrowness of the concourse, and was disfigured largely only at the interconnection with the first car. When the car-driving railway employee arrived at the station, they found the stairs up to the platforms covered in Diesel fuel and engine oil leaking from the crashed train. That fuel quickly ignited, making access to the platforms perilous…

Fortunately, there was a local train stopped on track 2 of the station, to the right of the crashed train, and its driver had just gone to the break room at the head of its platform to fetch their coat. Then they heard the sound of wheels slipping under emergency breaking, and left to see what was going on. Seeing the crashed train, they called the control center in Nakamura. The burning oil started belching black smoke, and fire alarms rang out. The control center instructed them to go and see to any injured passengers, which they did by crossing the tracks on the far side of the trains.

The conductor in the rear of the train, quite literally thoroughly shaken and hurt, also attempted to contact the control center, but only managed to get through using a cell phone. Having reported the incident, and told to wait for the fire brigade, she attempted to catch the attention of the local train driver, but failed. She went through her train, gathering passengers able to leave on their own on the platform byt the third car.

7/n

Meanwhile the railway employee from down below climbed up to the platforms using a nearby utility pole (!) and joined the effort to save injured passengers. Together with the local train driver, they broke the glass of the standard class reserved section of the first car and retrieved the passenger within, and the other one in the vestibule between the standard class and green car sections. When the conductor was on the phone with a firefighter, the employee took the phone and explained how to climb up to the platforms.

It was decided that everyone present - the conductor, the employee, the 11 passengers of the limited express and the 2 passengers of the local train - would be evacuated on the local train. After all boarded (having crossed or been carried over the tracks), the train departed. The passengers from the first car were dropped off and handed over to an ambulance crew at Higashi-Sukumo while the other injured were dropped off at Hirata station, closer to a hospital, where a firefighter escorted them to an ambulance.

The subsequent investigation revealed that, for unknown reasons, the driver had lost concentration and failed to push the drive handle into the 0 position, which on the train in question overrode the brake handle and continued applying power until the train passed an ATS-SS speed limit coil that triggered an emergency brake application. However, that was placed only 290 m before the end of the line, between the entry signals and the switch where track 2 branched off. The people who designed the signalling at the station had clearly failed to consider that a train would actually get that far without the driver starting braking and only placed warning coils that only tripped if not acknowledged within 5 seconds before that (plus a coil that tripped if the entry signals were passed at danger, which they were not).

8/n

I'm honestly surprised they managed to get everyone out before the fire could engulf the local train. And somewhat surprised people laying out automatic train stop devices could be that complacent. And that people could actually find themselves using a utility pole to climb onto an el.

You can find out more at the Japanese Wikipedia link, which cites the original report, here:
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%9C%9F%E4%BD%90%E3%81%8F%E3%82%8D%E3%81%97%E3%81%8A%E9%89%84%E9%81%93%E5%AE%BF%E6%AF%9B%E9%A7%85%E8%A1%9D%E7%AA%81%E4%BA%8B%E6%95%85

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土佐くろしお鉄道宿毛駅衝突事故 - Wikipedia

geeeero Apr 5

@HaTetsu Thank you for writing this down. We must always remember that almost all rules in the railways are written in blood, that is, they were established after horrible accidents.