How the driver of the electric locomotive of “crazy” flight No. 1908 went crazy: he saw the eyes of the devil

In Russian railway chronicles, this incident is known as the incident with train No. 1908.

Force majeure happened on one of the sections of the Oktyabrskaya Railway on the night of January 11, 2004. A few hours before, late in the evening of the 10th, another locomotive crew was supposed to go on duty at the Volkhovstroy depot. However, by the appointed time, only assistant driver Alexander Abdurakhmanov showed up for duty. But for some reason, number one, driver Eduard Gorchakov, was delayed. He arrived only almost an hour and a half later, explaining this violation of labor discipline by the fact that he had overslept.

The team of “electric locomotives” was about to set off on the next flight, provided for by the train schedule, any minute now. Time was running out, and therefore Gorchakov’s medical examination, which according to regulations is required for drivers and assistants, was carried out by the doctor on duty “in blitz mode” – superficially. According to its results, the medical condition of this man did not raise any questions, and he received permission to drive the locomotive.

According to the instructions received from the control room, Gorchakov and Abdurakhmanov were supposed to attach a freight train of 58 cars to their two-section mainline electric locomotive VL15 and drive it towards Tikhvin. This train was assigned the number 1908.

At first the flight went smoothly. The “tricks” began when they were moving along the stretch from the Volkhovstroy II station to the Kukol junction station. Via radio communication, the brigade received a message from the duty dispatcher that the entrance traffic light was closed and their train should stop in front of it and let another “truck” moving in the intersecting direction pass. However, Gorchakov suddenly, instead of slowing down, on the contrary, began to increase the traction of the electric locomotive. Noticing this, Abdurakhmanov wanted to correct the situation, thinking that the driver had simply made a mistake. But in response to his promptings to reduce the speed of the electric motors, Gorchakov ordered the assistant not to interfere and threatened him with physical violence. The ratio of the weight categories of these two people was clearly not in Alexander’s favor, and therefore he was forced to obey.

At about three o’clock in the morning, one thousand nine hundred and eight, bypassing the prohibitory red traffic light, burst into the Kukol station, overclocked the switch (as railway workers call the situation when a train, moving outside the permitted schedule, “forcibly” switches the switch with the wheels of the locomotive) and then rolled out onto Main way. All this time, the radio communications were calling for dispatch services to stop immediately. In order not to hear orders annoying him, Gorchakov turned off the radio station on the electric locomotive.

Fortunately, the “mutinous” freight train safely missed another one, which should have given way, and now the train, weighing over 5 thousand tons, was picking up speed, moving south unscheduled.

A few minutes later, train No. 1908, driven by the distraught Gorchakov, also, without stopping, passed the next Myslino station. Next was the Valya station, behind it Tsyvlevo, and then it was not far to Tikhvin.

As the driver’s assistant later said, when the red signal of the next traffic light flashed outside the window of the locomotive, his “chief” muttered something about “the eyes of the devil.”

Having made sure that the driver did not respond to verbal commands, the traffic control service employee was forced to resort to more effective measures. At her suggestion, the energy dispatcher received a command to turn off the power supply to the track along which the “crazy” train was moving on the entire Valya – Tsivlevo stretch. Only in this way was one thousand nine hundred and eight able to be “hobbled.” However, having immediately passed a de-energized section at the Valya station itself, the heavy freight train, by inertia, drove almost another 8 kilometers before stopping.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, Abdurakhmanov jumped out of the locomotive cabin and ran to the Tsivlevo station ahead. Having received information from him about what had happened, from there, on the next train moving in the opposite direction along the second track, a police squad was sent to the freight train frozen on the stretch.

Having climbed into the cabin of the electric locomotive, the law enforcement officers found the culprit of the commotion there – Gorchakov was sitting on the floor and was in a clearly inadequate state. When the 30-year-old driver was brought to the hospital some time later, the specialists there examined him and diagnosed him with acute delusional psychosis with aggressive manifestations.

During the investigation of the incident, it was calculated that the flight of the “rebellious” train, driven by a crazy driver, lasted about 47 minutes, during which the train covered almost 40 kilometers, accelerating in some sections to 95 km/h.

It was only thanks to a happy coincidence that this incident occurred without casualties or serious consequences. It was lucky that the train was pulled by an electric locomotive, which was stopped by turning off the voltage in the contact network. But with a diesel locomotive, such an option would be impossible.

The described emergency with a driver who lost his mind is unique in its own way. However, there were cases when the person driving the locomotive was “knocked out” for one reason or another, and the moving train was then left to its own devices. It was this kind of force majeure that formed the basis of the adventure film “Unscheduled Train”: there, a diesel locomotive driver was suddenly struck down by a heart attack.

However, if you study the chronicle of railway accidents, other scenarios are discovered, which resulted in the appearance of an out-of-control train.

Let us mention here an incident that occurred on September 12, 2005 on the Sverdlovsk Railway.

At night, the driver of a passenger train traveling from Yekaterinburg towards the Ustye-Akha station, Alexander Shalygin, on the approach to the Azanka station, suddenly heard on the radio the exclamation of the duty dispatcher, from which it became clear that a freight train was moving towards him along the same path, having ignored the red traffic light compound.

There were only a few kilometers left between the trains when Shalygin, having braked the diesel locomotive, ordered his assistant to uncouple the cars, where there were hundreds of passengers, and after that he drove his locomotive forward – to intercept the oncoming one. We managed to drive a few hundred meters, and then the spotlight of the offending train was already flashing ahead. By moving “head-on”, the driver exposed himself to enormous danger: in the event of a collision, the cabin of the locomotive would probably be flattened into a flat cake. However, only in this way could the railway worker protect the people on his passenger train from death.

At the very last moment, the oncoming freight train slowed down – after all, the sound and light signals that Shalygin gave from his locomotive as they approached went off. Two diesel locomotives stopped literally ten meters from each other.

Having climbed into the cabin of the “rebellious” train, Alexander saw his frightened colleagues there, workers of the same depot. As it turned out, these two members of the locomotive crew were overcome by sleep, and they ceased to control the movement of their train and did not hear the dispatcher’s screams on the radio. They were awakened only by the alarming whistles of the Shalygin diesel locomotive and the bright light of its searchlight.

This time, “sleeping unscheduled” was only a hassle. No people or equipment were harmed. The freight train retreated in reverse to the station, and Shalygin’s diesel locomotive, returning to the train, again picked up these cars, in which the unsuspecting passengers were sleeping, and dragged them further along the route.

But another incident, in the same place, in the Urals, led to much more serious consequences.

This happened almost ten years earlier – October 6, 1996. The locomotive crew, consisting of driver Evgeny Parchinsky and his assistant Yuri Zadvornykh, drove a commuter train along the Sosva – Alapaevsk route: a diesel locomotive and two passenger cars. After another scheduled stop near the bridge over the Sosva River, the diesel locomotives suddenly heard on the radio the alarming voice of a dispatcher from the Ust-Berezovka station, towards which they were to move. As it turned out, the station duty officer had seen a shunting locomotive a minute earlier rushing past the station building – straight into the section occupied by a commuter train. There was no one in the cabin of this TEM2!

There were only a few minutes left before the inevitable disaster. In such a situation, instructions order all people on a train that is in danger of colliding with an oncoming train to immediately leave the cars and locomotive and try to move away from them. However, the driver Parchinsky decided to act differently in this case. He and his assistant quickly uncoupled the cars, ordered the conductor to take the people into the forest, and they themselves decided to “catch” the uncontrollable diesel locomotive.

They moved towards him, and when the intruder was already nearby, Parchinsky turned on the reverse move. The calculation was that it would be possible to equalize the speeds of both locomotives as much as possible and, moving a little slower than the catching one, to “dock” with it quite gently, thus avoiding a strong frontal impact, and then try to slow down the shunting locomotive by turning on its braking system.

However, the plan was not fully realized. As it turned out, the uncontrollable diesel locomotive accelerated too fast (during the investigation, they found out that it was traveling at about 100 km/h). As a result, this intruder caught up with Parchinsky’s locomotive when it only managed to pick up speed at about 50 km/h.

Seeing that a powerful collision could not be avoided, the driver turned off the diesel engine a second before the ram, and he and his assistant managed to jump out of the cab into the engine room. As a result, both were injured, but survived.

The section of the diesel locomotive that came under attack was severely damaged, and the cabin, which the railway workers had just left, was flattened. However, the second, rear section remained intact. Having unhooked it, Parchinsky and Zadvornykh were able to use this “half” to return to the abandoned cars and push them to the nearest station, located on the path their train had already traveled before.

According to the railway workers themselves, the result would have been completely different if the blow had hit a locomotive standing motionless on the tracks. The force of such a collision would be much greater. Most likely, the diesel locomotive would have been completely turned around, thrown off the rails, and several tons of fuel could have spilled out of the damaged fuel tanks (and, very likely, caught fire)…

The front part of the intruder, the shunting TEM2, was also mangled. Yuri Zadvornykh immediately after the ramming went to his cabin to see what happened to the driver. But, to my surprise, I discovered that there was no one there, and the control panel controller was set to the position corresponding to the maximum thrust of the locomotive engine.

Where did this “flying Dutchman” come from? Investigators figured it out pretty quickly. It turns out that the driver of the railcar, Farafontov, was the culprit of the incident. Angry that his superiors did not promote him, making him a diesel locomotive driver, he decided to take revenge in a way fraught with great tragedy. I chose a convenient moment, made my way to the access tracks of the loading area where the TEM2 diesel locomotive stood, opened the driver’s cabin, started the diesel engine and moved the locomotive forward. While the car had not yet accelerated, the “avenger” jumped off it, but first set the speed control knob to maximum.

The uncontrolled TEM left the loading area at the Predturye station, cut the exit switch and, finding itself on the main track, rushed towards Ust-Berezovka and further to the bridge over Sosva, where it collided with a diesel locomotive of a commuter train.

The culprit of this emergency was later tried, and two brave railway workers were presented with government awards. Evgeny Parchinsky became a Hero of Russia, and Yuri Zadvornykh received the Order of Courage.

There were also cases of actual theft of locomotives on the railway.

For example, on January 1, 2013, one of the train compilers working in the Moscow region at the Mytishchi oil products base was inspired to perform exploits. The 30-year-old man, having properly celebrated the New Year holiday, managed to get to the cargo terminal site where the diesel locomotive was parked. Being “under the weather”, this “universal specialist” managed to start a powerful car, get on it, deceiving the dispatcher, to the freight station, and then attach six tanks and a carriage to the locomotive (for what reason is unclear… However, that’s where the hijacker’s successes ended . While trying to get his makeshift train onto the main tracks, he crashed into another train. One of the tanks was punctured and gasoline began to pour out of it, which then ignited. To cope with the raging flames, it was necessary to attract significant forces of firefighters. It was the firefighters who rescued the drunk “self-driver” from the cabin of the diesel locomotive, who received serious injuries. The damage caused by such railway “improvisation” was estimated at 2 million.