Spanish train collision continues as investigators look into rail ‘gaps’

Heavy machinery is being used to assist with recovery efforts after two trains collided in southern Spain, killing at least 41 people.

Rescuers carried out the second night amid fears more bodies would be trapped in the wreckage.

More than 120 people were injured when a Madrid-bound train carriage derailed and jumped onto the opposite track. Crash into an oncoming train in Adamuz on Sunday night.

Spanish media reported that an investigation is underway into whether defective or damaged welds on the rails were a factor in the accident.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has canceled plans to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos and pledged to get to the bottom of Spain’s worst train crash in more than a decade.

Spain’s King Felipe and Queen Letizia will visit the site later on Tuesday.

Three days of national mourning were declared.

Transportation Secretary Oscar Puente said the death toll “has not been finalized yet.”

Officials are working to identify the deceased.

Puente said the investigation could take at least a month, calling the incident “extremely bizarre.”

Spanish media reported that a 30cm gap in one of the rails was the focus of the current investigation.

Technicians told Le Monde that “bad” or “deteriorated” welds were “most likely” the cause of the derailment.

“The cause of a derailment is always the interaction between track and rolling stock, and that is what the commission is currently investigating,” Ignacio Barron, head of Spain’s Commission for the Investigation of Rail Accidents (CIAF), told RTVE.

However, Spain’s El Pais reported that it was unclear whether the failure was the cause or result of the accident.

On Monday, Renfe president Álvaro Fernández Heredia apparently ruled out the possibility of “human error”, telling RNE program Las Mañanas that if “the driver makes a mistake, the system will correct itself”.

Heredia also told RNE that both trains were traveling at maximum speed on the stretch of road where the accident occurred.

As the investigation into the accident continues, Spanish media reported that the train driver warned about conditions on the Madrid-Andalusia line in August and requested that speeds be limited to 250 km/h.

The driver’s union reportedly said in a letter to state rail infrastructure administrator Adif that the increase in the number and weight of high-speed trains has led to an increase in the number of breakdowns.

The railways said there were 400 passengers and staff on board the two trains. Emergency services treated 122 people, of whom 41, including children, remain in hospital. Of those, 12 are in intensive care.

Officials said most of the dead and injured were in the front carriage of the train bound for Huelva.

RTVE reporter Salvador Jimenez, who was on one of the trains, said the impact felt like an “earthquake.”

“I was sitting in the first car. For a moment, it felt like there was an earthquake and the train actually derailed,” Jimenez said.

Footage from the scene appears to show some train cars rolling onto their sides. Rescue workers could be seen climbing onto the train and pulling people out of the sloping train doors and windows.

“There were people screaming for doctors,” Jose, a passenger traveling to Madrid, told public broadcaster Canal Sur.

Network operator Adif said the accident occurred at 19:45 local time on Sunday (18:45 GMT), about an hour after one of the trains leaving Malaga heading north to Madrid derailed on a straight track near the city of Cordoba.

According to the transport minister, the force of the accident pushed the carriages of the second train into the embankment.

All high-speed services between Madrid and the southern cities of Malaga, Cordoba, Seville and Huelva have been suspended until Friday.