Explosion in carriage at Sofia's Nadezhda depot: investigators check if deliberate
The 21 September incident has only now come to light: 300 square metres of glass were shattered. A case has been opened against an unknown perpetrator, and BDZ has pulled identical carriages.
Symbolic image · Photo: Bin im Garten / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped and resized)
An explosion in a passenger carriage at the Nadezhda rail depot in Sofia shattered about 300 square metres of glass on the repair hall, bTV reported on its "120 Minutes" programme. The incident happened on 21 September shortly after 10 a.m. but had not been made public until now. No one was hurt, as the hall was empty. According to state railway BDZ and a depot technician, the blast occurred in a technical cabinet under the carriage body, outside the passenger area; according to the technician it houses the power electronics for lighting, vacuum toilets and other systems.
The carriage last carried passengers on 17 September on the Sofia–Burgas line, then broke down and was returned empty to the depot; a repair attempt on 19 September did not fix the fault. BDZ says the equipment's design does not suggest such a blast in normal operation, but no causal link between the fault and the explosion has been established. All carriages of the same series have been taken out of service as a precaution. Police initially saw no sign of sabotage, but later opened a case against an unknown perpetrator. The file was sent to the Sofia District Prosecutor's Office; investigators have not yet reached a firm conclusion on the cause.