Train driver killed by electric shock at Sofia station, halting traffic for hours
A 53-year-old driver for state railway BDZ died of an electric shock at Sofia's Central Station. Train traffic was halted for hours and several commuter trains were canceled.
Archive image · Photo: Bin im Garten / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped and resized)
A train driver was killed in an accident at Sofia's Central Station on Saturday. According to initial information given to broadcaster bTV by employees of BDZ Passenger Services, the pantograph on the locomotive of train No. 1620 from the Plovdiv depot broke after the engine overheated. The 53-year-old climbed onto the locomotive's roof before the overhead line had been switched off and suffered a fatal electric shock.
The accident happened around midday in the western approach to the station. Train traffic through the Central Station was halted at 11:55 a.m. after the overhead line was switched off, media reported. It was cleared again at 5:35 p.m., according to the state-owned National Railway Infrastructure Company (NRIC). Because of the power outage on the line, commuter trains on the Sofia–Pernik and Sofia–Kostenets routes, among others, were canceled.
The exact circumstances and the sequence of events leading up to the accident have yet to be investigated; the information so far is considered preliminary.