Hellenic Train suit against OSE last Dec. cites poor state of Greek rail network; probe to expand to other employees

A lawsuit filed by Hellenic Train last December against Greece’s state-run railroad network owner and controller, OSE, is today viewed as an ominous “warning bell” over the long-standing and ultimately lethal problems plaguing the sector.

One of two trains that collided last week in north-central Greece, at the Tempi site, belonged to Hellenic Train, the subsidiary of Italy’s FS in Greece. Since a memorandum-mandated privatization in 2017, Hellenic Train is the private – and essentially the only – passenger rail provider in Greece.

The official death toll as of Wednesday is 56, while some 30 people were on board.
According to information presented on the prime-time newscast of Athens-based Mega TV, Hellenic Train accuses the state-owned Hellenic Railways Organisation (OSE) over what it describes as the poor state of rail infrastructure in the country, especially the condition of railway tracks.

The company, the successor of Trainose, the state-run rail operator in Greece before being sold-off by the SYRIZA government in 2017, demands 1.149 million euros in damages in its lawsuit.

The FS subsidiary claims the damages correspond to improvements it made between September 2017 and February 2019 to make the Greek rail network safer. The lawsuit came in the wake of a train accident at the Adendros site, now viewed as a precursor to the deadly Feb. 28 accident. The legal action also came after a specific contract to install an electronic monitoring system along the entire system – the now infamous contract 717 – ceased being implemented.
The Adendros (Thessaloniki area) rail accident in 2017 cost the lives of four people, incluing one of two train engineers, but failed to mobilize either the government at the time or the subsequent government in 2019.

Six years later and after the death of 56 people the head of the Greek supreme court prosecutor’s office, Isidoros Dogiakos, requested the case file of the 2017 accident in order to review the particulars of that deadly mishap and how action could have prevented the Tempi rail tragedy.

At the same time, media reports on Wednesday claimed that the ongoing top-priority judicial investigation into the Tempi disaster will now shift to other OSE employees, beyond the only on-duty station master at the Larissa station. The latter remains jailed pending the pre-trial investigation, as he is allegedly responsible for switching the north-bound passenger train into the path of an ongoing south-bound freight train.