Runaway train at Landen, Belgium

[DesireToFire]

Apologies if this has already been posted.

From bbc news;

An empty train travelled along tracks in Belgium for 30 minutes without a driver after the man left his cabin to investigate an engine fault.

The train moved off from the platform at Landen, east of Brussels, and continued for another 12km (7.5 miles) before another driver jumped on board.

Although the train was moving slowly, services on the line were halted.

Officials cleared the next station of passengers and the train was brought under control.

"The train was going very slowly, the platform was clear and the station at Tienen (Tirlemont in French) had been evacuated, so no passengers were ever put in danger," said Belgian rail operator SNCB (NMBS in Dutch).

The drama unfolded at around 21:00 (20:00 GMT) on Thursday...

 

[LAX54]

Apologies if this has already been posted.

From bbc news;
An empty train travelled along tracks in Belgium for 30 minutes without a driver after the man left his cabin to investigate an engine fault.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35611868

so how come their version of TPWS / AWS did not stop the train ??

 

[ComUtoR]

so how come their version of TPWS / AWS did not stop the train ??

I can think of a couple of ways it would be possible in the UK.

 

[Deepgreen]

Apologies if this has already been posted.

From bbc news;

Very amusing statement that "although the train was moving slowly services on the line were halted" - as if it might conceivably be the case that they may have simply run other trains around the 'runaway'!

 

[Groningen]

(Tirlemont in French)

As this is the dutch speaking part of Belgium it is just called Tienen.

 

[theageofthetra]

As someone who has been travelling to Belgium since 1985 but less so recently- is there still the Walloon v Flemish lack of cooperation in most things? Wasn't there a serious rail accident 10 or so years ago on SNCB where a signaller 'pretending' not to understand the other language was a factor? In fact what is the 'official' Railway language of SNCB?

 

[317666]

As someone who has been travelling to Belgium since 1985 but less so recently- is there still the Walloon v Flemish lack of cooperation in most things? Wasn't there a serious rail accident 10 or so years ago on SNCB where a signaller 'pretending' not to understand the other language was a factor? In fact what is the 'official' Railway language of SNCB?

Indeed, the Pécrot crash where two signallers couldn't (wouldn't?) speak each others' language, when trying to stop a train which had passed a signal at danger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pécrot_rail_crash

In terms of the 'official' language, the answer is both French and Dutch. Station signage and announcements are only displayed in the local language (both for Brussels and a few other bi-lingual places), and on-train staff are supposed to be able to speak both languages as far as I know. Whether lessons have been learned from the above crash and signallers now also have to be bi-lingual, I don't know!

Interestingly, a few years ago a tourist came up to me at Leuven station and asked me why he couldn't see any trains going to Liège - I had to explain to him that as Leuven is Dutch-speaking, he instead needed to be looking for 'Luik'!