Iryo defends the reliability of its trains, including the damaged one, on the Madrid-Seville line

One of the railway operators involved in the serious accident in Urda (Toledo), Iryo, came out this morning to address any doubts about the reliability of its trains when they circulate on the Madrid-Seville line. "Iryo uses exactly the same tools as the rest of the latest generation trains that operate on Spanish tracks, with the exception of Renfe's S100 (the oldest series). All of them have the ERTMS [security system] installed and both the LZB and ASFA systems are integrated as a subsystem of the same. This allows transitions from ETCS to LZB or ASFA to be made automatically to guarantee safety and operational agility."

Train 6076, which left Madrid's Puerta de Atocha station bound for Seville at 7:54 on Wednesday, was paralyzed at kilometer 118, at the doors of the Urda LZB station after the LZB signaling system crashed at 8:30. Its driver notified the control center of the Adif infrastructure manager in Atocha itself about the fact that the train was stopped at 8:41 and 8:48. He also informed the control center that it was impossible for him to restart the LZB system and, with it, the march. The response of the Adif operator in charge of that crisis was to start when he could and move at normal speed. A Renfe AVE was advancing towards its position, which had also been ordered to run normally (at a maximum of 200 kilometers per hour as it did not have LZB) under the protection of the BSL lateral beacon system and the ASFA security system itself. The fatal hit from behind to the Iryo occurred at 8:53. The Renfe unit traveled 25 kilometers, according to the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, “inexplicably” (it occupied the same canton or segment of track between signals as the Iryo) and without any braking order.

“Since its start of operations, Iryo has increased its investment in the maintenance of its entire fleet by 10%,” the company stated this Monday. In addition to proving the impossibility of restarting the LZB by the Iryo train, according to the audios of the communications between the driver and the Adif operator, the operator's CEO Fabrizio Favara already pointed out the LZB restart time for its trains as excessive in an appearance on October 5 in the Senate, within the framework of the commission investigating the accidents in Adamuz (Córdoba) and Gelida (Barcelona).

Sources close to Iryo explain that the restart of the security system on board the trains, native to the ERTMS system and adapted to the LZB to be able to circulate on the Madrid-Seville line, takes between three or four minutes. With the second failed attempt to resume operation by the train stopped in Urda that Wednesday morning, the Iryo protocol orders the driver to contact the operator's own maintenance team. The driver called the company while also speaking with the Adif control center.

The lethal impact of the AVE occurred while these efforts were being carried out in the cabin of the Iryo train, and with an Adif technical team trying to lift the LZB system from 8:35 a.m. at the Urda station. They were not successful in that mission before the tragedy either.