Cleaner steals train, drives into house

[erafjel]

A night shift female cleaner at a local train depot in Saltsjöbaden outside Stockholm, Sweden, for some reason decided to try out one of the trains in the depot. She managed to not only start it, but also drive it outside and on to a dead end track. She had then got the train up to enough speed to run through the buffer stop and into a residential house some 50 m ahead. The train ended up in the living room, the family living in the house had their bedroom at the same floor but fortunately were not injured.

The cleaner, now at hospital, has been arrested. It's not clear what her motives were.

Go here for pictures from Swedish media.

 

[cascaderailroad]

Post Deleted

 

[fran1]

Makes you wonder how she drives a car, badly I would think.

 

[teddytoot]

Takes me back some years to when I travelled on that line from the luxury hotel it served on the archepelago to central Stockholm.

 

[William0d0]

Lucy, you got some 'splainin' to do.

 

[domsarto]

Did the cleaner:

a. just go loco
b. let off some steam
c. go off her track

and

d. was she even trained

 

[erafjel]

So, latest word is that it was most likely an accident and the 22 year old cleaner, still in hospital, is freed of all suspicion of theft and dangerous devastation. While she has been laying unconscious in hospital since Tuesday, speculations have been abundant in Swedish press about her motives, since word from the train company was that it was impossible to start and drive the train unintentionally. Now, they admit that, well, ok, actually it is possible... although of course it shouldn't have been... but the keys to the train had not been removed (they should have) and the dead-man's handle had been disengaged or got stuck somehow (shouldn't happen). So the theory right now is that while cleaning the driver's cabin, the throttle was accidentally pushed, perhaps by the driver's seat being folded forward, and the train drives away, with the poor cleaner panicking inside...

The prosecutor is now directing his attention to the train company instead, who has some explaining to do, as well as a serious review of their safety routines.

 

[daylightrain]

Why does this remind me of that Thomas episode?

 

[sawyer811]

Not sure Daylight; I will say that this does remind me of the time I got to sit in Milwaukee Road 261's engineer seat though. The cab was full, and I just kinda plopped down to get out of the way. The crew were fine with it...but they couldn't hear the dialogue in my head!

..."Let's see, know what that control does, know what that one does, there's the sander, throttle, brakes. Don't know what that one does, but I can figure it out once I'm rolling!!" :hehe:

 

[JohnnyC1]

Gotta watch out for those voices!!

• 
  
  

John

 

[ctclark1]

Why does this remind me of that Thomas episode?

It is almost Thomas Comes To Breakfast to the letter... In that story it was a careless firelighter who bumped "a lever" when working within the loco, sounds very familiar and I had similar thoughts upon hearing this news story...

 

[cascaderailroad]

Vertical control stands in the USA, used to have removable handles, that prevented a common person from operating any controls. Newer desktop control stands have a PC lockout code that must be entered into the loco PC ... I am not sure what security safegaurds are in place abroad ? NYC transit has some sort of lockout that disables the control handles, preventing a cleaner, or trespasser from any operation of a loco.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCcwNoVSt2E

 

[ctclark1]

Even desktop style controls in the US I believe have removable reverser handles. To operate as a trailing loco in an MU consist, as well as any time the crew is leaving a loco, even with it idling, rules are that the reverser handles must be removed.