On the afternoon of this Sunday, December 8th, a derailment occurred in Ferrominera del Orinoco railroad near Ciudad Piar in the Angostura municipality, Bolívar State, in the south of the country.
By: Pableysa Ostos | Correspondent lapatilla.com
According to what was reported by a worker who for security reasons preferred not to be identified, the unit had to be diverted in an emergency to one of the two escape shunts that exist and resulted in the derailment. “The process is still under investigation but the railroad operations crews of Ciudad Piar comment that they are driving down (the hill) too many wagons with only two engines, and that does not provide security, apart from the fact that in the wagons many brake shoes are crystallized and they (the government company) do not do the corrective maintenance to the wagons”.
They explained that “if the brake shoes are crystallized, of course they are not going to do an effective braking”.
“There are trains that already have more than 100 (cars) between hoppers and gondolas (they are types of railroad cars that are used to transport bulk loads), these should have more or less three or four engines since most engines are old”, added the worker of the state company.
They explain that “then it would be like four machines to be able to drive down that number of cars, although this train was short, they explained that they have been driving between 115-120 car for a week and they only put two engines on it, that is dangerous because when it comes the time to stop they won’t be able to.”
