A school class from Salzburg is stuck in the Italian capital after a trip to Rome because rail links between northern and southern Italy have been interrupted by a train derailment in Florence. The students and accompanying teaching staff – a total of 26 people – should have returned to Salzburg from Rome on Thursday, but had to postpone the journey home.
The students from Salzburg are among thousands of people waiting at Rome’s central station for information about their train. They now have to spend an extra night in Rome due to delays of up to five hours. “We were on our way to Salzburg. We only found out at the station that our train had been cancelled,” a history teacher at the stricken school told the Italian news agency ANSA.
The teachers had to look for a hotel for the night. “We searched for hours for a hotel that could accommodate 26 people,” said the teacher. She had to search over 20 accommodations before finally finding a hotel. “A colleague and I will be back here at the station at 6 pm to see if it is possible to get tickets for tomorrow,” said the educator.
Derailed freight train caused chaos
The chaotic conditions in the Italian railway system arose after the carriage of a freight train derailed. No one was injured in the accident near the Firenze Castello station on Thursday evening. However, the railway line between Florence and Bologna, important for the north-south connections, was shut down for hours, both for regional and long-distance traffic. Thousands of passengers were trapped at many train stations, for example in Rome and Milan.
An intercity night train between Milan and the southern Italian city of Salerno stopped shortly before Florence on the open track at about 2 a.m. because of a power failure due to the freight train accident. More than 100 passengers waited hours into mid-morning for the train before it could enter a station. The railway police provided the travelers with food and drink. It is not yet possible to explain why the wagon of the freight train derailed, according to a railway official.
Source: Krone
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