Qualla: Tempi Train Crash

Tempi Train Crash: Introduction

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nikosperakiss, CC BY-SA 4.0. Most of the dead were going home from Carnival. The Intercity 62 left Athens on the evening of 28 February 2023, carrying around 350 passengers up the spine of Greece toward Thessaloniki - students returning to university, workers to families, young people whose break had ended. Just before midnight, where the line cuts through the Tempi gorge in the Vale of Tempe, the passenger train collided head-on with a southbound freight train at a closing speed of around 250 kilometres per hour. A station master in Larissa, working alone on a network whose automated signalling had not functioned for years, had directed the Intercity onto the wrong track. Fifty-seven people died. The first six carriages caught fire so intensely that some bodies could only be identified through DNA, and one young woman, Erietta Molchova, left no remains at all.

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Image: Nikosperakiss | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tempi Train Crash: Who They Were

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The electoral type, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Greek public learned the victims' names slowly, over weeks. Most were between 18 and 30. There were 20-year-old twins from Larissa traveling with their cousin. There was the ticket inspector, whose family later won an 800,000-euro civil judgement against the rail operators fo...

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Image: The electoral type | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tempi Train Crash: The Fireball Question

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NikosLikomitros, CC0. What killed many of the passengers was not the collision but what came after. A massive fireball erupted seconds after impact and burned at temperatures hot enough to melt the cafeteria car. The Hellenic Railways Organisation initially attributed it to silicone oils in the locomo...

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Image: NikosLikomitros | CC0

Tempi Train Crash: The Crime Scene That Was Paved Over

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Falk2, CC BY-SA 4.0. Within days of the collision, before the search for human remains was complete, work crews moved in. Rails were repaired, debris cleared, and roughly two hectares of the site were covered with quarry gravel and a thin layer of tar. The official explanation was that the local dist...

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Image: Falk2 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tempi Train Crash: Streets That Will Not Forget

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NNeilAlieNN, CC BY-SA 3.0. On the second anniversary, 28 February 2025, more than a million people marched in Athens alone. Demonstrations took place in 262 cities and villages across Greece and abroad - in Greek life this is generally considered the largest civil protest of the post-1974 democratic era. C...

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Image: NNeilAlieNN | CC BY-SA 3.0