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Passenger Misses Stop, Kills Fifty-Six | Fascinating Horror

Fascinating Horror

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"On the 27th of June, 1988, a busy commuter train was bound for Paris’s Gare de Lyon station..."

Fascinating Horror posts weekly videos covering the true stories behind some of history's greatest disasters. The channel is made possible by supporters on Patreon and YouTube channel members. HUGE thanks to everyone who supports this channel!

LINKS: 🔗
► My other channel: @fascinatinghistoric
► Support this channel: Patreon: fascinatinghorror | @fascinatinghorror
► Follow me: Twitter: TrueHorrorTales | Instagram: fascinatinghorror | Facebook: horrorfascinating
► Get in touch: hello@fascinatinghorror.co.uk

CHAPTERS: 🔖
► 00:00 - Intro
► 00:36 - Background
► 01:35 - The Gare de Lyon Disaster
► 07:44 - The Aftermath

MUSIC: 🎵
► "Glass Pond" by Public Memory

SOURCES: 📑
► "Train Driver Jailed for Crash That Killed 56 People" by Patrick McDowell, published by AP News, December 1992. Link: https://apnews.com/article/c6a225aa4c...
► "Seconds from Disaster: Paris Train Crash" broadcast by National Geographic, November 2005.
► "Death Toll Now 59 in Paris Train Crash" by Steven Greenhouse, published by The New York Times, June 1988. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/29/wo...
► "Catastrophe Gare de Lyon" by INA, June 1988. Link: https://www.ina.fr/ina-eclaire-actu/v...

#Documentary #History #TrueStories

20 Comments

@ingridremywelna9124 2 months ago

The way the title is worded makes it seem like a passenger got so angry that they missed a stop that they just started murdering

@ItsActuallyKate 2 months ago

If the system failed because of one stupid passenger then it was doomed to fail from the start

@seanmorris440 2 months ago

As dumb as that woman was, the system should have been well designed enough to handle an idiot like her. Safety is not a fucking joke.

@kevinconroy2901 2 months ago

Fifty-six people are dead because a train driver didn’t know about a second, electronic braking system???

@TheScarface43 1 year ago (edited)

This was honestly one of the most insane chains of unfortunate events I've ever seen. This is almost cartoonish levels of bad luck.

@gingercube688 3 years ago

"her motives unclear"
It was pretty damn obvious that she wanted to get off at that station and didn't realise this train wasn't going to on the new timetable

@classicmicroscopy9398 3 years ago

It's cases like this that make you appreciate the complexity of many serious accidents. It's often a chain of unfortunate cause and effect events rather than a simple mistake.

@oussamadjeziri311 8 months ago

8:52 THERE WAS A BACKUP WHAT???? no fucking shot

@mothsanchez944 3 years ago

Never ceases to amaze me that folks like Andre are willing to stick it out until the end to save as many people as possible.

@kyleclark4449 3 years ago

Andre was a hero. I wouldn't have had the mental fortitude to make that order myself. He knew that he would die, but his duty was to his passengers. Rest in peace, sir.

@radwanderer6165 3 years ago

The fact with the second, electrical brake system got me

@spartanrolv4553 1 year ago

I remember this disaster so vividly.
A friend of mine had changed working from Gare de Lyon to Gare Montparnasse, the previous day.
I remember how the city was in panic when it happened.

@sushizn 3 years ago

This is pretty similar to the 2021 Hualien train derailment in Taiwan, in which the mistakes of one single person caused a deadly chain of events that killed dozens. A flatbed truck from a construction site rolled down a hill onto the tracks just before a tunnel. A train came and hit the truck, derailed, and everything piled into the tunnel which was barely wide enough for 1 train to pass. I will always remember the interview they did with one of the first responders, he was diagnosed with PTSD because the scene was so gruesome. This was what he said: "It was like walking into a human blender, it was dark, there were body parts everywhere, the air was mixed with blood so it was difficult to breathe. I could hear people screaming and crying everywhere but I couldn't see or reach them. If hell ever existed, that was it."

@Zimin_Anatoly2000 3 years ago (edited)

Huge respect to Andre Tanguy
He is a real hero of this tragedy...

@zacbru 3 years ago (edited)

As a former SNCF worker and a Gare de Lyon dweller, I had many occasion to get in the tunnel. The slope is steep and the trains go down fast. Sometimes I think about it and get the chills.

@winterhaydn 2 months ago

8:46 a backup emergency brake 🤦‍♂️

@unlapras9365 3 years ago

My mother knows someone who was on the waiting train that day. When passengers were told to evacuate she jumped out of the train and went away without looking back. Many were not so lucky.

@godblesstrolls 3 years ago

9:32 If I die and this is what they give me for a memorial then I want somebody to get fired!

@worldwideinterests1 3 years ago

I was willing to have sympathy for the compound errors of the driver I'm a guard up until "forgot about the electric brake". Seems like that should be a pretty hard thing to forget about when you're on a runaway train.

@kalkuttadrop6371 1 year ago

Initially, 3 people were charged criminally. The woman who pulled the brake illegally, the train driver who drained the brakes, used the wrong alarm, didn't identify himself, and failed to use the emergency stop in the cab, and the control manager who failed to divert the train to the siding during the window before it passed the turn off.
The woman and control manager both had the charges dropped(the woman couldn't possibly have known what would ensue, and the control manager only had 8 seconds to respond while dealing with a audible alarm and a bunch of trains calling him at once while the train giving the distress didn't identify itself, there wasn't enough time to find the problem train before it was too late to divert it. The train driver's charges weren't dropped and he lost his job and was found partially responsible)