The 1981 Chengdu–Kunming rail crash occurred on July 9, 1981, when train number 442 passed the failed Liziyida bridge near

Ganluo County Ganluo County ( zh, s=甘洛县; ) is a county of Sichuan Province, China. It is under the administration of the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture. Administrative divisions Ganluo County administers the following 9 towns A town is a type o ...

Sichuan Sichuan is a province in Southwestern China, occupying the Sichuan Basin and Tibetan Plateau—between the Jinsha River to the west, the Daba Mountains to the north, and the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau to the south. Its capital city is Cheng ...

province. More than 200 died in the accident while 146 were injured. It is the worst train disaster in the history of the

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

.Distribution regularity of debris flow and its hazard in upper reaches of Yangtze River and other rivers of southwestern China, by Fangqiang Wei, Yuhong Jiang, Peng Cui and Mingtao Ding, published by Wuhan University Journal of Natural Sciences in 2007, Volume 12, Number 4, page 619–626

Crash

At 1:30 a.m., a

mudslide A mudflow, also known as mudslide or mud flow, is a form of mass wasting involving fast-moving flow of debris and dirt that has become liquified by the addition of water. Such flows can move at speeds ranging from 3 meters/minute to 5 meters/ ...

(Flow velocity up to 13.2m/s, bulk weight up to 2.32t/m3, contains a large number of boulders, include dozens with a diameter of over eight meters) occurred at the Liziyida gully, a tributary of the

Dadu River The Dadu River (, ), known in Tibetan as the Gyelmo Ngul Chu (), is a major river located primarily in Sichuan province, southwestern China. The Dadu flows from the eastern Tibetan Plateau into the Sichuan Basin where it joins with the Min Rive ...

, destroying the , Liziyida bridge. When the train was dispatched from Ganluo Station at 1:35 a.m., the local dispatcher sent the notice of departure but electricity suddenly cut out before the train fully left the station. The driver noticed this, but decided to continue as usual. At 1:41 a.m., the number 442 passenger train consisting of two China Railway DF3 pulling 13 cars from

Geliping Geliping () is a town in Xi District, Panzhihua, Sichuan province, China. , it has two residential neighborhoods and six villages under its administration: ;Neighborhoods *Jinlin Community () *Jingyi Community () ;Villages *Geliping Village *Xin ...

Chengdu Chengdu; Sichuanese dialects, Sichuanese pronunciation: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: ; Chinese postal romanization, previously Romanization of Chinese, romanized as Chengtu. is the capital city of the Chinese province of Sichuan. With a ...

was dispatched from the Niri station after passing Route 221 (another train operated on the opposite direction, from Chengdu to Jinjiang). A minute later, staffs of Niri station discovered that they had lost phone contact to the next station Wusi River station when reporting the departure of route 442. At 1:45 a.m., the train entered the Nainaibao tunnel at a speed of . After passing the tunnel curve, the driver Wang Mingru discovered that the building near the tunnel exit had collapsed and the light reflections from the rails were missing from the Liziyida bridge. He tried to make an emergency stop, but failed due to steep gradients of the rail before the bridge (at 14‰). As a result, the two diesel locomotives,

baggage car A passenger railroad car or passenger car (American English), also called a passenger carriage, passenger coach (British English and International Union of Railways), or passenger bogie (Indian English) is a railroad car that is designed to c ...

No. 13, post office van No. 12, and passenger car No. 11 fell into the river. Passenger cars No. 10 and No. 9 crashed into the river bank. Passenger car No. 8 derailed in the tunnel and overturned outside of the tunnel exit.

Effects

Depending on the source, there were 240, 275 or 360 people killed, including four crew-members. The railway was blocked until a temporary bridge was completed on July 24. After the opening of the new Liziyida tunnel in May 1984 bypassing the gully, the temporary bridge was dismantled and the Nainaibao tunnel was abandoned. The bridge piers still stand today.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:1981 Chengdu-Kunming rail crash Chengdu–Kunming rail crash, 1981 Railway accidents in 1981 Railway accidents and incidents in China July 1981 in China