Two trains collide in the worst rail disaster in Pakistan’s history - January 4th, 1990

On this day in 1990, an overcrowded passenger train slammed into a parked freight train at a railway station in the Sindh province of Pakistan.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that honors the dead by sharing their stories
with the living. I'm Gabe Louzier, and in this episode,
we're returning to the fateful day when the nation of
Pakistan mourned the worst rail disaster that it's ever known.

(00:33):
The day was January fourth. An overcrowded passenger train slammed
into a parked freight train at a railway station in
the Sinned province of Pakistan. The collision occurred at about
twelve thirty am at the Songhi Village station and the
Succor district. The crash killed between two hundred and three

(00:56):
hundred people and injured as many as seven hundred others.
The noise from the impact was so loud that villagers
reported hearing it as far as five miles away. The
passenger train was named the bahaw Hoodin Zakrea Express, after
a medieval Muslim scholar of the same name. With sixteen cars,

(01:19):
the train had a capacity of fourteen hundred passengers, but
it was common practice to overload cars in Pakistan back then,
and as a result, the Zachrea was carrying closer to
two thousand passengers. On the morning of the crash, the
train had set out from the Punjab province city of
Maltan on a five hundred mile overnight trip to the

(01:43):
southern port city of Karachi. Songhi Village was about halfway
through the journey, and the Zakrea arrived there shortly after
midnight on January four. As the train approached the station,
one of the workers suddenly switched the train to a
new side track. Unbeknownst to the engineer or apparently to

(02:05):
the railway workers, a sixties seven car freight train had
already been parked there overnight on that same side track.
By the time anyone realized the danger, it was too late.
The Zachrea plowed directly into the back of the freight
train at a speed of thirty five miles per hour.
The locomotive was immediately thrown off the rails, and it

(02:27):
pulled the first three passenger cars along with it. Nearly
everyone in those front three cars was killed or seriously injured,
but the damage extended through virtually the entire train. In fact,
witnesses reported that the eighth car had been partially buried
by the force of the collision, and army troops had

(02:48):
to use blowtorches to cut into the one portion of
the mangled car that was still above ground. Survivors were
rushed to one of Succor's seven hospitals, but of beds
filled up fast, and some victims had to be airlifted
all the way to Karachi for emergency treatment. The official
death toll reported that day was two hundred and ten people,

(03:12):
though some later reports put the estimate at well over
three hundred lives lost. The Zachrea's engineer had survived the
crash by leaping from the moving train moments before impact.
A state investigation concluded that the driver had no chance
to break and that the railway staff was directly responsible

(03:34):
for the collision. Three employees at Songi station were eventually
charged with criminal negligence and manslaughter. This included the careless
signalman who had switched the passenger train onto an occupied track,
and the assistant station manager who had allowed the freight
train to remain in the station overnight. Both trains involved

(03:58):
in the crash were operated by Pakistan Railways, a national
state run company that owns about five thousand miles of
track across Pakistan. The company has a long history of
fatal railway accidents, stretching back to its founding in eighteen
sixty one, but the Secore rail disaster of nine nine

(04:20):
is considered their worst one to date. Since nineteen fifty three,
there have been dozens of train related accidents in Pakistan,
and the tragedies didn't stop with the one at Songhi station.
In fact, less than a year and a half later,
a crash in the goat Key district killed over a
hundred people, and in June of one another crash and

(04:43):
goat Key killed at least sixty five passengers. Trains aren't
the primary mode of transportation in Pakistan like they used
to be, but the country's rail system still carries more
than sixty million passengers every year. Train crashes remain all
too common in the country because successive governments haven't put

(05:04):
enough resources into improving the aging colonial era railways, and
several decades of corporate graft and corruption haven't helped much either. Still,
there is hope for brighter, safer days ahead. A recent
investment from the Chinese government has already led to thousands
of miles of updated tracks, as well as hundreds of

(05:25):
refurbished engines, passenger cars, and train stations throughout the country.
There's still a long way to go, but hopefully in
the not too distant future, Pakistani's will be able to
ride the rails more safely and frequent train collisions will
be a thing of the paddies. I'm Gabe Louzier and

(05:45):
hopefully you now know a little more about history today
than you did yesterday. You can learn even more about
history by following us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at
t d i HZ show, and if you have any
comments or suggestions, you can send them my way at
this Day at i heart media dot com. Thanks to

(06:07):
Chandler Mays for producing the show, and thank you for listening.
I'll see you back here again tomorrow for another day
in History class. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

(06:28):
you listen to your favorite shows.