Rometta Marea derailment

Maintenance was conducted on the line a few days before due to reports of abnormal banking by some train drivers; however, no major problems were found.

There, the train would join another convoy, from Siracusa, and begin a long journey to northern Italy, ending in Venice's Santa Lucia station, where it was expected at 10:10 a.m. the next day.

The derailment happened a few minutes before 7 p.m., after the train passed Venetico, while crossing a small bridge above the Saponara stream near the Rometta Marea station, 32 kilometers from Messina, in a place hardly reachable by rescue vehicles.

The next four carriages derailed and swerved across the rails, demolishing a nearby building (an old depot) owned by Ferrovie dello Stato and inhabited by three families of railwaymen, who were absent at the time.

[1] A few minutes after the crash, a hundred or so people from the nearby town rushed to the accident scene, including the city mayor, in order to help the passengers.

Many engineers serving on the line were questioned by railway police; most of them reported (as some of them did before the accident to supervisors) anomalous shocks and quivering around the switches near the Semenzara bridge.

Concetta Crescenti, wife of the deceased engineer Nania, told the inquirers that her husband frequently complained to her about the wobbling while crossing that area.

Maintenance works found and fixed many problems in the old railway equipment, including some broken wooden sleepers and rail misalignment.

The train wreckage was left at the track side until 2004, when Police removed the seals protecting evidences and the engine, along with three coaches, was moved in a nearby location,[note 1] and is still there.