Stéblová - A tiny municipality of 80 houses and 190 people, located in Eastern Bohemia, the Czech Republic, and passed through by a train line connecting two regional cities - Hradec Králové and Pardubice. Stéblová may seem uninteresting at first, but 50 years ago, on 14 November 1960, it entered the Czechoslovak and European history with a tragic train crash.
On that day, at PM 5:43 of the local time, two trains - one heading to Pardubice, the second to Hradec Králové - crashed head-on at approximately 60 kmph speed near the Stéblová railway station.
In total, 118 people died. Tens of others suffered very grave injuries.
In the Czech Republic, it is the gravest accident on record. And in Europe, there has been only one rail accident that killed more people - in 1974 in Zagreb, former Yugoslavia (now Croatia), with 153 dead.
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"Don't speak about it!"
Beside the very high death toll, two aspects of the tragedy are remarkable.
First, the Stéblová train disaster took place during the Czechoslovak communist regime, which effectively meant that the authorities tried to keep the event as secret as possible, officially to prevent it from being abused by "enemies of socialism".
All Czechoslovak media were ordered by the Central Committee of the communist party to report about the crash only very shortly. The trial was not public, compensations were distributed in silence, and everything was supposed to be forgotten quickly.
"Green light"
The second remarkable aspect is that in spite of rather robust investigation, there is (and most probably always will be) very little that can explain why the steam train heading to Pardubice left the Stéblová railway station ahead of schedule, which in effect caused the head-on collision with the diesel train heading to Hradec Králové.
Importantly, the crash took place amid very difficult conditions - it was about 3 degrees Celsius, the evening was dark and misty, and the Stéblová station was very poorly lit.
The steam train staff - and two people in the station too - saw a shady green light, understood as a departure sign. But the train dispatcher at the station never gave any signal - he could not, because he was inside the railway station building at the time.
It has never been explained what the mysterious green light was, or where it came from - whether it was an optical illusion, a reflection, or whether there were any light in the first place.
After departing from the station, the conductor and staff did not see - due to the dark and mist - the red light signaling a train coming from the opposite direction.
An attempt was made to stop the diesel train by the staff at the Stéblová station, but it was too late.
Allegedly, the crash was heard two kilometers away.
In February 1961, the conductor and staff of the steam train were given sentences between 1.5 to 5.5 years in prison.
