Pleading not guilty to the felony charges of disturbing the safety of transportation and the misdemeanors of manslaughter and negligent bodily harm, the afternoon shift stationmaster who appeared before the special appellate investigator today to apologize for his role in Tempe disaster.

The station master in the 36-page memorandum that he handed over to the investigator, according to a publication by larissanet, states that he finished his shift at 10:30 p.m. and that he should not have stayed until 11:00 p.m. (the reason, after all, for which he was prosecuted) as the time period 22.00 to 23.00 does not have the concept of co-service but the time within which the transfer of the service from one station master to another should be carried out smoothly and safely.

In his memorandum, the station master, a father of two children, begins by stating that he was hired at OSE in 2001 and in 2014, after training, he was promoted to station master and since 2019 he has been performing his duties at the Larisa and Paleofarsala stations. He emphasizes that in his career he has not caused any incident and was not referred to disciplinary control and that the possibility of his pre-trial detention has psychologically affected his family.

He then states that the pre-arrested station master worked at least 10 times as a night shifter at Larissa Station before the accident and that he was “completely familiar with the Station and the local peak control panel”.

The shifts

Regarding the shifts, he states that there are “three shifts (1st, 2nd and 3rd) for S.S. of Larisa, which is from 6:00 to 15:00, from 14:00 to 23:00 and from 22:00 to 7:00 the next day” and adds that “the hours 6:00 to 7:00, 14 :00 to 15:00 and 22:00 to 23:00, which theoretically have simultaneously the staff (station masters) of the 3rd of the previous day with the 1st of the following day, the 1st with the 2nd shift and the 2nd with the 3rd shift. In essence, theoretically one would think that at 6:00 to 7:00 they should be at SS. Larisa three (3) station masters at the same time, at 14:00 to 15:00 four (4) station masters and at 22:00 to 23:00 three (3) station masters. But this is not the case. The common time does not exist because at those points in time there is a special reason such as e.g. momentarily more traffic congestion. It exists purely and solely to ensure the safe delivery – receipt from one stationmaster of one shift to another. Nothing more and nothing less. The Station Master of the new shift arrives. Update from the previous one. He receives service and signs the book and releases the previous one, who also leaves.”

The station master emphasizes in his memorandum that from the time the employee takes over, he is “responsible for the service that has been undertaken, until the time when the next change of service takes place” and denies once again the claim that he had to to stay until 11.00 p.m. as “this inscription does not mean co-service for the hours 22:00 to 23:00 of the Station Masters of the 2nd and 3rd shifts (but also for 6:00 to 7:00 and 14:00 to 15 :00 respectively), but the time within which the transfer of the Service from one to the other should be carried out smoothly and safely and, by extension, the assumption of responsibility by the next station master”.

Chronologically analyzing his movements from the moment he took over the shift, he states that the 59-year-old station master came at 21.45 and that by 22.30 when he handed over to the 59-year-old, traffic on the railway had normalized. Regarding the smudges in the shift book, he states that: “but due to my blindness I had filled in the delivery time incorrectly, which I corrected to the correct one, making a smudge, which I immediately corrected with a correction blank, but this did not change anything to the actual fact that the time of delivery – receipt of my service as a station master is 10:30 p.m., that is, the time indicated in the book.”

The station master, shortly before the end of his memorandum, points out once again that even if he had stayed until 11:00 p.m., nothing would have changed in terms of the accident. This is stated by the station master, who after the completion of the investigative process was released with restrictive conditions.