MOSCOW, July 22 (Itar-Tass) - Officials at the Russian state railway corporation RZD warned Sunday night that an accident involving an international express train and a small car, which had occurred earlier in the day at a railway crossing some 130 kilometers to the west of Moscow, might affect the schedules of both suburban and long-distance trains at a major railway line linking Moscow, Minsk and Warsaw.
At 20:35 Moscow Standard Time, the locomotive of the Moscow-Vilnius express train bumped into an Audi car, the driver of which had crudely encroached on the safety rules by trying to dash across the tracks in spite of the inhibiting signal of the stoplight in front of the approaching train.
No one of the locomotive crew or the passengers abroad the train was injured but two persons inside the Audi died.
“The locomotive cannot continue movement on its own and a reserve drive engine has been called up” to pull the train to the nearest station, a spokesman for the RZD said.
In addition, the collision caused damage to the oncoming track and this might cause delays of long-distance and commuter trains bound for Moscow, he said.
The trains that were leaving Moscow’s Belorussky railway station after the Lietuva /Moscow-Vilnius/ Express Sunday night were bound for Minsk, the Belarusian cities of Gomel, Brest and Polotsk, the Russian Baltic exclave region of Kaliningrad, as well as for Prague and Berlin.
“Measures are being taken to eliminate the aftermath of the accident and to restore the routine schedules,” the spokesman said.