The Queen of the Sea rail disaster, the greatest train crash in railroad history, occurred when an overcrowded passenger train was destroyed on a coastal railway in Sri Lanka by the tsunami which followed the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake. Up to 2,000 people were killed, making it the world's worst railway accident and eclipsing the previous record set by the Bihar train disaster in India in 1981, when a train had derailed and fell off a bridge, d...
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The Queen of the Sea rail disaster, the greatest train crash in railroad history, occurred when an overcrowded passenger train was destroyed on a coastal railway in Sri Lanka by the tsunami which followed the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake. Up to 2,000 people were killed, making it the world's worst railway accident and eclipsing the previous record set by the Bihar train disaster in India in 1981, when a train had derailed and fell off a bridge, drowning about 800 people.
The train was a regular service operating between Colombo, Sri Lanka, and the southern resort town of Galle. The route of the train runs along the coast of Sri Lanka, and at Telwatta the line is about 200 metres inland. It has been described as Sri Lanka's most popular tourist train, and on Sunday, December 26, 2004, during both the Christmas holiday weekend and a Buddhist full moon holiday, it was particularly full when it left Colombo shortly after 7.30 a.m. with around 1,500 passengers on board.
Suddenly, at 9.30 a...
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