Quite tragic and sounds like an entirely avoidable accident. No mention of why the passenger train switched to the freight train track. Is that normal? What systems or protocols failed that lead to this accident? I didn't find any details about this in the article.

From what I gather from Greek news [1], there was no separate freight track. But there is one track per direction under normal conditions. One direction was knocked off by a power failure at the time of the accident, so both directions were running on a single track for that segment. Then, some signaling-relatd failure sent two trains on a head-to-head collision.

[1] https://www.news247.gr/koinonia/sygkroysi-trenon-sta-tempi-p...

Good point. If there is such a thing as a dedicated "freight track" there, then you'd expect caution & queries from the passenger train crew.

It's probably too early to make speculations but sounds like a "Not my Job" kinda problem.

I don't know how is it possible in 2023 both trains to run on the same line and therefore crush head to head with each other. This is murderous negligence.

There are no etcs and safety related systems working. Everything works manually and from notes

Why is this on HN?

Because most probably it was the result of systems failure, a thing which interests many on HN (I'm part of that group).

Additionally a systematic failure of oversight.