While Chiefs of the SNCB must face an official enquiry before the Belgian Parliament this afternoon, it has been revealed that a major catastrophe was averted just north of Charleroi on Friday 19 February.

Marc Descheemaeker, Luc Lallemand and Jannie Haek of SNCB will spend a large part of their hearing explaining their policy on security while the country still mourns the 18 passengers killed in a collision last week.

The report, by Le Soir, shows that power was cut to a train traveling on a wrong line and therefore likely to collide, head-on, with a train already approved to use the line. When any works on the track are carried out trains should run alternately on single track stretches, but in this instance after a signaling error,  two trains were allowed on to the same stretch. Only through the power outage did it mean that passengers remained unharmed.

An internal investigation has been opened in Infrabel to determine the circumstances of the incident.