The Spanish Union of Railway Machinists (SEMAF) has formally requested from Renfe a comprehensive report on the actions taken after detecting cracks in the 'bogies' of two branches of the S106 AF series, which prompted their preventive withdrawal from service. The union also demands that additional mitigating measures be applied to reinforce the safety and reliability of these trains.
"SEMAF's position is that all necessary measures must be taken to ensure safety; if it cannot guarantee the structural integrity of the 'bogies' of the 106 trains, action must be taken accordingly with the material," they have insisted through a statement.
The request from the railway union comes after the public operator reported this Wednesday the reinforcement of monitoring of the 'bogies' of the Talgo trains of the S106 AF series and the preventive withdrawal of two other branches during the last week of August, as part of the control and monitoring plan activated after the detection of cracks in these elements.
At the same time, the union has sent a letter to the State Agency for Railway Safety (AESF) requesting the opening of a supervision procedure regarding the set of measures applied in response to the appearance of cracks in the 'bogies'.
As they explain, this initiative before the AESF is proposed after the union verified that the preventive program in force "has not worked" and that incidents "continue to recur," which is why they consider "essential" the intervention of the AESF to "verify that the necessary mitigating measures are applied to fully guarantee the safety of workers and users."
In parallel, SEMAF has indicated that it is already working with its legal services "in order to process applications before other official bodies, so that measures are determined to reliably guarantee the safety of professionals and travelers."