ITALY: Death Train

At the mountain whistle-stop of Balvano, 60 miles southwest of Naples, special train 8017 stopped for water. Then it struggled off into the rainy night—two locomotives tugging 45 freight cars jammed with some 700 passengers. In a damp, narrow, two-mile-long tunnel, train 8017 stopped again.

The incline was steep. As the wheels of the two locomotives spun on the slippery rails, smoke poured from the stacks, swirled about the passengers. In the caboose, still sticking out of the tunnel, a brakeman heard strange noises coming from the freight cars ahead, realized something was terribly wrong, ran back down the track...