Rail services resume in Greece after crash

ATHENS: Intercity rail travel resumed in Greece on Wednesday for the first time since a head-on collision killed 57 people in the nation's worst rail disaster more than three weeks ago, operator Hellenic Train said.

From early in the morning, a number of passenger services were back on.

The mainline where the crash occurred on February 28 - the country's busiest, spanning 600 kilometres from Athens to the second-largest city of Thessaloniki in the north - will not be reopened until April 1, acting Transport Minister Georgios Gerapetritis said.

Trains were running from the capital's Piraeus seaport to the international airport, and between Athens and Chalcis on the island of Evia. Two other local services in the Peloponnese region have also started up again, Hellenic Train said.

Few passengers were at hand at the Athens train station to the airport at midday on Wednesday, but those present showed little enthusiasm about boarding.

Michalis, a municipality employee who was not willing to give a surname, said that the long hours of waiting made railway travel a hardship even before the accident.

Tassos, who did not wish to give a surname or job description, said he had no choice but to take the train to work.

He said that the risk is there and it's a coin toss.

The return to a full regular schedule of train services will take five weeks.

The disaster sparked weeks of angry and occasionally violent protests, which have put pressure on the conservative government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis ahead of elections due in May.

Most of the victims were university students returning from a long holiday weekend.

The stationmaster on duty and three other railway officials were charged with life sentences and face possible life sentences.

Greece's rail watchdog found serious safety problems across the network, including inadequate basic training of critical staff.

Panagiotis Terezakis, the new director general of the state-owned Hellenic Railways OrganisationRailways Organisation OSE, said Wednesday that the company would do everything possible to win back passengers' confidence.

On Tuesday, train drivers called for safety assurances including better monitoring of rail crossings, improved tunnel lighting, bridge inspection data, and the removal of debris and overgrown vegetation from tracks.

The railway unions warned that the network was underfunded, understaffed and accident-prone after a decade of spending cuts.

The drivers' union said Tuesday that repeated warnings were downplayed or not taken seriously. At the peak of the demonstrations, more than 65,000 people took to the streets nationwide to demand accountability and call for Mitsotakis' resignation. Many Greeks have been alarmed by the decline of public services amid the large-scale privatisation, including passenger and freight trains, to pay off debts stemming from the country's 2009 -- 2018 debt crisis.