The high-speed derailment of a French train that left seven people dead and dozens injured was an accident waiting to happen, investigators say.
In a report handed over to judges on Monday, the court-appointed rail engineers confirmed that the July 2013 derailment was caused by a faulty fishplate - a joint bar linking two pieces of rail.
But they also reported that inspections in the area of the crash near the station of Bretigny-sur-Orge, south of Paris, had revealed around 100 identifiable defects.
These included numerous joints either missing or loose. Several of the faults had been known for up to about eight months before the accident without being rectified. One crack in a metal piece had first been registered in 2008.
"The principal cause (of the accident) was a shortfall in the quality of maintenance," public prosecutor Eric Lallement told a press conference.
The Bretigny station was known to SNCF staff as a "risky zone" with "numerous gaps" in its maintenance procedures. But this awareness of what the experts termed "a state of disrepair never seen before" was not translated into action to remedy the situation.
Maintenance guides were incomprehensibly complex, the logging of faults was unreliable and systems for ensuring they were repaired were weak, the report said.
Had the Paris-Limoges 3657 InterCity train not derailed that day, it was virtually inevitable that one of the next few trains to pass through the station at high speed would have, the report concluded.
In view of the state of the tracks, the experts said it would be desirable to restrict trains approaching the station to a maximum speed of 100km/h.
At the time of the accident, the train was travelling at 137 km/h through an area with a speed limit of 150km/h.
The judges must now decide whether to initiate legal proceedings against RFF, the company which manages the track, or against the state train company SNCF.
SNCF declined to comment on the prosecutor's comments on Monday, saying they had not yet seen the full report.
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