Balvano train disaster  The Balvano train disaster was the deadliest railway accident in Italian history and one of the worst railway disasters ever. It occurred on the night between 2-3 March 1944 in Balvano, Italy. Over 500 people in a steam-hauled, coal-burning freight train died of carbon monoxide poisoning during a protracted stall in a tunnel. In 1943, Axis Italy was invaded by American and Imperial forces, and the south-part of the peninsula (almost fully conquered by Allied forces) suffered severe wartime shortages, encouraging an extensive black market. People in large cities like Naples began bartering fresh produce for commodities brought by servicemen, and stowed away on freight trains to reach their suppliers' farms. The railway companies also suffered shortages of finest-quality coal. The burning of low-grade substitutes developed a reduced power output and produced a large volume of carbon monoxide, an odorless and poisonous gas, a particularly severe problem in Italy's railway network, which crosses mostly mountainous land, and hence makes large use of tunnels with steep inclines of up to 3.5%. At 19:00 on 2 March 1944 the freight train 8017 started from Battipaglia heading to Potenza on the Battipaglia–Metaponto railway. The train, hauled by two locomotives (the 480.016 followed by the 476.058), had a mass of 520 tonnes and also carried many illegal passengers, making it grossly overloaded. In Eboli some passengers were forced off, but more boarded on following stops. At 00:50 the train left the station at Balvano, the last one before the disaster. On the steeply graded Armi tunnel the train stalled with almost all the cars inside the tunnel, and the passengers and crew were asphyxiated by the carbon monoxideladen smoke, overcome so slowly that they failed to realize what was happening to them. Most died in their sleep. Of the few survivors most were in the last few cars, which were still in the open air. Rescuers later found that the driver of the 480.017 locomotive had tried to restart the train in the forward direction, while the driver of the 476.058 locomotive at some point tried to engage the reverse gear in attempt to exit the tunnel; the two drivers were unable to communicate because the 476 was an Austrian-built locomotive with right-hand drive, while the 480 had left-hand drive. At 05:10 the Balvano station master learned of the disaster from last car's brakeman, who had walked back to the station.