An SNCF agent died Tuesday evening after being struck by a TER.
He was performing maintenance on the line connecting Chambéry to Modane, in Savoie, where the weather was bad.
The accident took place shortly before 8 pm in the town of Saint-Julien-Mont-Denis, in the Maurienne valley, while the man, whose age has not been communicated, "made sure the proper functioning of the installations ”on the tracks, specifies this Wednesday the CGT Federation of railway workers.
SNCF opened an internal investigation into the circumstances of this accident which occurred "in extremely degraded climatic conditions", according to the union.
The department was placed in orange vigilance (level 3 out of 4) by Météo France because of snowfall.
Shocked, the driver of the TER, which was carrying six passengers, his controller and another agent who witnessed the accident were taken care of by the SNCF.
The accident caused the line in the Chambéry-Modane direction to be cut for part of the evening.