Heilbronn railway accident

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In the railway accident in Heilbronn, the night express train D 890 derailed from Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof to Hamburg-Altona on August 12, 1984 in the Heilbronn-Klingenberg station section as a result of excessive speed. Three people died, 57 were injured, some seriously.

Starting position

D 890 from Stuttgart to Hamburg was a pure sleeper and couchette train with through cars from Lindau and to Kiel , Westerland and Bremerhaven . The train consisted of locomotive 110 109 and nine cars. On Sunday, August 12, 1984, it was busy with around 200 travelers on average. The driver was 60 years old and was due to retire in autumn 1984. He was considered experienced and his last investigation in December 1983 had revealed no objection. He had acquired the required route knowledge in 1975 and had last traveled the route a week beforehand with the same train that he should have run from Stuttgart via Heilbronn to Heidelberg . Before leaving Stuttgart, he had the list of speed restrictions with him and from it noted excerpts of the Bietigheim-Bissingen- Heidelberg section on a “ cheat sheet ” for a better overview .

Between the train stations Lauffen (Neckar) and Heilbronn-Klingenberg , a night construction site was set up on this and the following weekend on the regular track of the double-track line, which was listed in the list of speed limits. Trains in the direction of Heilbronn therefore had to use the opposite track in this roughly eight-kilometer section. Since there was no track-changing operation, the train journey had to be permitted with written driving commands , which the dispatcher in Lauffen handed over to the train drivers. For this, the trains had to stop unplanned. In Lauffen station, the driver of the D 890 received the written driving order B, which allowed the exit signal "N1" of the station in Lauffen to pass the stop , announced the journey on the opposite track from Lauffen to Heilbronn-Klingenberg and contained the instruction that the train was without The main signal had to enter the Heilbronn-Klingenberg station section at 40 km / h. He also received an order C to drive at 40 km / h on a section shortly after Lauffen because of the shortened cut-in distance of a level crossing .

the accident

curved track at the scene of the accident
The scene of the accident on the following day with cars 2, 3 and 4 in the foreground

The train left Lauffen station two minutes late and the initially prescribed speed of 40 km / h. Later the driver accelerated to 60–80 km / h and passed the construction site at this speed, where even 100 km / h would have been permitted. Only after a few kilometers did he accelerate the train further to 95 km / h and maintain this speed until Klingenberg.

At the distant signal Va, which is attached to the right of the track in the normal direction of travel, the driver should have started braking to 40 km / h, but he did not.

At 9:31 p.m., D 890, about 600 meters from turnout 58 leading back to the right track, reached the entry signal A from Heilbronn-Klingenberg, which is also on the control track , at the height of which, according to the written travel order, it was only 40 km / h should have driven. Instead, the driver accelerated the train to 110 km / h. A little later, around 200 meters before the switch connection, he initiated an emergency brake , which he could no longer prevent the train from entering it at 103 km / h. The centrifugal force pushed the wagons at this switch, which had a radius of 300 meters, so much to the left that the right wheels lifted off. As a result, the springs pushed the wagons back to the right, while at the same time the centrifugal force on the second switch (radius: 500 meters) was acting in the same direction, so that all nine wagons derailed. The locomotive stayed on the tracks, its coupling broke, and it came to a stop 200 meters further. The first four cars overturned, with the first and fourth cars falling partially and the second and third cars falling completely down the five-meter-high embankment. The next two cars tipped over onto the tracks and came to rest above the first car.

The centrifugal forces of the train bent the right track outwards for several meters. A car tore a catenary mast from its foundation. Immediately after the accident, the driver reported on the train radio : "I missed something, I was 120 'over where I should have driven 40." and added: "It's my fault, it's my fault."

Railway accident Heilbronn-Klingenberg sketch.svg
Sketch of the scene of the accident

Rescue measures and consequences

The scene of the accident on the following day with car 2 in the foreground

The accident led to a large-scale deployment of all rescue workers; Among others, 150 police officers and 60 employees of the Heilbronn professional fire brigade , the German Red Cross and the technical relief organization were on duty .

Two people died in the accident in the second car and one person in the third car. One of the victims was the member of the Baden-Württemberg state parliament, Josef Wilhelm Hauser . 57 people, some seriously injured, were treated , some on an outpatient basis and some in the surrounding hospitals in Heilbronn, Brackenheim , Bietigheim and Marbach . The DB was criticized for its inadequate emergency management, as the 150 uninjured passengers had to wait until their onward journey without further assistance in Heilbronn main station.

The property damage amounted to DM 4.5 million. The route was fully open again after three days after the damage to the track structure and the overhead line had been repaired.

Work-up

The driver was not under the influence of alcohol during the accident. He was initially in shock and then refused to testify. The drive order was secured in his documents after the accident. The train and the route were in perfect condition before the accident, so that a technical defect or sabotage could be excluded as the cause. The investigations therefore concentrated on too high a speed as a result of human error by the driver and are based in particular on the registration strips of the Indusi .

The main hearing against the train driver took place two years later before the first criminal chamber of the Heilbronn regional court . There were seven co-plaintiffs , there were 25 witnesses and six experts were summoned. The driver could neither conclusively explain why he had not complied with the speed limit when changing track, nor could this otherwise be clarified by the criminal proceedings . Possibilities that were discussed were that the train driver recorded the line of the book timetable that recorded Heilbronn-Klingenberg station (which he was not familiar with as part of its normal operating procedures) as km 49.2, with the position of the entry signal at km 48.2 could have mixed up and therefore imported too quickly. He could also have relied on his “cheat sheet”, on which he had only entered the location of the intermediate signal in front of the station part of Heilbronn main station at kilometer 50.5. He may have mistaken this signal for the entry signal. In July 1986, he was sentenced to eight months ' imprisonment for negligent homicide with 35 negligent bodily harm , with the sentence suspended for two years . In addition, he had to pay a fine of 5000 DM to a non-profit organization.

The accident could have been avoided by better signaling of the track change and an Indusi on the opposite track; the latter was retrofitted in February 1985. In 2000, the Brühl railway accident occurred in a similar accident, in which a train derailed in the area of ​​a construction site due to poor orientation of the driver and excessive speed.

literature

Web links

Commons : Heilbronn Railway Accident  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
  • more pictures of the accident site: [1] [2]

Remarks

  1. ↑ This is part of the Heilbronn Hbf train station, also known as Heilbronn Vorbahnhof . This part of the station is in front of the freight yard as a parking and turning group and is located between the Heilbronn districts of Klingenberg and Böckingen .
  2. ↑ according to Preuss (2008): 56

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ coaches directory to Kursbuch summer of 1984
  2. ↑ a b c d e gk: 9:31 pm . In: Heilbronner Voice of August 14, 1984 . S. 13 .
  3. ↑ Hartmut Hölscher: One can only speculate about the cause . In: Heilbronner Voice of August 14, 1984 . S. 14 .
  4. ↑ a b c d Hartmut Hölscher: Three people died in the rubble . In: Heilbronner Voice of August 14, 1984 . S. 1 .
  5. ↑ a b c d without author: Too high a speed suspected as the cause of the accident . In: Stuttgarter Zeitung of August 15, 1984 . S. 6 .
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z Erich Preuß : Railway accidents at Deutsche Bahn. Causes. Backgrounds. Consequences . transpress, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-613-71347-5 , pp. 45-47 .
  7. ↑ a b c d e f Erich Preuß: Railway accidents in Europe. Facts. Reports. Logs . 4th edition. transpress, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-344-70716-7 , pp. 110-111 .
  8. ↑ a b c d e f g Gerd Kempf: Train driver wanted to retire in autumn . In: Heilbronner Voice from August 15, 1984 . S. 13 .
  9. ↑ a b c d e f g Martin Geier: Thrown off the tracks after a construction site . In: Stuttgarter Zeitung of August 14, 1984 . S. 6 .
  10. ↑ Gerd Kempf: Weeping children with teddy bears lay on the floor . In: Heilbronner Voice of August 14, 1984 . S. 13 .
  11. ↑ without author: From noon "free travel" on the new track in the direction of Heilbronn . In: Heilbronner Voice from August 15, 1984 . S. 15 .

Coordinates: 49 ° 7 '21 "  N , 9 ° 10' 21.7"  E