Bornitz railway accident

When railway accident Bornitz , an edge ride on February 25, 1956 continued the as Verschubfahrt the station Bornitz active durchgangsgüterzug 7137 Dg which by moving express train D 94 from Dresden to Leipzig in the flank. The accident on the network of the Deutsche Reichsbahn in the GDR left 43 dead and 55 injured.

Course of the accident

The accident can be traced back to minor violations of the service regulations, which then led to this accident due to the adverse weather conditions. Visibility was very poor that morning due to the fog. The fog was probably also responsible for the fact that the two trains were delayed. In any case, it was decided that the crossing of the two trains on the then single-track line would not be in Riesa , but in Bornitz station. The dispatcher , who had started his duty at 6:00 am, agreed to the crossing and put the distracting route into track  1 for Dg 7134. Dg 7137, which was driving with a leader , misjudged itself and stopped about 400 meters before the exit signal . With that he blocked a level crossing . The head of the department, who started work at 6:30 a.m., therefore instructed a switch attendant to have the Dg 7137 pulled up to the usual stopping point. However, he only informed the dispatcher afterwards, who, however, agreed to this illegal procedure (the dispatcher should have given the order to the switch attendant personally and also had to personally deliver the report to the locomotive driver ).

Moving forward alone would not have triggered the accident. However, since the Dg 7137 was standing on track 1 without any boundary signs , the dispatcher was able to close its route , accept the D 94 and allow it to pass through. This was also a violation of the service regulations, since track 1 did not have a safety switch and passage through it would have been prohibited during the shunting movement of the Dg 7137. In addition, the Dg 7134 had trouble releasing the brakes and a few minutes passed before the leader locomotive set the train in motion. This fact led the dispatcher to suspect that the engine driver did not want to carry out the improperly placed order. However, it was only when they were linked with the probably sight-related driving over the waiting sign K11 that led to the accident. It was never quite clear whether the engine driver of the Dg 7137 braked or simply saw the signal too late. The result, however, was that the pre-tensioning locomotive drove at low speed (5 to 10 km / h) into the flank of the D 94, which was passing through at 50 to 60 km / h at that moment, on the entry point. 43 passengers were killed in the D 94 and a further 55 people were injured, some seriously, including the driver of the leader locomotive of the Dg 7137.

Legal proceedings

The main hearing, which was held at the Leipzig main court in mid-1956, pronounced four prison sentences. The chief guilty party was sentenced to five years in prison because he interfered in the operations of the dispatcher and had the disastrous order transmitted by an unauthorized person. The dispatcher was punished with four and a half years in prison for not having the order withdrawn and for not making sure that the illegal shunting drive was not carried out. The train driver was sentenced to one and a half years in prison for performing a shunting drive that had to be discussed with and supervised by a dispatcher. He should also have known that at such a small train station shunting movements while another train was passing through were prohibited. It should be noted here, however, that the engine driver was not present during the negotiations and the pronouncement of the judgment, as he was still in hospital care. The stoker of the leader locomotive was sentenced to one year in prison because he took the order from an unauthorized person (the switchman) and passed it on to the driver without comment.

source

• Hans-Joachim Ritzau, Jürgen Höstel: The catastrophe scenes of the present (railway accidents in Germany Volume 2), 1983 Ritzau KG, ISBN 3-921304-50-4

Coordinates: 51 ° 18 ′ 9.8 "  N , 13 ° 10 ′ 33.7"  E