Langhagen railway accident

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In the railway accident Langhagen on Nov. 1, 1964 drove a fast train in the station Langhagen , Kreis Güstrow , a derailed freight train on. 44 people died.

Max Sefrin , Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers and Minister of Health, head of a government commission at the scene of the accident, visits injured people in the hospital.

Starting position

Langhagen station is on the Berlin – Rostock line . Here was a freight train with 12 with gravel -laden freight cars , 1,000 tons, in a siding on the go. The locomotive moved ahead with the tender so that the signals valid for the journey were on the stoker's side. The engine driver and stoker therefore had to share monitoring of the signals. The stoker had to call out the position of the signals to the train driver, the train driver had to convince himself of the correctness of this call and react accordingly. he had to step on the stoker's side.

Following the instructions of the dispatcher , he should pull up to the signal that secured the exit to the track, in order to first let the D 1193 pass there. This was on the way from Berlin to Rostock Hauptbahnhof .

the accident

The stoker related the signal from the mainline track, which showed "free travel" for the express train, to his own train journey and called out to the engine driver that they had free travel and could drive. The locomotive driver relied on the stoker's call without checking and accelerated without noticing that the switch was not set in the direction of the main track, but instead he was moving on the stump track , which, following a safety switch , secured against unauthorized exits into the main track . The buffer stop , he went at the end, derailed freight cars and their gravel charge came to rest on the track rail. As a result of the force of the impact, the first freight wagon was initially pushed vertically upwards and protruded into the clearance profile of the main track on which the express train passed the accident site immediately afterwards at 105 km / h. He hit the car protruding into its clearance profile, which crashed into the passing train . In the collision, five cars of the express train pushed into each other. Three of the wagons were totally destroyed, three others were badly damaged.

consequences

44 people died, 70 others were injured, some seriously. The financial damage amounted to at least 1.7 million marks . Helpers from the fire brigade , Red Cross , People's Police , soldiers from the National People's Army and the Soviet Army were involved in the rescue operation . After this accident, all main lines were fitted with devices that automatically initiated an emergency brake on a train that passed a signal indicating a “stop” .

As a result of the accident, the GDR Council of Ministers took the decision to retire the existing passenger coaches with wooden superstructures as soon as possible and to use only safety glass for windows in passenger coaches in future. However, this decision was still not implemented after 10 years due to the capacity bottlenecks in the industry.

The locomotive driver and stoker of the freight train were charged in March 1965 before the 1st criminal division of the Schwerin District Court with negligent cause of the accident. The train driver was sentenced to 5 years, the stoker to 3½ years.

literature

  • Edgar A. Haine: Railroad Wrecks. Cornwall Books, New York 1993, ISBN 0-8453-4844-2 , p. 161.
  • Minister of Transport: To all railway workers. Brochure on the Langhagen railway accident on November 1st, 1964 . Berlin 1964.
  • Hans-Joachim Ritzau, Jürgen Höstel: The catastrophe scenes of the present = railway accidents in Germany Vol. 2. Pürgen 1983. ISBN 3-921304-50-4 , p. 177f.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ 39 fatalities, 100 injured name the NDR under "The most serious railway accidents since 1960" and Haine.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Edgar A. Haine: Railroad Wrecks .
  2. ^ A b Hans-Joachim Ritzau, Jürgen Höstel: The catastrophe scenes of the present .
  3. ↑ a b c d Hidden Places Forum: General: Disasters, forces of nature, accidents or incidents in the GDR .
  4. ↑ Erich Preuss: Reichsbahn-Report. Between ideology and reality . Transpress, Stuttgart 2015. ISBN 978-3-613-71516-5 , p. 152.
  5. ↑ Langhagen train accident in court. In: New Germany . March 17, 1965.

Coordinates: 53 ° 41 ′ 7.6 "  N , 12 ° 25 ′ 11.7"  E