Death toll in German train crash rises to 23

A high-tech train travelling at 125 mph crashed in north-western Germany today, killing at least 23 people in the first fatal accident involving the magnetic levitation system.

Karl-Heinz Brueggeman, a rescue services official, said the death toll rose to 23 after more searching was done in and around the train, which smashed into a maintenance cart.

Officials had said earlier that 29 passengers were aboard the train, which is used four days a week on the 20-mile track between Doerpen and Lathen near the Dutch border. There were also two maintenance workers on the cart.

It was unclear whether the other passengers or the workers had been accounted for after the crash, which left the front of the train badly mangled.

The Transrapid magnetic train came off the elevated tracks in the town of Lathen at around 10:05am (9.05am Irish time), police spokesman Helge Nestler said.

Rudolf Schwarz, a spokesman for IABG, which oversees the track, said the accident was the result of human error.

“At this time, the accident was not caused by a technical failure. It is the result of human error,” he said.

The Transrapid train is made by Transrapid International, a joint company of Siemens AG and ThyssenKrupp AG. The track is operated by Munich-based IABG.

He said there were no tourists aboard the train when it crashed about a half-mile from the station at the village of Melstrup.

“We’re trying to get as many details as we can,” he said, adding that the train, which can reach speeds of as much as 450 kph, or 270 mph, was going about 200 kph.

Kevin Coates, a former spokesman for Transrapid, said it was the first time that he was aware of a crash of a magnetic-levitation train.

“I have to believe that this is not a malfunction of the technology but a communications breakdown” between the operators and the maintenance personnel, he told the Associated Press by telephone from Maryland, in the United States.

Magnetic-levitation trains use powerful magnets to float the trains just above the tracks, allowing them to glide along without friction. Rescue workers used fire trucks to reach the elevated track and the train more than 13 feet, above the ground.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was on her way to the crash site, the government said.

This was Germany’s worst rail disaster since 1998, when 101 people died as an InterCityExpress derailed and smashed into a bridge near the northern town of Eschede in the country’s deadliest train crash.

The accident is another blow to hopes for the magnetic-levitation technology after a fire on one such train in Shanghai last month.

The fire broke out in an electrical storage compartment aboard Shanghai’s magnetic-levitation train as it was headed toward the city’s international airport August 11, generating large amounts of smoke but causing no injuries.

The Shanghai system is the world’s only commercially operating maglev train. Officials are studying the possibility of a line between Munich and the city’s airport.

The technology has been around for years but so far has not caught on as conventional train networks have expanded steadily. Concerns include the amount of electricity the trains use at high speed and the precision with which the tracks must be built.