Background
Northeim is a city of 29092 people (as of December 2020) in the center of Germany, 76km/47mi south of Hanover and 55km/34mi north-northeast of Kassel (both measured in linear distance) in the western foothills of the Harz mountain range in the federal state of Lower Saxony (“Niedersachsen”).
Aside from a small airport and connections to the Autobahn 7 (which bisects Germany between the Austrian and Danish border) the city is connected to the German Railway Network via it’s 6-track station on the Hanoverian Southern Railway. Opened in 1856 this electrified double-track mainline used to be one of Germany’s main railway corridors until the Hanover-Würzburg high speed railway took away most long distance trains after it opened in 1991. Sleeper-trains and those carrying tourists along with their cars remained on the old line, along with slow freight trains.
Northeim is also where the South Harz Railway (heading into the mountain range of the same name) diverts from the main rail line, giving the tracks in the city a distinctive Y-Shape.
The trains involved
Travelling northbound the night of the accident was D482, an overnight international express train from Munich to Copenhagen. The train consisted of several four-axle passenger cars of the type AM203 (first class) and BM234 (second class), as well as a type WLABmh175 sleeper car (most likely).The train cars were modern, having been introduced only about a decade prior. Measuring 26.4m/86ft in length each car weighted 36–39 metric tons depending on the version (first class, second class, sleeper car) and could travel at up to 200kph/124mph. Most of the cars held the typical blue-beige livery from the DB (German national railway), only the sleeper car carried an entirely blue livery as part of Europe’s TEN-program of shared sleeper car rolling stock.
Pulling the express train was DB 110 390. The series 110 is a four-axle multipurpose electric locomotive introduced in 1952. The 85 metric ton locomotive measured 16.5m/54ft in length and could pull a train at up to 140kph/87mph.
Travelling in the opposite direction was a 43-car freight train of unknown number, routing or exact contents, consisting mostly of two-axle covered freight cars. These simple, universal cars with wooden or
synthetic resin bodies on a steel frame had been in use for decades and were a vital part of the freight system before shipping containers became the norm on rails also. A car with maintenance-equipment is also part of the train, running in second position.
The Accident
On the 15th of November 1992 shortly after midnight a freight train is driving through Northeim station on it’s way towards the south of Germany, rattling along at 90kph/56mph. At approximately 1:30am a buffer falls off the maintenance car just after it passes the B241’s road underpass. Buffers are large, slightly T-shaped metal cylinders found on the four corners of most European train cars, they absorb the pushing forces between train cars (like a shock absorber) and maintain a minimum distance between train cars to protect the centered couplers. Since they take impacts regularly they wear out and need to be replaced every now and then.
The 100kg/220 pounds heavy steel cylinder eventually gets lodged on the rails, derailing the seventh car, tearing the coupler and breaching the pneumatic circuit. This applies the brakes in both halves of the train, but the disaster is already in motion. The rear 15 cars slip off the track, turning sideways or even falling over, blocking several other tracks as Night-Express D482 is approaching the station at 120kph/75mph. The derailment of the freight cars triggers a safety-system, turning all surrounding signals red. Calculations later say the 44 years old driver of D482 might have seen the signal change right as he passed it. The locomotive still registers the red signal through the train control system and triggers an emergency stop, but it’s too late. There’s only 180m/590ft between the signal and the wreckage. Shaving off just a few kph the locomotive crashes into the wreckage at 1:33am, still moving at approximately 100kph/62mph. The flimsy freight car bodies break apart on impact, it’s their steel frames that inflict serious damage on the passenger train. After a few meters the wreckage gets denser, the locomotive and leading few cars derail while grinding against the freight cars. This cuts the passenger cars open as if someone took a giant can opener to them. The train breaks apart, some passenger cars get stuck in the freight cars or on the platform. The sleeper car and one of the passenger cars falls off the embankment at the portal of the underpass, the sleeper car’s frame crushing it’s body as it rolls over. It takes several hundred meters for the train to actually stop. The driver’s cabin of the locomotive has been compressed up against it’s rear wall, by the time responders will make their way to the front of the locomotive they can only report finding the driver’s dead body. He is one of 11 victims of the collision, another 51 people are injured severely enough to require hospitalization. 230–238 (different sources) people survive with minor or no injuries.
The Aftermath
The first police officers and firefighters reach the scene within minutes, soon followed by emergency medical personnel. The station lies in complete darkness, but they can hear talking, moaning and screaming from injured survivors. In seconds the two trains have turned into a massive, chaotic field of debris with around 300 people, more or less alive, somewhere in it.
The rescue-effort starts similarly chaotic, in the confusion and inexperience it takes 47 minutes for ambulances and equipment cars to be sent to the scene, only after the latter arrives can floodlights be set up. Twisted metal, pieces of debris and remains of what the freight cars had loaded are scattered all over, the firefighters try to help as good as they can with the small ladders they brought. Some responders climb inside the wrecked train, try to render aid until survivors can be taken away.
The first sign of the disaster for arriving responders are the two cars on the road by the underpass. The sleeper car is sitting on the embankment, rolled over and completely destroyed, while the other passenger car reaches across the road, looking almost like it belonged there. It had fallen straight through the railing of the underpass, remaining relatively intact in part due to not completely inverting.
The train wasn’t nearly full, an ongoing problem with the connection, but in this case it surely saved lives. Judging from the wreckage, a full train would’ve caused even more fatalities to be claimed.
It is unknown if a faster response would have let more people survive, there are no public numbers differentiating “dead on arrival” and “succumbed to injuries”. A fact is that available people with medical training from a nearby university weren’t called in until late in the rescue-operation, and it was 3:38am, two hours after the collision, when the first rescue helicopter landed at the site. For a mass casualty event in a modern, urban environment, that is unacceptably late. Early in the morning the emergency recovery train from the DB arrives with specialized equipment, it’s locomotive is used to partially unfold the destroyed driver’s cabin of D482’s locomotive, only now can the body of the driver be recovered. Officials later flatly admit that no-one planned on an emergency recovery train being needed at night, so it wasn’t staffed at night. All in all almost 500 people are involved in the rescue and recovery, it takes days for the last victims to be recovered as they’re only found once the wreckage starts to be removed.
No technical fault can be found on either train, the signal-system triggered the brakes on D482 as it was supposed to. Investigators crunch the numbers and find that the accident could’ve almost been avoided. Just 24 more seconds, another 400m/1310 feet, would’ve been needed and D482 could’ve stopped ahead of the derailed freight train with no-one getting hurt. Attention turns to the maintenance car that lost the buffer, one of 300 in the DB’s fleet of around 200 thousand train cars. And they find a flaw. When the car was fitted with the buffers those were welded on, rather than being secured with 4 bolts. Over time the welds must have started to crack, and eventually they gave out. The car passed a major inspection in 1990, the quick pre-departure check done employees called train evaluators might have been a chance to spot the damage. The DB had recently changed the requirements for the employees checking the cars before departure, allowing it to be done by lesser-experienced employees, elevating the former group to the level of “Wagenmeister” (“waggon-master”). The rules said the former only have to notify their superiors if they find something suspicious. Criticism is drawn to this, but no-one can proof that a specific person missed something. The public prosecutor investigates for years, eventually giving up. It was a chain of tragic coincidences that caused the accident, no one can be held legally responsible.
The wreckage is eventually cleared, most of the two trains is taken away for scrap and the tracks get repaired.
The last Series 110 is retired in 2014, the D482 (then renamed CNL 482) is cancelled in late 2010. In 2018 the underpass, repaired after the accident, is completely replaced. All that remains today is a small memorial-stone at Northeim Station, 150m/490ft from where the collision happened. It’s an oddly small memorial, it can almost be mistaken for a random flowerbed if the stone wasn’t engraved with a short reminder.
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