Double Traction, Single Failure: The 2023 Fürnitz (Austria) Train Collision
Background
Fürnitz is a town of 1512 people (as of 2025) in southern Austria, located 5km/3mi south of Villach (to which it is administratively linked) and 38km/23.5mi west of Klagenfurt am Wörthersee. The border to Slovenia, near Kranjska Gora is similarly only 5km/3mi to the south (all measurements in linear distance).
Fürnitz lies on the Rudolfsbahn (“Rudolf Railway”), an electrified, partially double-tracked main line connecting Amstetten (Austria) with Tarvisio Boscoverde (Italy) on 407km/253mi of track. The line opened in 1873 as one of Austria’s main north-south rail corridors, being originally a private effort meant to profit off rail companies wanting to send trains on the connection before being nationalized by 1884. In the 21st century the line is mostly used for freight traffic with both national and international connections, along with localized passenger services and occasional international passenger services from Vienna to Venice on the southern part of the line.
Fürnitz is also the site of the Villach-Süd shunting yard, a massive freight yard which sees 2800 freight cars processed per day. The commercial district serving the yard is about as big as the town itself. The yard is built on a “loop” which merges with the Rudolfsbahn on either side of Fürnitz.
The Trains Involved
Z41870 was an international freight service provided by TX Logistik, a German freight rail company owned by the Italian national railway. The train was scheduled to run from Tarvisio Boscoverde (Italy) to Freilassing (Austria) and consisted of 16 pocket cars carrying different semi-trailers. It was pulled by two electric locomotives, one rented from Luxembourgian Alpha Trains (185 521) and one from German Railpool (186 106, leading). The Class 182 is a four-axle freight locomotive made by Bombardier Transportation as part of the second generation “Traxx”-family, specifically being a multi-system version which can run under several different electrification standards. This makes them ideal for international freight trains, as they can take the trains across borders without requiring a locomotive swap. 186 106 specifically was approved for service in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy and the Netherlands. Each Class 186 weighs 85 metric tons at a length of 18.9m/62ft and can reach 160kph/99mph. Z41870 had an overall weight of 1545 metric tons at 585m/1920ft long.
The other train involved was Z45484, a tanker train operated by RCA (Austria’s national freight rail provider), consisting of 19 four-axle tank cars carrying kerosene. The train was coming from Jesenice in Slovenia and was passing through Fürnitz in order to enter the loop leading into the Villach-South freight yard. It was pulled by three locomotives, having its ÖBB Class 1116 063 supported by an ÖBB Class 1144 and an ÖBB Class 1293. The Class 1116 is a four-axle multipurpose electric locomotive produced between 1999 and 2006 by Siemens as part of the “Eurosprinter”-family, referred to by the ÖBB (and most enthusiasts) as the “Taurus”. Every series 1116 measures 19.28m/63ft in length at a weight of 88 metric tons and can reach 230kph/143mph. The train cars alone weighed more than the entirety of Z41870, requiring the two additional locomotives which brought the train weight to a total of 1950 metric tons at a length of 366m/1200ft.
The Accident
Railpool 186 106 and Alpha Trains 185 521 were taking freight train Z41871 to Tarvisio Boscoverde (Italy) on the evening of the 19th of January 2023, when an autonomous emergency stop brought the train to a stop near Schwarzach (Austria) at 11:31pm. The driver reset the train, reported the incident and started driving again, only to be brought to a stop again within minutes. Both times the train had been stopped due to a “system error” with the PZB, the automatic train control system meant to catch ignored red signals or speed limits. The driver, after reporting the second error, continued to limp the train to Dorfgastein (Austria), where the two locomotives switched places. The rest of the journey passed without incident and the train reached its destination by 2:30am.
The two locomotives were separated from their train, shunted into a different track by a local shunting locomotive, and the train cars for the return trip (Z41870) were coupled to them. Now 186 106 was in the leading position again. Separating the two locomotives once more and having them switch places was considered and later referred to by the driver as the “ideal option” but wasn’t done. The driver blamed this on communicative difficulties due to the limited German proficiency by the workers at the station. Instead the driver boards 186 106 and tries several times to reboot the train control system by completely powering down and restarting the locomotive, without success. Eventually, with the mounting delay in mind, he decides that the journey will have to be done without the train control system. The train, now designated Z41870, departs the station at 4:00am on the 21st of January, contacting the Austrian dispatcher at 4:08 to report that he is running with the train control system offline due to an unresolvable error. He’s permitted to continue the trip at a top speed of 100kph/62mph, being told that the train will proceed to Villach-West shunting yard where they can switch the locomotives around to continue the trip with a working train control system.
The train continues by approaching Fürnitz station, with the driver reading the pre-signal to the station as “clear” and thus maintaining the 100kph/62mph speed. At the same time the tanker train is lumbering up the slight incline of Fürnitz station at 49kph/30mph, intending to pass through the station and enter the loop (a sweeping 180° turn) into the local shunting yard. Z41870’s driver spots the red main signal in the distance just as he reaches the platforms of Fürnitz station at approximately 4:17am. He triggers an emergency stop, but the speed of the train along with the snowy conditions and slight downhill gradient mean that the train barely slows down. 186 106 eventually runs out of track and, navigating a set of points, crashes into the side of the oncoming tanker train’s 14th car. The locomotive proceeds to crash through the other train, breaks through a noise protection wall and falls over in a local resident’s backyard, damaging three parked cars as it comes down. 185 521 follows it along while the leading two freight cars become beached on the remains of the noise protection wall. The semi-trailers on them come in contact with the overhead catenary, sparking a fire. Behind them 6 of the tank cars have derailed, 4 of which suffer punctures and beginn leaking kerosene into the ground. The driver of Z41870 suffers minor injuries as he is thrown around the cab during the collision, his coworker on the other train requires treatment for a shock.
Aftermath
Residents awoken by the noise and subsequent fire called the emergency services, with the first firefighters from local volunteer fire departments arriving by 4:33am. The firefighters started by trying to subdue the fire from a distance until they were instructed on the contents of the freight cars, by which point they moved closer and managed to extinguish the flames before they could spread to the tanker cars. A second unit made their way to the wreckage of 186 106, located the driver and cut an access opening into the locomotive to retrieve him. Firefighters were further involved in observing the burned area to keep the fire from restarting and stopping the leakages from the tank cars. Despite their efforts around 80 thousand liters/21 thousand gallons leaked into the ground, later requiring extensive excavation to remove the contaminated soil.
The driver of Z41870 testified that he was completely blindsided by the red main signal at Fürnitz station, which was why he was approaching it at vastly excessive speed. He explained that he was sure that the pre-signal had shown “clear”, allowing him to proceed at speed. Logged data and testing of the signaling system, however, showed that the signal had actually shown “attention/expect stop”, an indication that is to be reacted to by a deceleration to no more than 40kph/25mph. Thus, the train was approaching Fürnitz station at more than twice the permitted speed.
The investigation retraced the final minutes of the train’s journey with an identical locomotive, noting down the visibility of signage and signals at different points. The test showed that the pre-signal became visible at a distance of 228m/748ft, as the height of the driver’s cab allowed the driver to look over the top of a trackside wall as the track curved ahead of the station. The signal became clearly visible, being mounted on a “signal bridge” above the track, at a distance of 128m/419ft and was finally right in front of the driver for several moments before the train would pass under the bridge. The report does note that a different main signal is mounted right next to the pre-signal, and at the time of the accident that signal showed “clear”. It is thus possible that the train driver, not immune from the effects of a night shift and past stressors (like the failed attempts to fix the train control system), mistook the green “clear” from the main signal for a “clear”-indication of the pre-signal mounted right next to it. The nighttime of the accident doesn’t impact this theory, as the visibility was still good and the modern signals bright enough to be clearly read.
Normally a train blowing past a yellow pre-signal would be reigned in by the automatic train control, but due to the consistent error which had interrupted the train’s prior trip the system was offline during the trip. PBZ (“punctual train control”) is part of the locomotive’s ETCS-system, ETCS being the “European Train Control System”, an international standard meant to simplify international train services in Europe. The Class 186' ETCS-computer can be rebooted by powering down and restarting the locomotive whole, which, while stopped at a station, is done by turning off the main battery switch. So yes, the solution to a problematic computer aboard the train can be “turning it off and on again”. However, the Class 186' manual requires that the battery switch be turned off for at least three minutes. The driver, needing to get going soon, didn’t disconnect the battery for more than 2 minutes at any point. This meant that the system was never properly reset, making the attempts futile.
Running two locomotives in double-traction requires one to be designated as the “slave” unit, turning off its ETCS, as the system would otherwise trigger an automatic stop since it would detect two (seemingly) different trains way too close to each other. That meant that, while 185 521 had a working ETCS-system, its system wasn’t able to kick in and stop the train when the driver sped past the pre-signal without slowing down.
186 106 couldn’t have been replaced until the train reached Villach, so the only options were to either have the two locomotives switch places at Tarvisio Boscoverde or run the train without ETCS and PZB, thus having no safety net if the driver made a mistake. The driver, in agreement with the dispatcher, ended up doing the latter. Running trains with the protection system disabled was allowed, with a 100kph/62mph speed limit being imposed. The accident report notes that, between February 2022 and January 2023, Austria saw 10 trains (8 passenger and 2 freight services) run without PZB being operational.
TX Logistik suspended the driver immediately after the accident and updated their guidelines for operations without or with a faulty PZB-system. From now on those trains were limited to 50kph/31mph and had to stop at the next possible location where the locomotive could be turned around, replaced or repaired. An existing option to address the issue couldn’t be chosen to not be performed, as it had been done ahead of the accident. The ÖBB (Austrian national railways) adopted the speed limit guideline, dropping the maximum speed for trains without properly functioning PZB-systems to 50kph nationwide.
The driver of Z41870 was put on trial in October 2024, being charged with negligent cause of fire, negligent environmental contamination, negligent cause of bodily harm (causing the other driver to suffer a shock counts as causing bodily harm), negligent destruction of property and dangerous interference with rail traffic. The total damages of the accident, including the cleanup of the kerosene and delayed/cancelled trains, ended up costing over 20 Million Euros/23.4 Million USD. The driver stated that he only saw himself as playing a “contributing role”, explaining that he had had no way of telling the workers at Tarvisio Boscoverde that he’d like to see the locomotives switched around, that the 100kph/62mph speed limit at the time for trains without PZB was higher than it should’ve been and that the dispatcher shouldn’t have put a kerosene-train and one without PZB on intersecting paths, even with signals meant to keep them apart. The trial appears to be ongoing as of August 2025, with the driver looking at a fine of 720 daily payments or a year in jail if found guilty. An underground bulkhead was installed at the site to contain the contaminated ground water, complete removal of the kerosene is expected to take until the mid- to late 2030s. Railpool’s 186 106 will see none of it, the locomotive was deemed beyond repair and stripped for parts, with its bare shell being spotted at Zagreb (Croatia) in spring 2024. It’s possible that 185 521 met the same fate, having not been seen since the accident.
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