Background
Othmarsingen is a town of 2926 people (as of December 2019) in the Canton Aargau in northern Switzerland, 8km/5mi south of Brugg and 24.5km/15mi west of Zürich. The German border, marked by the Rhine River, is just 19km/12mi to the north (all distances measured in linear distance).
For being a rather small town Othmarsingen has excellent traffic connections, being linked to both the A1 and A3 motorway as well as being the intersection of the Heitersberg Railway, a 25.4km/15.8mi double- or even quad-tracked main line running east to west with the Aargau southern railway connecting Brugg with Arth-Goldau, a double-track electrified main line mostly used for freight traffic headed towards the Gotthard and onward to Italy.
The trains involved
Travelling southbound from Basel via Brugg towards Italy was Night Express 295 on it’s way from Dortmund in western Germany to Rimini in Italy. Pulled by an SBB RE 6/6 since Basel the train carried 544 passengers who were excited to make the trip to the Adria literally in their sleep. At the time the track-section between Othmarsingen and Brugg only had a single track, with northbound trains waiting at Othmarsingen before proceeding into it.
At the same time freight train number 41094 was travelling northbound on it’s way from Italy to (presumably) Basel, consisting of an unknown number of climate-controlled freight cars carrying various food-products. These trains, called “Interfrigo”, had no other purpose than to get heat-sensitive products quickly from Italy all the way across Switzerland.
Pulling the train was another SBB RE 6/6, number 11674 “Murgenthal” (pronounced without the H). The RE 6/6 is a six-axle multipurpose electric locomotive introduced into service in 1975. The locomotives weight 120 metric tons at 19.3m/63.5ft long and are able to reach up to 140kph/87mph. Built to pull heavy freight and passenger trains over mountain passes the RE 6/6 was fitted with 3 two-axle bogies, with the middle one being able to move sideways a considerable distance to allow the locomotive to navigate tight turns that it’s predecessor, which used 2 three-axle bogies (the more conventional way to do it) couldn’t use without drastically increased wear and reduced traction. Most of the 89 locomotives made are still in service, most with the SBB, as their ability is still needed especially for freight trains.
The accident
On the 18th of July at approximately 2:50am the Murgenthal is approaching Othmarsingen station from the south. It will continue to the north towards Basel once the single-track section to Brugg is cleared. It’s a dry but foggy night with slightly below-average visibility. Coming the other way is NE 295, having last stopped at Basel station, where the train was handed over from a German to a Swiss locomotive. Basel SBB is a popular location for locomotive-swaps as it can be reached by trains not set up for the Swiss power supply system. In Switzerland trains drive on the left side, similar to cars using the left hand lane in the UK or South Africa. NE 295 is approaching Othmarsingen station on the left side of the freight train (seen from the Murgenthal’s perspective) and will need to cross over in front of the freight train to the right to proceed southbound. The track-layout of Othmarsingen station means that the express train will get very close to where the freight train is supposed to wait at a red signal. There is no block-system in place as the signal has to be approachable from both sides without triggering an emergency stop. Furthermore, there is no set of catch points protecting the single track line. Catch points are a kind of turnout often found at the start of single-track routes or when branch lines merge into main lines. They’re meant to keep the proceeding track safe by, if necessary, purposely derailing an unauthorized train rather than sending it on a collision course.
At approximately 2:56am the “Murgenthal” passes through Othmarsingen station, speeding right past the red signal telling it to stop. Just before it reaches the entrance to the single track section the locomotive There is no publicly available record, so it’s unknown why the driver ran the signal or if he even tried to stop. The locomotive and a few cars barely pass the oncoming freight train before, at 2:58am, the Murgenthal drills itself into the seventh-last passenger car at full speed. The struck car is nearly stopped on the spot, tearing off the passenger train and activating the brakes in the whole train. The seventh car gets torn apart by the Murgenthal while numbers 8, 9 and 10 derail and fall over, missing both the stopping freight train and the overhead wire supports. The last car is less lucky, falling against one of the supports and being cut open down it’s length. The Murgenthal derails also, with the following freight cars piling up and at least one telescoping high above the wreckage, being torn up and themselves further damaging the passenger cars. Within moments the majority of the trains and parts of the railway infrastructure turn into a massive, towering pile of twisted metal and shattered glass. 6 people die in the accident about 100 more are injured, 29 of which severely.
Aftermath
At 3:15am the first responders reach the site of the accident, as their flashlights dig through the darkness and fog they are faced with a horrid, surreal sight. The station’s northern end is blocked in it’s entire width by a pile of torn up train cars, several metric tons heavy freight cars are lodged entirely above the responders’ eye level. Tearing through the overhead wires cut power, plunging the whole train and surroundings into darkness. With the wreckage at a rest the only noise are the responders’ footsteps on the gravel ballast and shouts, screams and moans from passengers inside the remains of the express train. At 3:50am Mr. Woodtli, the local police’s press officer, is awoken by a phone call. There has been a train accident near Othmarsingen, and he’s supposed to head out. He’s only started to build a press-department in April, but he has a number of years of regular service with the police under his belt. He’s not nervous as he heads to the station to get his equipment, in his years on duty he’s seen plenty of horrific stuff. As he arrives on the site everything is still covered in fog, walking through the wreckage he encounters several passengers aimlessly wandering through the debris. Most of them were sleeping when the trains crashed, they probably have little idea where they even are or what happened. And there’s still people screaming and crying, trapped inside the train cars. Woodtli later says he and the other police officers, around 130 men, soon made one realization: They couldn’t do anything. They weren’t equipped to triage or render aid to hundreds of people, didn’t have the equipment to get inside the train cars to help and recover more. They do their best trying to keep passengers from wandering off, but most of the rescue operation is run by firefighters and medics, over time 270 of them arrive at the site. Meanwhile the officers collect pieces of luggage and personal belongings, everything is brought to nearby Schafisheim, were most passengers are also taken. Reuniting as many passengers as possible with their belongings is meant to help identify the dead and more severely injured. By 8:30am 250 passengers have been evaluated by EMTs and got their belongings back before being sent on their way by bus. By 2pm all passengers who didn’t need to stay at the hospital left the area. Woodtli returns to the station later in the day, only to be promptly sent back out when the arriving journalists want to do interviews at the site. By the late afternoon the train is empty. It takes another few days before the wreckage is removed from the site, some of the survivors only leave the hospital after weeks.
It’s unknown why the driver of the freight train ran the red signal, there never was a criminal investigation and trains don’t have voice recorders the way airplanes do. All sources I found refer to only passengers dying, so I assume the driver of the locomotive somehow survived but was never charged with anything. While he acted negligently it was noted at the time that his behavior hadn’t been criminally negligent. The role of the weather cannot be underestimated either, with extremely dense fog covering the area at the time.
Mr. Woodtli explained in a 2012 interview that he, like many of his colleagues, didn’t head straight home after his shift that day. He spent a long time that evening sitting at the station with some colleagues, talking about what they’d witnessed while “having a few beers”. There was no crisis support for responders at the time, that responders might need help or therapy simply wasn’t considered then. He claims that he could largely leave the memories behind after a week, never suffering nightmares or insomnia after that. He also never talked to his wife about the events, not wanting to burden her with it. Nowadays it has become standard for emergency services to have support-systems for responders in place, and it’s widely accepted that responders can struggle to cope with a disaster like this just like survivors can.
The SBB no longer offers the night express, the connection 295 is now a train from Munich to Rome provided by the ÖBB (Austrian national railway) under their “Nightjet” brand. The last connection from Dortmund to Rimini (by a German charter-provider) ran in 2003. Nightly international trains into Switzerland are now exclusively provided by the ÖBB with Austrian rolling stock. Some time after the accident the rail line to Brugg was rebuilt in double-track configuration, completely replacing Othmarsingen station’s northern exit layout and the cause of the accident. Would the same trains run today they would go past one another at speed with no problem.
The RE 6/6 11674 “Murgenthal” was severely damaged, but since the RE 6/6-fleet was badly needed it was repaired and, having since been modernized several times, is still in service as of November 2020, now numbered Re 620 074–5 for SBB Cargo (the Swiss national railway’s freight division).
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