Background
Fiesch is a town of 921 people (as of December 2018) in southern Switzerland, 13km/8mi northeast of Brig and 45km/28mi southwest of Andermatt (both distances measured in linear distance) in the canton of Valais at 1049m/3442ft above sea level.
The town is connected to road traffic by the Furka Pass Road (known to some people abroad from the “Goldfinger” James Bond Movie), which has a bus line also, and connected to the Swiss railway network by the Matterhorn-Gotthard Railway (MGB). The MGB is a privately owned railway company owning and using a 1000mm (Meter-gauge) narrow gauge electrified railway network of 144km/89mi with 44 stations. Founded in 2003 from the merger of the Furka-Oberalp-Bahn (FO) and the Brig-Visp-Zermatt-Bahn (BVZ) the MGB provides regular regional passenger trains along with occasional freight services and a car-shuttle through the Furka Base Tunnel.
The train involved
The most famous service provided by the MGB is the Glacier Express, operated in a cooperation with the Rhaetian Railway (RhB), another Swiss narrow gauge railway operator. Established in 1930 the Glacier Express uses purpose built panoramic cars made by Breda and Stadler on a 8 hour trip from Zermatt to St. Moritz. The scenic route and luxurious train cars make the train extremely popular with tourists from all over the world.
The train involved in the accident was Glacier Express 906, a late morning connection towards Andermatt. Pulling the train was MGB series HGe 4/4 II number 102, one of the series’ prototypes. Introduced in 1989 (then for the FO) the HGe 4/4 II is a four-axle narrow gauge electric locomotive built for pulling heavy passenger trains. The locomotives weigh 64 metric tons at 14.77m/48.5ft long and can reach up to 100kph/62mph. To navigate the steeper sections of the MGB’s rail network the locomotives are equipped with a type Abt cogwheel-system, allowing them to still reach 40kph/25mph on sections too steep for normal adhesion railways.
As most Glacier Express trains towards Andermatt 906 consisted of 3 second class panoramic cars, the service car (which holds a kitchen and a small office for the head steward) and two first class panoramic cars.
The rear two cars where made by Breda in 1993, but had been refurbished between 2005 and 2008 to make them identical to the never cars made by Stadler. The first class cars seat up to thirty-six passengers in rows of 3, arranged vis-a-vis with tables (this also makes a restaurant car unnecessary, any food and drink is served in the panoramic cars). The cars’ construction is a compromise of of weight and rigidity, with every car weighting 18.9 metric tons empty. One end of each car holds doors and emergency exits, the other a toilet and controls for the onboard systems. Half the cars, marked APi (like the fifth car in the train) were fitted with a handicap-accessible toilet, costing another six seats. The large windows are part of the cars’ structure, being 3 layers thick and thus near-impossible to break. However, even with those limitations the cars fulfilled all current safety-standards.
The accident
On the 23rd of July 2010 at approximately 11:45 Glacier Express 906 is approaching Fiesch on it’s northbound trip towards Andermatt. As usual for this time of the year the train is well booked with over 200 passengers, the last car alone holds 35 passengers. Travelling between Lax and Fiesch (1.6km/5234ft linear distance) the train has to go through several sharp turns as it runs parallel to the Furka pass road, around 50m/165ft higher up the side of the valley. To ensure safe operation the speed through these turns is limited to just 35kph/22mph. Just ahead of the Fiesch-Feriendorf station the track straightens out as it goes over a viaduct. Leaving the last left hand turn at 11:49am the driver passes the sign marking the end of the slow speed zone and starts to accelerate. A fatal error. The sign marks the end of the speed limit, but acceleration is permitted when the last car passes it, not the locomotive. The driver gets the train up to 56kph/35mph when he suddenly feels the locomotive lurch forwards, the same second the train declares a pneumatic leak and triggers an emergency stop. Puzzled by the odd behavior and unexpected stop the driver reports the stop and then climbs out of the locomotive. Looking back towards Lax he realizes that his six-car train is only three cars long. Going around the sharp last turn faster than they were meant to the rear three cars tipped over and tore off the rest of the train, triggering the stop. The service car and first class cars have separated from the train and one another without even mounting the right side rail, with the first class cars falling over completely and the service car, which made it onto the viaduct, leaning against the railing. Mowing down several support poles for the overhead wire luckily none of the cars fell down the side of the mountain, but car 6 still rolled 120° and is sitting on the steep lawn. 42 passengers are injured and require medical attention, 23 of which suffer severe injuries. A 64 years old Japanese tourists suffers fatal injuries in the rear car.
Aftermath
The driver and the head steward help the less severely injured and uninjured passengers out of the stricken train, they know that the difficult location of the wreckage on the side of a mountain means the responders will take a few minutes to arrive. When they eventually arrive they do so backed up by 10 rescue helicopters from four different providers. Firefighters have to anchor the rear car to the track and hillside before it can be entered, they fear that it might roll or slide further down the mountainside. At least the engineering is proven right, despite the large amounts of glass none of the cars have collapsed, meaning no one got trapped inside or even crushed. The rear car is damaged the worst, with the right hand side being dented in and the glass breaking.
The work at the site and treatment of survivors is complicated by the various nationality of the passengers, among the 42 injured survivors 28 alone are Japanese, with others from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and India. The driver initially states that he saw a warp in the track that could’ve thrown the rear cars off the track, even though one is found the investigators can’t ensure that it had been there before the accident as the derailment caused significant damage to the track. A theory that something was hit on the track is quickly disprooven as the forward section of the train is completely undamaged except for the damaged coupling on the third car when the service car tore off.
The head steward reports sitting in his office in the service car, and knowing where he was from the left and right turns he felt an acceleration that he knew wasn’t meant to happen yet. According to him the service car started to move oddly, with the landscape starting to wave up and down outside the small window. As he left his office to investigate plates started to fall to the ground, the next moment the train car started to lean and derailed. A passenger from the rear car hands over a video he happened to record as the train derailed, it shows the front of the train running smoothly as the rear cars start to tip over.
The video also shows that the driver didn’t actually accelerate at the signal, he started increasing the train’s speed approximately 90m/295ft ahead of the signal. As such the rear of the train was going through the sharp left hand turn too fast. Car six was overwhelmed by the centrifugal forces and derailed as it tilted to the right. It swiped pole 44 of the overhead wire, tore pole 45 out of its foundation (pulling car 5 off the track), fell past 90° and flattened pole 46 as it came to a rest on top of it. The derailment of the cars ahead was aided by the couplings being on the outside and a single buffer being in the middle, opposite to what most trains have. Car 5 was helplessly pulled out of it’s track by the sixth car, immediately starting to lean and falling on pole 47. The service car derailed but only slightly leaned, being stopped and held by pole 48. This lucky coincidence keeps it from falling off the bridge, no doubt a scenario with worse consequences.
Investigators find that the brakes worked perfectly fine, there is no defect found that can be proven to have existed before the accident. Calculations reveal that the train could’ve safely navigated the turns at 51kph/31.7mph, much faster than it was meant to go. So, technically, it only went 5kph/3.3mph too fast. A difference that is barely walking pace.
In total (excluding medical bills) the accident caused a damage of 4.2 million Swiss Francs/3.9 million Euros/4.4 million USD. The rear two cars were scrapped once the investigation ended, the service car and rear second class car were repaired and eventually returned to service. Due to a shortage of rolling stock the Glacier Express temporarily ran with normal passenger cars and panoramic cars mixed in the train.
The report closes with recommendations, including the installation of improved safety-systems that can monitor and limit the speed of the trains, improve signage directing passengers to the few emergency exits, and upgrading the locomotives from a data-logger using paper to an electronic system. The driver is put on trial in 2011 for negligent manslaughter, several cases of negligently causing severe bodily harm and negligence interference with rail traffic. He is sentenced to 2 years of jail, entirely turned into probation, and has to pay 15500 Swiss Francs/14562 Euros/16276 USD.
The railway line reopens just two days after the accident, with the driver’s urged to be especially focused on the speed of the train in the curvy section. The Glacier Express didn’t suffer any loss in popularity, and this remains the only accident causing injuries or even costing lives in it’s history.
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