Background
Pfäffikon (full name Pfäffikon ZH to differentiate from other municipalities of the same name in other Cantons) is a city and municipality of 12164 people (as of December 2019) in the Canton of Zürich in Northern Switzerland, located 18km/11mi east of the city Zürich and 44km/27.3mi southwest of the German city Konstanz, right on the Swiss Border (both measurements in linear distance).
The town lies on the northern shore of lake Pfäffikon, at an elevation of 547m/1795ft above sea level. There is no connection to the Autobahn-system, public transport happens on the road via several post bus lines or via trains on the Effretikon–Hinwil railway line (also called the Kemptalbahn/Kemptahl Railway), a 22.5km/13.75mi electrified single track branch line opened in 1876.
The vehicles involved
Travelling southbound on the Kemptalstraße (Kemptal Road) towards Pfäffikon was a Mercedes bus of unknown year/model carrying a driver and 40 passengers. The bus belongs to the Sindelfingen-based company Hassler & Sons and has been chartered by the Sport Club from Schönaich, a small town 17km/10.5mi linear distance south-southwest of Stuttgart. The passengers were mostly married couples on a vacation in Switzerland rather than a specific sport’s team.
Travelling from Fehraltorf eastbound towards Pfäffikon was regional train number 8477, provided by an SBB RABDe 12/12. Made between 1965 and 1967 the RABDe 12/12, nicknamed Mirage after the fighter jet introduced around the same time, is a three-car electric multiple unit developed to help provide regional train services with a train every 30 minutes. Each Mirage measured 73.3m/240.5ft in length and could seat 200 passengers in a two-class configuration (second class end cars and first class middle car). Unusually for a regional train all 12 axles are driven (hence “12/12”), providing strong acceleration all the way to the Mirage’s top speed of 125kph/78mph despite an empty weight of 170 metric tons. To keep up with even the highest traffic demands up to four units could be coupled together and controlled by one driver, a double-traction was pretty much standard for most services. The trains originally received a dark red paintjob, setting them apart from the dark green of most Swiss trains. Providing the service on the day of the accident was unit 1106, the sixth Mirage made.
The accident
On the 12th of September 1982 Mirage 1106 is approaching Pfäffikon from the west, travelling at approximately 80kph/50mph with an unknown number of passengers. The train is running two minutes behind schedule, a common problem which the fast acceleration of the Mirage was meant to help with. At 2:56pm a bus carrying the sports club from Schönaich reaches the edge of Pfäffikon from the north on the Kemptalstraße, it will pass over a level crossing to proceed into the town. The crossing had received warning lights just a few years prior, but the barriers were still operated by hand by a crossing guard at the site.
The crossing guard knows the schedule from the top of her head, and lowered the barriers a few minutes prior. But with not train coming she concludes she must have made a mistake and raises the barrier again. A fatal error. Because just as the bus reaches the crossing so does the Mirage, at full speed. A witness on the other side of the crossing sees the bus move into the crossing just as the bright red train reaches it also. The train driver triggers an emergency stop, obviously too late to make a difference. One third of the bus makes it through the crossing, but it doesn’t matter. The heavy train strikes the side of the bus nearly centered and tears it to bits on impact. For a moment the rear section of the bus reaches high up, in an instant the wreckage is consumed by a fireball caused by the ruptured fuel tank. Most of the bus’ wreckage gets stuck on the signal guard’s hut, the rest of it gets dragged along as the forward two cars derail with the leading car being pulled sharply to the left and getting stuck in a field at nearly 90° to the track. 39 people aboard the bus die in an instant, 2 survive with severe injuries. An unknown number of passengers aboard the train are injured also, but everyone aboard the train, including the severely injured train driver, survives the collision. Without knowing it, 43 children in Schönaich are now orphans.
Aftermath
Responders are on site within minutes, firefighters quickly take care of some minor fires in the field of debris the collision left behind. Over time almost 300 responders reach the scene, collect bodies from the wreckage and tend to the survivors. There is little left of the bus, a short section of the rear end and a piece of the roof are the only recognizable pieces. At the same time Mister Hirzel, then a 15 years old player of Pfäffikon’s soccer team, is on a bus trip with his team, returning from Zürich. Minutes after the accident their bus is stopped by firemen, and the driver is told that he won’t proceed any further that day. Their driver is an officer of the Canton police, being off-duty at the time. He asks the players to hand him his police-jacket from the luggage and that he’ll “arrange that they can proceed”. As he returns to the bus unsuccessfully the team learns of what happened, and that bus operation has been ceased in the area for safety reasons. Some of Hirzel’s friends and relatives are involved in the rescue effort, they are affected by what they experience at the site for years to come.
It doesn’t take long to find the cause, the crossing guard erroneously believed there was no train coming and opened the gates just as the train arrived. The SBB (Swiss national railway) soon accepts the blame and promises comprehensive financial aid. Mister Gorhan, the mayor’s assistant from Schönaich, travels to Pfäffikon the same day, orchestrates the recovery and transport of the victims and their belongings, helps with identification. Some of the victims are severely injured, a few are burned and take a long time to be identified.
Back home the local administration immediately starts working on finding new homes for the orphaned children, in the end all of them find new homes, most going to friends or relatives, and none end up in orphanages. In 2007 Gorhan recalls one particular pair of grandparents taking custody of 4 young children, something he says can’t have been easy. As news make their way around the world in the days following the accident donations start coming in for the survivors and the orphans, the administration makes an effort to provide an orphan’s pension to all of them until they turn 27. So many donations roll in, the budget is only exhausted by the late 90s. The wreckage is quickly cleared, the Mirage is repaired and returned to service. The collision is the worst train accident Switzerland has seen until that point, wishing to avoid a repetition the SBB accelerates their effort to automate level crossings. Mirage 1106 is repaired and returns to service some time after the accident, being spotted in service in 1990 (the photo I used above).
A makeshift memorial is erected at the site of the accident, while no one from Schönaich finds their way to the memorial service a few weeks after the accident a delegation starts attending a regular memorial service at the site every two years. Gorhan recalls that, originally, there was a sense of separation as Schönaich was shaken by loosing so many people at once and people from Pfäffikon, despite having nothing to do with the tragedy, felt a sense of guilt. But over time a sort of friendship grew between the two groups, underlined by the visits taking turns back and forth. Significantly, part of the new partnership are visits by each other’s sports clubs. As the tenure of the graves in Schöneich expired in 2007 the affected part of the cemetery was not reused but turned into an official memorial. In recent years both towns expressed that their relationship evolved from being about the tragedy’s memory to a genuine friendship, for the visit to Pfäffikon trips to the site are no longer a mandatory part of the trip. The accident is far from forgotten, but what started as an annual trip to the memorial turned into a genuine friendship.
In 1996 the SBB refurbishes 18 of the 20 Mirage-trains made, turning them into SBB series 520. Further experimentation and investigation revealed that the fast acceleration didn’t make the desired difference for more punctuality in regional traffic, but shorter time-spans to load and unload passengers do. The Mirage, with infamously narrow doors, was a counter-productive step for this. By 2008 all Mirage-trains are in storage, by 2010 the last one is scrapped. Not a single car survives today.
Today the SBB’s level crossings are automated, the barriers can’t be up as a train approaches. With the crossing guard eliminated the human error that caused the tragedy cannot happen today. The railway line is now part of the S-Bahn Zürich, a suburban/regional passenger service focused on connections within the Canton of Zürich with few connections into the neighboring Cantons and even southern Germany. Services are provided by locomotive-pulled bilevel trains (DPZ), on this line using the SBB Re450, an electric locomotive specifically developed for these trains, and 3 bilevel cars. The bilevel cars allowed shorter trains and the end of double-traction while maintaining capacity, with the more modern trains generally increasing passenger and crew safety.
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