Train Accident Newsroom

NTSB Before The Association Of American Railroads Damage Prevention

Thank you for inviting me here today. This is the second time in the last 6 weeks that I am addressing an AAR audience, and, rather than considering this an endorsement for my speaking skills, I think this shows the importance the AAR and the National Transportation Safety Board place in railroad safety. Both your organization and mine are dedicated to the same goals, the avoidance of railroad accidents and the reduction of injuries to our fellow citizens.

Transportation safety problems can occur anywhere, of course. Because Amtrak will be inaugurating high-speed rail service in the Northeast Corridor as early as next year, when we heard about the terrible high-speed train accident in Germany last month, I dispatched three of our investigators to Germany to determine if any lessons learned there will have applicability here in the United States.

On arrival, our team met with the Eisenbahn-Bundesamt (EBA), essentially Germany’s version of the Federal Railroad Administration, although the EBA seems to contain elements of the NTSB, the Surface Transportation Board, the GAO and the AAR, as well. This is what we learned.

Although the catastrophe occurred at a highway overpass just outside the town of Eschede, the accident sequence actually began earlier. To understand the mechanics of what happened, you have to realize that the first generation of Germany’s ICE system, which comprises about 60 train sets, uses two-piece resilient wheels. The accident train was of this first generation.

At a point about 5.6 kilometers or 3 miles before the overpass, a rim from one of these resilient wheels on the first passenger car broke, with the tread of the wheel wrapping itself around the track brake on the trailing truck of the car. Probably because of this, in interviews after the accident, passengers from the first car reported noise and vibration about 2 minutes before the accident.

In that two minutes, the train approached a turnout, at which point the damaged wheel apparently hit a guide rail at the track switch, which penetrated the first two cars of the train. Still, the train continued to move at 180 kilometers an hour. After striking the guide rail, the train continued toward a second switch. The second passenger car was diverted to the siding track and derailed. Car 3 was forced out even farther toward the supports of a highway bridge crossing the tracks at that spot. The trailing end of car 3 knocked the bridge supports down. As an example of the forces involved, one of the concrete supports was found several hundred meters from the bridge, driven directly into the ground.

The crash dynamics were horrific. Two passenger cars were crushed by the falling bridge. The rest of the train ran into the collapsed bridge, with the heavy trailing locomotive adding to the impact forces from behind. The accident site has been compared to what one finds at a major airline accident. Nearly 100 people lost their lives.

What does this accident mean to us as we look to high speed train service in the United States? While no one can make assurances that a major accident will not occur, there are some aspects of rail service in this country that will mitigate the effects of such a calamity.

First of all, U.S. crashworthiness standards are stronger than those in Germany. Amtrak cars have the ability to withstand stronger buff forces and have crush zones at the end of the cars. They are also equipped with collision posts. The "Amtrak High Speed Train" car body is built to withstand the weight of the car without collapsing. However, any time a high-speed train is going to collide with an immovable object, the results cannot help but be catastrophic.

Second, we will not use resilient, or multi-sectional, wheels on our high-speed service. But we still have to concentrate on the critical component of the wheel/rail interface. For high-speed rail service to be successful, we have to apply great attention to checking the integrity of the rails and the rail car wheels to ensure they don’t fail during use. Rail transportation is very unforgiving at the speeds that will be introduced in this new service.

The examination of the German accident will be important for application to future rail services in the United States. I’d like to turn now to two issues on the Safety Board’s agenda dealing with rail safety now – improper cargo loading and operator fatigue. I know that the issue of cargo shifts or improper loading is of particular interest to this audience. The Board has seen this cause accidents in all modes of transportation, not just railroad.