Why the Berlin-Hanover ICE route has been closed for so long
At the fire station of the joint municipality of Meinersen is the old motto “God in honor, the neighbor in defense”. The same phrase read on the nearby wildfire memorial stone commemorating a major fire on August 10, 1975 that engulfed five firefighters and killed them. These days, a large-scale operation of many fire brigade units is taking place in the area. This time man is united in fighting the aftermath of a train wreck.
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Three more weeks of lockdown? That seems long
On Thursday last week at 3.41 a.m. near Meinersen, a train with filled propane gas tanks drove into a freight train standing on the section of track.
The ICE route between Hanover and Berlin will “most likely” remain closed until December 16th, which is what Deutsche Bahn has announced. Many thousands of passengers from all over the republic with destination Berlin & now change their plans for another three weeks. According to Deutsche Bahn, passengers who have planned a trip for the period between November 18 and December 16 and now want to postpone it can use their ticket flexibly in long-distance traffic. “Depending on the departure or destination in NRW, travelers are recommended to check connections with a change in Frankfurt or Hamburg as a possible faster alternative,” said the railway. But why is it taking so long?
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Rails, track bed and overhead lines are destroyed
Anyone approaching the scene of the accident at least has an idea of the forces at work when two freight trains collide. The place in the middle of the forest looks like a battlefield, so God bowled all nine on the track. The huge wagons with their gas boilers lie on their side, pushed into each other, wheelbases have been brutally torn out, to the left of them the green “nose” of the run-up locomotive looks over the wrecked wagons of the other freight train. A local resident is said to have heard the noise as the trains collided. According to a local firefighter, it sounded like huge tin cans banging together.
As far as the eye can see – and much of the disaster is still hidden from view by the trains that have been thrown – the track bed is totally destroyed, the rails describe a curve where the line should be straight, the overhead lines are destroyed for hundreds of meters. The fact that almost nothing happened to the driver of the train that got into the car is surprising.
The stationary train had emptied its tons of cargo
“If the paper had still been in the wagons, it would have turned out differently, it would have been like a buffer stop,” says fire brigade press spokesman Carsten Schaffhauser. The train had already unloaded its cargo of 90 tons of paper per car before the impact.
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Further speculation as to how the same situation would have been with an ICE or if the rear-end collision had taken place in one place instead of in the middle of the forest remain unanswered. Everyone is calm and friendly at the scene of the accident, but please no subjunctive information – it is how it is, says a fireman.
Only one torch has a large tongue of flame
But how is it? Only three of the four reliable mobile large flares, each connected to a gas car, are still in operation. One of the four boilers, each containing 50 tons of liquid propane gas, has already been pumped dry. Two torches are clearly on their last legs, their flames are bluish and rather weak. A torch, however, spits out a spectacular yellow-orange tongue of fire into the grey, cloudy sky.
Such a device burns a ton of gaseous propane per minute, says Michael Gose from Gifhorn, deputy head of the district press office. The blazing torch is flanked by members of the volunteer fire brigade with a hose that can release 3000 liters of water per minute – for example in the unlikely event that liquid gas instead of gaseous propane gets into the torch. Then, according to Carsten Schaffhauser, there is a huge fireball.
The wagons could only be pumped halfway
One problem in dealing with the accident over the past few days was the unfavorable location of the gas boiler. “If a tank wagon is standing upright, it is emptied via the valves below,” says Schaffhauser. “But the wagons lay sideways, so the valves were halfway up, so they could only be pumped out halfway.” The liquid gas then became gaseous in the vacated space of the boiler. Hence the flaring.
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The freezing temperatures at the beginning of the week then made the work of the firefighters more difficult. “The cold makes the gas sluggish,” explains Jochen Fries, senior fire engineer at Evonik Industries’ plant fire department in the Marl chemical park. And so it had to be accelerated again using two “hotmobiles”, which Carsten Schaffhauser describes as “huge flow heaters”. Since then, water heated to 70 degrees has been continuously poured over the wagons. The thick hoses lying on the boilers are reminiscent of giant lawn sprinklers. The hot water pours out of countless nozzles.
The minister comes to visit: “Great work”
The Interior Minister of Lower Saxony also visits the helpers this afternoon. He wanted to “get a better picture of the situation and thank all the emergency services,” says Boris Pistorius (SPD) and is led to the wrecks, past the special truck with nitrogen, around which a small white carpet of fog has formed in the moss. With the nitrogen, the remaining gas sphere is trapped in the wagons “iteratively”, as Jochen Fries explains.
“Great work, excellent interaction, great cinema,” the minister certifies to all fire departments. Already the averting of danger, which was done at the beginning, was exemplary. Mayor of the joint municipality Karin Single, who accompanies Pistorius, emphasizes the tireless commitment for a week: “I’m proud of what all the volunteers have done. From the beginning. Everyone was alerted, secured the site in the middle of the night, immediately obtained the necessary expertise, and were on duty day and night.”
Praise for the emergency services: Lower Saxony’s Minister of the Interior, Boris Pistorius, had the state of affairs at the scene of the accident explained to him on Thursday afternoon (November 24).
© Source: Matthias Halbig
Special fire brigades have “divided” the scene of the accident
The expertise came immediately – not only from Marl, but also from Ludwigshafen and Dormagen. “We are responsible for everything that rumbles, cracks and is poisonous,” says Jochen Fries with a smile, describing the field of action of his colleagues. The people from Evonik’s fire brigade came to Meinersen from Marl on behalf of the transport, accident information and assistance system (TUIS) of the chemical industry, with special equipment and know-how not available from the normal fire brigades.
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The people from Marl “shared” the scene of the accident with their colleagues from BASF and Bayer. Since then, around 20 members of the volunteer fire brigades and the special forces have been on duty in shifts – along with staff from the Federal Police, Technical Relief Organization and the German Red Cross.
There is no risk of explosion at any time
“A tank car was leaking,” says Fries. “I experienced that for the first time in 15 years.” These containers are usually very stable, “surviving” even such an accident. Apparently the compression was too strong, but the danger was always manageable despite the leak. Fries assures that even if spark ignition had occurred, there would have been no explosion from the leaky boiler, only a flame. Pressure should build up in such a boiler for a long time before it ruptures.
Fries had only been in the region in September – when a tank wagon with nitric acid overturned in a shunting accident in Seelze near Hanover. Everything was going well back then, and Fries also sees “light at the end of the tunnel” in Meinersen. The fire brigades expect their mission to be completed this weekend.
Two heavy-duty cranes on rails lift the wagons
At the latest at the beginning of the week, Monday or Tuesday, as soon as the weirs have rolled up their hoses, Deutsche Bahn will start their work. A 100-ton and a 160-ton rail crane will be used to approach the scene of the accident from both sides in order to be able to salvage and transport the wreckage. “Phoenix” and “Bulldog” are already ready for this in Lehrte. Tow trucks and diesel locomotives are also organized. The use of another 120-ton heavy-duty crane, which would have to be brought to the site via the forest paths, is not yet certain.
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According to the experts, the repair is extremely complex. The repairs to the overhead line and the track bed can only begin once the clean-up work has been completed. The damage to the control and safety technology can only be assessed once the scene of the accident has been cleared because the overturned wagons are lying on the cable ducts.
The forest paths became a resilient path network
Since the accident, the railway has made a resilient network of paths out of the forest paths, on which the many emergency vehicles can maneuver easily, and which could ultimately also be used to bring the monster crane to the site. Large trucks still unload their ballast loads on Thursday. 3000 tons have been installed so far.
“We bought all the mineral mixtures in the area together,” says Markus Grimm. Head of DB maintenance in Hanover. Rails, yokes (sleepers with pre-assembled rails), masts, ballast and other materials for repair are already piled up a little behind the train wrecks on the railway embankment. The salvage and repair workers are practically pawing their hooves. “They’re just waiting for our ‘Go!'”, says Schaffhauser. Just like the many passengers who now have to travel hours of detours.
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Explosive propane escapes after freight trains collide near Gifhorn
A freight train stops at a signal, another pulls up – explosive propane gas escapes from a wagon.
© Source: dpa
Although the “damage image should be completely recorded, the accident site inspected” first, they want to work “with all intensity” towards a resumption of operations on December 16th. It starts to rain. Fire brigade spokesman Michael Gose from the Gifhorn volunteer fire brigade looks to the sky: “We actually hoped to be able to put our things away in the dry,” he says. “We probably won’t be able to do that.”
Question of guilt unresolved
Michael Körber, Head of Operations North at DB Netz, will not engage in a discussion on the question of guilt at the site. The cause of the accident is the subject of investigations, and Deutsche Bahn is supporting the authorities. Please do not say more about this.
There had recently been complaints from the nearby villages about the fairly loud largest of the four mobile torches, so they were switched off the night before. The gaper problem was “minimal” over the days, says Michael Gose. The usual sad unfortunate tourists stayed away from the site surprisingly.
One of Gose and Schaffhauser’s colleagues reports on people who asked him whether the paths would be restored afterwards. “We told them that the paths had only just been made now. Before,” he says, “it was just mud”.