For eight months, railway experts have been investigating how the fatal train accident in Burgrain near Garmisch-Partenkirchen in early June 2022, with five dead and numerous injured, could have happened. Now there are newer findings from the authorities about what could have contributed to the accident. The embankment may have been so soaked that the rails and sleepers gave way under the heavy load of the double-decker regional train and the carriages derailed as a result. The public prosecutor’s office in Munich II, which is investigating negligent homicide, has recently received a corresponding report.
The public prosecutor’s office immediately passed the report on to Deutsche Bahn (DB), which immediately responded with a precautionary measure. As of today, Tuesday, trains are only allowed to pass the accident site, which has long since been repaired, at reduced speed; at 70 kilometers per hour. A “lack of subsoil” is given as the reason in an internal DB directory. The internal directory is a compilation of the so-called slow-moving stations for train drivers and all other railway employees who need to know.
The new slow-moving section applies to a length of 600 meters; on the section between kilometers 97.4 and 98 on the route from Munich to Garmisch-Partenkirchen. This is exactly the section on which a regional train traveling from the mountains to the state capital derailed at midday on June 3, 2022. Two of the five cars fell down the embankment. It took months for the single-track section to be repaired and usable again.
The public prosecutor’s office in Munich II, which is investigating on suspicion of negligent homicide, now has three reports commissioned by the authority. The latest expertise is about the railway embankment. This report states that the railway embankment at the site of the accident was “soaked through” and that this could lead to problems. The trains would therefore have to travel more slowly there. According to the expertise, there are “geotechnical peculiarities” that emerged during drilling in the railway embankment. The Katzenbach, which flows directly past the route, is also mentioned.
A torrent runs past the scene of the accident
The possible causes of an unstable railway embankment at the scene of the accident go back a long way. The train drivers’ union (GDL), together with experts from Pro Bahn and other organizations, presented initial assessments at a press conference almost two months after the train accident. Two decades ago, at the scene of the accident, two federal highways were linked via an extensive structure. At the expense of the railway embankment, a “torrent that is dangerous in times of flooding”, the Katzenbach, was relocated to the railway embankment. This may have had consequences for the stability of the railway embankment.
At the end of last year, the federal government announced in response to a parliamentary request from the left that the relocation of the Katzenbach had been coordinated with Deutsche Bahn and the Weilheim water management office. The measure was then carried out according to the “technical specifications” of the water management office. The government further stated at the end of 2022 that, according to information from the Federal Railway Authority (EBA), “there were no findings within the framework of railway supervision about serious defects or increased maintenance requirements on the section of track concerned”.
The thesis that a softened railway embankment could have contributed to the accident had already made the rounds soon after the accident; also among local politicians in Werdenfelser Land. Now this thesis receives new nourishment. Final findings about what led to the train accident are not yet available. Several circumstances may have come together. Another report that the public prosecutor’s office has had for some time points to problems with the sleepers.
Concrete cancer is said to have damaged the sleepers
The railway had already declared in August 2022 that the sleepers in this section of the route would have “partial irregularities in the material properties”. This was the result of reports commissioned by the railways. Those familiar with the case speak of so-called concrete cancer. Water could have seeped into the sleepers through cracks in the concrete and caused damage. Concrete cancer is not a new phenomenon, railway lines and motorways in Germany have been affected by it in the past still are today.
What exactly led to the accident is to be clarified in another expert opinion, a so-called “overall report”. Experts should evaluate the available individual reports and thus come to an overall picture. The public prosecutor’s office in Munich II is still waiting for this result. It is currently not possible to foresee when the overall report will be available. In this respect, it is still unclear what will come out of the investigation at the end.
From Tutzing – from there the route is almost entirely single track – via Garmisch-Partenkirchen to the border near Mittenwald there are currently nine slow-moving stations; mostly due to “superstructure deficiency”. So because of defects in the track bed. Due to a “lack of subsoil” a second part of the route between Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Mittenwald has been added to the accident section. Here the trains are only allowed to travel at 20 kilometers per hour.
The Pro Bahn passenger association explained this at the request of the SZ, the new speed restrictions indicated that the problems with the routes were “much worse” than previously assumed. This is “very bad news” for passengers in the Werdenfels region, says Norbert Moy, chairman of Pro Bahn in Upper Bavaria. If not only the superstructure but also the subsoil is affected, then “lengthy and complex construction sites are coming our way”. Deutsche Bahn must now quickly clarify “how the catastrophic conditions in the network could have come about” and improve maintenance. And the federal government, as the owner of the railway, must acknowledge its responsibility for the condition of the routes.