The Bavarian Regiobahn (BRB) attributes the narrowing of one of its trains at a station in Peiting, Upper Bavaria, to a technical fault on a switch. According to this, this point could not have been placed completely on the track, but could have been placed between the two directions, so to speak, and thus lifted the front bogies of the train off the track. This was announced by a spokeswoman for BRB on Wednesday as the company’s “initial state of knowledge”.
At the same time, the question remains open as to whether the driver of the Regiobahn recognized the signal associated with the points too late, for example because of the sleet and twilight, or whether he might have completely overlooked it. This signal would therefore have revealed a faulty position of the points.
According to the federal police, three students suffered a slight shock in the accident on Tuesday morning at Peiting Ost station. A total of 52 passengers were traveling with the regional train, most of them students on their way to school. They were all able to continue the journey later by bus. The train, which was already comparatively slow when entering the station, jumped off the tracks with the front part, but remained standing upright on the track bed.
After the accident, the tracks at the points are severely deformed. Footage shows that a rail is broken. According to the BRB, it has no indication that this could have been the case before the accident. The official investigation into the cause of the accident is being conducted by the Federal Police under the direction of the Munich II public prosecutor. According to a police spokeswoman, however, there are still no results. The police also do not want to confirm the information provided by the BRB.
The single-track route has been criticized for a long time
According to a company spokeswoman, Deutsche Bahn, whose network division is responsible for the tracks, switches and signals, does not want to anticipate the investigations of the authorities and therefore does not want to comment on them. The track infrastructure in Peiting Ost station was renewed a good year ago. After the train accident in Burgrain near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in which five people lost their lives at the beginning of June last year, the railways have also set up numerous slow-moving sections on the Pfaffenwinkelbahn that is now affected. Part of it has still not been eliminated.
The Pro Bahn passenger association has criticized the condition of the single-track route for years as inadequate. As early as 2003, a position paper stated that the existing route infrastructure, most of which was built in 1917, “no longer meets the requirements of modern rail transport”. In principle, nothing has changed in this regard despite selective measures taken by DB.
In 2020, Pro Bahn collected more than 3,100 signatures for an online petition with which the association called, among other things, for the electrification of the Pfaffenwinkelbahn and improvements in the entire Werdenfels network around Garmisch-Partenkirchen. This also includes the route of the Burgrain accident. In the meantime, the railway has announced that it will invest 80 million euros in its ailing networks in the Werdenfelser Land and in the Oberland. After longer route closures last year, the modernization announced for the period up to 2025 will be accompanied by renewed closures.