After the fatal train accident in Burgrain near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in which five passengers died on June 3 and many other people were injured, some seriously, the Union of German Locomotive Drivers (GDL) made serious allegations against the DB Group. When dealing with the accident, it shouldn’t be about identifying “pawn victims” such as the train driver, the dispatcher or the person responsible for the route, who have been investigated since the evening of the accident. This was emphasized by the Bavarian GDL state chairman Uwe Böhm on Tuesday. Rather, the GDL – regardless of the specific cause of the accident – sees a systemic responsibility at Deutsche Bahn and in the policy requirements for the state-owned company.
Böhm warned that tracks and other railway infrastructure must be understood as part of public services and be equipped and maintained accordingly. Instead, the infrastructure division of the railways must simply deliver profits, which then flow into any other global activities of the DB Group. In addition, the railways are neglecting their core business and their railways. According to a Bundestag printed matter, one possible cause of the train accident near Burgrain was brittle concrete sleepers that could no longer withstand the weight of the trains in the long term.
One does not want to anticipate the results of the ongoing investigations by the police, public prosecutor’s office, railways, the Ministry of Transport and other government agencies, but only provide material to optimize these investigations, emphasized GDL man Böhm on Tuesday. This material was compiled by the former PDS member of the Bundestag and transport politician Winfried Wolf, as well as Dieter Doege, the longstanding state chairman of the Pro Bahn association in Berlin-Brandenburg. Both see themselves as proven friends of rail transport and at the same time as proven critics of Deutsche Bahn. According to Doege, they received a lot of support from DB employees for their analysis of the accident. These would have to remain anonymous, however, because otherwise they would have great difficulties internally.
A conversion of the B2 could have had consequences
For Böhm, Doege and Wolf, this is already a major point of criticism: Anyone who points out the neglect of the sometimes completely dilapidated infrastructure must fear for their jobs or for further orders from the railways. Even before the accident, in which a regional train derailed, three carriages overturned and two of them tipped over from the railway embankment into a ditch, there were indications from train drivers that the section of track was in poor condition. It is not known whether anyone followed these tips, Doege said.
From his point of view, what made the accident so serious was a major renovation of the neighboring B2 about two decades ago. At that time, the Katzenbach was relocated to a new ditch built directly between the tracks and the road – the ditch into which the wagons are now tipped. It cannot be ruled out that the water from the stream made the embankment unstable. If the safety concerns of the railway had been taken into account when planning the road, it might have stayed with a ground-level solution, which experience has shown is much safer. In addition, the road construction at that time made the double-track expansion of the railway line almost impossible. It is possible that a guide rail, which is often installed elsewhere in Bavaria, could have prevented the wagons from tipping out of the curve into the ditch.
At the request of the dpa news agency, the railways did not comment on any of this on Tuesday – neither on the ongoing repair work nor on the possible extent of the damage or when rail traffic could be resumed.