Third recall fuels doubts about German ICE trains

Citation

(1999), "Third recall fuels doubts about German ICE trains", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 8 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/dpm.1999.07308cab.002

Third recall fuels doubts about German ICE trains

Third recall fuels doubts about German ICE trains

Keywords Rail transport, Safety

Doubts about the safety of Germany's high-speed Inter City Express (ICE) trains grew on Sunday when the railway withdrew 59 trains for safety checks for the third time in a week, causing further delays.

Rail operator Deutsche Bahn AG said it was making new checks because it had recently become aware of cases in which the wheels on some German local trains not part of the federal rail system, but of the same type as ICE wheels, had broken.

A broken wheel is believed to have caused Germany's worst post-war rail disaster on 3 June 1998 when 98 people died after an ICE train derailed and slammed into a bridge at 200kph (125mph) near the northern town of Eschede.

The main routes affected by the ICE recall are Hamburg to Munich and Basle, Switzerland, and Berlin to Frankfurt. The German rail system, famed for its punctuality, has been plagued by delays ever since the crash.

"It is still unclear when the trains can be returned to service," a railway spokesman said. He added passengers should expect delays even though 120 trains had been put on to make up the ICE shortfall. The added trains are slower and have fewer seats. Deutsche Bahn said it and the Federal Railway Authority were now assessing what measures had to be taken to allow the ICE trains back into service.

Meanwhile newspapers reported that rail experts believed regular checks on the trains in the years before the crash had been insufficient.

Bild am Sonntag said ultra-sound checks had been abandoned three years ago because they did not work, and that the wheels had subsequently been examined with the naked eye. It cited JÏrgen Siegmann, a professor at the Technical University of Berlin, as describing visual checks as "absurd".

Deutsche Bahn could not immediately be reached for comment on the reports. The trains that have been withdrawn are the first generation of ICE trains built in 1991. They account for more than half Germany's fleet of 104 ICE trains and were taken out of service twice last weekend for visual and ultra-sound checks on their wheels. The railway is also checking 25 trains of the Hamburg local railway system which have similar wheels.

The sleek red-and-white ICE trains, Germany's answer to the French TGV high-speed trains and the pride of its rail network, have succeeded in luring many passengers away from domestic air routes since they were launched in 1991.

The rail spokesman declined to say on which local trains wheels had broken and it was unclear when the incidents occurred.

Unlike the ICE trains, the local trains in question do not belong to the federal railway system, which is run by state-owned Deutsche Bahn. Some local trains in German cities are operated privately or owned by local government.

German Transport Minister Matthias Wissmann said on Saturday that rail travel was still one of the safest forms of transport despite the Eschede crash.

A survey published in Focus magazine showed that 61 per cent of Germans still have full confidence in the railway despite the Eschede crash, while 34 per cent said their confidence had declined.

(Lloyd's Casualty Week, Vol. 312 No. 13, 26 June 1998.)