 | |
| Details | |
|---|---|
| Date | 21 November 1960 |
| Location | Woerden |
| Country | Netherlands |
| Incident type | Derailment |
| Cause | Ignoring temporary speed limit |
| Statistics | |
| Trains | 1 |
| Passengers | 151 |
| Deaths | 2 |
| Injured | 3 (seriously) tens (minor) |
The Woerden train accident was a railway accident on 21 November 1960 at around 20:10 in Woerden, the Netherlands near the Cattenbroek rail crossing.
The train involved in the crash, a DM80760 / Fac BD, was a British train from Hanover, Germany to Hook of Holland, in the Netherlands, carrying 151 on leave British military personnel and their families, including some 10 women and several children. [1] The crash was due to the train driver failing to notice a temporary speed limit and travelling too fast through that section of track. The train broke behind the second carriage and six of the eleven carriages derailed and tilted partially. Two people died, three people were seriously injured and many more received minor injuries. [2]
Ambulances from surrounding towns (Zwammerdam, Woerden, Bodegraven and Utrecht) were summoned. The rescue operation was difficult because the site of the disaster was only accessible via a muddy country road. Initially, people had to be carried by stretcher several hundred metres to the ambulances, although the rescue was subsequently better organized. [3] Some military personnel helped during the rescue operation while others were sent to Woerden railway station. Around 100 Nederlandse Spoorwegen staff started the clear up with cutting torches. Hours after the disaster, the uninjured passengers were taken, by bus, to Gouda whence they were transported to Hook of Holland by train.
The tracks were blocked in both directions. The overhead lines were destroyed and the overhead supports had fallen onto the tracks. The clear up work continued through the night and the following morning, when rail cranes were able to lift some carriages back onto the track. The day after the crash, train traffic resumed on one track while the president of the Nederlandse Spoorwegen, ir. J. Lohman, also visited the disaster site.
One of the two people who was killed was Heinz Schmodta, a 62-year-old German cook. The other person was Raymond Albert Miller, a 19-year-old British able seaman from Spennymoor, Co. Durham, England. Just before the crash he went to the toilet in the fourth carriage and was crushed by the concertina effect. With the help of cutting torches his body was removed from the train.
The injured included a train guard, who was hurled out of the train.
Due to track works there was a temporary speed limit of 40 km/h which was indicated with special signs. According to statements, the train was travelling at a speed of 90 km/h at the time of the crash.
The Granville rail/train disaster occurred on Tuesday 18 January 1977 at Granville, a western suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, when a crowded commuter train derailed, running into the supports of a road bridge that collapsed onto two of the train's passenger carriages. The official enquiry found the primary cause of the crash to be poor fastening of the track.
The Eschede derailment occurred on 3 June 1998, near the village of Eschede in the Celle district of Lower Saxony, Germany, when a high-speed train derailed and crashed into a road bridge with 101 people killed and 88 injured. It remains the worst rail disaster in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany and the worst high-speed-rail disaster worldwide. The cause was a single fatigue crack in one wheel that, when it failed, resulted in a part of the wheel becoming caught in a set of points, effectively changing the setting of the points whilst the train was passing over it. This led to the train's carriages going down two separate tracks, causing the train to derail and crash into the pillars of a concrete road bridge, which then collapsed and crushed two coaches. The remaining coaches and the rear power car crashed into the wreckage.
The Harmelen train disaster, on 8 January 1962, was the worst railway accident in the history of the Netherlands. Harmelen, in the central Netherlands, is the location of a railway junction where a branch to Amsterdam leaves the Rotterdam to Utrecht line. It is common at high-speed junctions to avoid the use of diamond crossings wherever possible – instead a ladder crossing is employed where trains destined for the branch line cross over to the track normally employed for trains travelling in the opposite direction for a short distance before taking the branch line.
The Sutton Coldfield train crash took place at about 16:13 on 23 January 1955 in Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire, when an express passenger train traveling from York to Bristol, derailed due to excessive speed on a sharp curve.
The Camp Mountain rail accident occurred at approximately 9:48 am on 5 May 1947 when a crowded picnic train derailed on a sharp left-hand curve between Ferny Grove and Camp Mountain stations on the now-closed Dayboro railway line, approximately 15 km (9.3 mi) northwest of Brisbane, the state capital of Queensland, Australia.
The NS Class 6400 is a type of 4 axle diesel-electric freight locomotive. 120 were built by MaK and ABB between 1988 and 1994 for Nederlandse Spoorwegen.
On the evening of 4 December 1957, two trains crashed in dense fog on the South Eastern Main Line near Lewisham in south-east London, causing the deaths of 90 people and injuring 173. An electric train to Hayes had stopped at a signal under the bridge, and the following steam train to Ramsgate crashed into it, destroying a carriage and causing the bridge to collapse onto the steam train. The bridge had to be completely removed; it was over a week before the lines under the bridge were reopened, and another month before the bridge was rebuilt and traffic allowed over it.
The Sarai Banjara rail disaster occurred on 2 December 2000, when a derailed freight train crossed onto the opposite track early in the morning in Punjab, India. A Howrah–Amritsar Express a passenger train coming from other direction hit the freight train head-on at speed, killing 46 people and injuring at least 150.
The Igandu train disaster was an accident which occurred during the early morning of June 24, 2002, in Tanzania. In one of the worst rail accidents in African history. A large passenger train with over 1,200 people on board rolled backwards down a hill into a slow moving goods train, killing 281 people.
The Yattalgoda train crash was an accident on a Sri Lankan rail line near the town of Kurunegala on 19 August 2001.
The Hyde railway disaster occurred on 4 June 1943 near the small settlement of Hyde, Otago, New Zealand, on a bend of the Otago Central Railway. At the time, it was New Zealand's worst railway accident; of the 113 passengers on board, 21 were killed and a further 47 were injured. However, just over 10 years later, the Tangiwai disaster took 151 lives on 24 December 1953. The Hyde disaster remains as the second-worst railway accident in New Zealand's history.
The Grayrigg derailment was a fatal railway accident that occurred at approximately 20:15 GMT on 23 February 2007, just to the south of Grayrigg, Cumbria, in the North West England region of the United Kingdom. The accident investigation concluded that the derailment was caused by a faulty set of points on the Down Main running line, controlled from Lambrigg ground frame. The scheduled inspection on 18 February 2007 had not taken place and the faults had gone undetected.
On 8 August 2008, at approximately 10:30 local time, EuroCity train EC 108 Comenius, en route from Kraków, Poland, to Prague, Czech Republic, struck a part of a motorway bridge that had fallen onto the railroad track near the Studénka railway station in the Czech Republic. The train derailed, killing eight people and injuring 64.
The Halle train collision was a collision between two NMBS/SNCB passenger trains carrying a combined 250–300 people in Buizingen, in the municipality of Halle, Flemish Brabant, Belgium, on 15 February 2010. The accident occurred in snowy conditions at 08:28 CET (07:28 UTC), during rush hour, on railway line 96 (Brussels–Quévy) about 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) from Brussels between P-train E3678 from Leuven to Braine-le-Comte and IC-train E1707 from Quiévrain to Liège. A third train was able to come to a stop just in time. The collision killed 19 people and injured 171, making it the deadliest rail accident in Belgium in over fifty years.
The Marden rail crash occurred on 4 January 1969 near Marden, Kent, United Kingdom, when a passenger train ran into the rear of a parcels train, having passed two signals at danger. Four people were killed and 11 were injured. One person was awarded the British Empire Medal for his part in the aftermath of the collision.
The Bouhalouane train crash was a fatal railway accident that happened at Bouhalouane in Algeria on January 27, 1982 at 01:30 and killed 131 people.
The Circumvesuviana Derailment was a railway accident which occurred on Friday 6 August 2010 in Naples, Italy. A train of the Circumvesuviana line, a local railway providing transport in the area around the Mount Vesuvius, derailed between the San Giorgio a Cremano and Naples stations.
On 21 April 2012 at 18:30 local time, two trains were involved in a head-on collision at Westerpark, near Sloterdijk, in the west of Amsterdam, Netherlands. Approximately 117 people were injured, one of whom later died in hospital. The collision is thought to have been caused by the driver of one of the trains passing a red signal.
On 13 December 2018, a high-speed passenger train and a locomotive collided near Yenimahalle in Ankara Province, Turkey. Three cars (carriages/coaches) of the passenger train derailed in the collision. Three railroad engineers and five passengers were killed at the scene, and 84 people were injured. Another injured passenger later succumbed to injuries, and 34 passengers, including two in critical condition, were treated in several hospitals.
 | Wikimedia Commons has media related to Woerden rail accident on 21 November 1960 . |
Railway accidents in 1960 | |
|---|---|
| Location and date |
|
