艾雪德列车出轨事故
维基百科，自由的百科全书
事发经过
德国时间上午10时30分（UTC+1，后同），列车从汉诺威站开出继续行程。40分钟后，当列车驶至策勒区艾雪德镇以南约6公里时，第2节车厢的 第3条车轴上的一个车轮外钢圈因疲乏而突然爆裂，钢条碎片插进了车厢内。当列车驶过转辙器时，爆裂的车轮外钢圈又把转辙器上的引导轨扬起一段，同时也插入了车厢走道并冲破车厢顶；在一连串效应，造成车头与第2节之后的车体分离。
由于事发时列车车速高达每小时200公里，因此引致第2节车厢抛离轨道冲入树丛之中，而第3节及以后的车厢则驶进了另一轨道上，并撞向一条行车天桥 的拱位（桥梁）之上，因冲力强大，天桥桥梁被撞断后，天桥主体随即倒塌压在第3节车厢中后段，第3节之后的所 有车厢全部出轨挤压在一起，两名正在桥下工作的德国铁路员工当场被出轨列车撞死。肇事列车的首节机车则继续向前行驶3公里，至通过艾雪德站后才被完全煞停[1]。
[编辑] 救援
[编辑] 开始救援
上午11时正，110接到第一个报案电话。这时，人们还不清楚发生了什么事。2分钟后，警察报告“艾雪德火车相撞事故”。同时消防和救援机构也接到 了报案电话。最先到达的救援者是事故现场附近听到响动的居民。
11时6分，红十字会救援协调中心宣布临近的汉诺威、Gifhorn和Uelzen等地区医疗和救援机构进入紧急状态。
11时7分，第一辆消防车到达事故现场。1分钟后，人们从消防队长现场报告中终于明确得知现场情况，一列高铁列车出轨撞桥。驶向现场的途中消防队长 即下令调集本地区所有设备参与救援。与此同时，celle、汉诺威两架救援直升机和Fassberg直升机中队的也收到警报赶往现场。根据首批到达现场的 救援人员报告，celle的救援指挥部确认这是一场大规模伤亡事件并启动高级别的警报。该控制中心工作人员只协助一个人问同样的时间，便通知周围的控制中 心，最后由就近的汉诺威控制中心，配置了救援直升机采取行动。
为了确保重伤员能够第一时间被运走，11时18分，德铁公司决定停止运营，并于7分钟后停驶所有列车。一次偶然听到交通广播的机会，是于11时42 分从国家消防学校伋出的。11时45分，开始创建控件的操作。
为救治伤者，当局搭起了帐篷，轻伤者在300米外一所健身室就地诊治，再转送医院。事发后一小时，50多名医生到达现场。12时5分，首名伤者由直 升机送往医院。
12时15分起，集结区191名主要道路沿线的移动注册工作队成立。德国希尔德斯海姆提供从铁路发送Tunnelrettungszug，在12时 25分展开救援行动。下午1时，显然有足够的急救人员在场，所有伤者在当时被发现。
经过13小时到达三山的军队坦克，后来又提出消防部门从汉诺威出动一部40吨起重机除杂物。13时45分，控制中心表示，把所有救出的伤者集中为一 点，以便救援和诊治。
约15时，已有87名伤者被送往医院。15时15分，紧急警报解除，此时在邻近的县大部分志愿消防和救援服务人员已被征调。接着就开始设法移开埋住 三节车厢的倒塌的桥梁。到了午夜，挖掘出78具尸体。检察官下令，所有尸体都要解剖。
大多数受害者是由于突然从每小时200公里减速到静止而死亡的，冲力相当于从160米高处坠落。
[编辑] 进一步发展
截至18时第一次新闻发布会中，死亡人数已达100人。当天晚上，吊车开始清理到一边碎片，而各地救援行动也继续进行。
翌日（6月4日），时任总理科尔和下萨克森州部长施罗德到达事发现场视察，他们原需出席一个基督教主教的服务，须由霍斯特 Hirschler和约瑟夫Homeyer代替。当时，初步证据指出一个破碎的轮辋造成是次灾难。
6月10日，即事发后一星期，死亡人数上升至99人，另外两个人在医院不治身亡。6月21日，在策勒镇教堂举行了悼 念会，共2,000人参加，包括科尔和施罗德。总统赫尔佐克在讲话中特别感谢无数的志愿所作出的贡献，高层领导人员 在事故现场敬献了花圈。
事故纪念碑
[编辑] 事故起因
[编辑] 轮箍设计
ICE-1列车的车轮原本均是以单铸铁制造一体成型，但是有严重车身震荡与噪音问题；所以，后来改以在车轮外由一层20毫米厚的橡胶包著，外面再套 上一个相对地较薄的金属车轮，该修改的双层金属车轮原本是设计用在速度较慢的大众运输系统上；因此，双层金属车轮表面上未必能看到其出现金属疲劳形成的微细裂缝。
铁路机构的多名经理均曾感受过该等震荡，并研究如何解决。有工程师认为，必须加强ICE 列车的悬挂系统，虽然同款轮箍未有进行过高速测试，但有效解决行车时的震荡问 题。在那时，德国缺乏探测车轮真实损耗的设施。
[编辑] 未能刹车
车轮爆裂后列车未能刹停，是导致之后一连串事件发生的主因。倘若当时列车能即时刹停，上述严重事件发的机会会大大降低。
一般而言，铁路公司当得悉列车有怪声传出，便会即时启动停车与检查政策，但这个政策则不适用于ICE列车上。当乘客欲尝试警示车务人员有一大 片金属插进车厢时，列车经理以公司政策为理由，拒绝刹停列车，直至把问题调查完成，这里已浪费了一些宝贵时间。该名经理因此被法院检控。
[编辑] 维修及保养
在事发前的一段时间，德铁慕尼黑维修中心的工程人员只是用标准型的闪灯检查车轮，而并非用可探测金属疲劳的仪器；但在更之前的时间，却有用上更先进 的机器；然而，该套机器存在很多误差信息，令该套机器可靠程度减低，故被迫停用。
直至事发前的该星期，在3次同的自动化检查中，探测到该车轮已有瑕疵。调查人员从列车上的电脑系统取出的维修报告中发现，肇事列车在事发前两个月， 已先后有8次职员投诉来自转向架上有缺陷车轮的噪音和震荡，但德铁未有更换之，并表示日常检查妥当，而工程人员也未有就车轮问题而作出预报[1]。
[编辑] 其他因素
在事故中倒塌的行车天桥，其设计也是间接导致事故的因素之一，原因是该天桥的两端是由薄的桥墩支撑著，而并非用实心拱形设计。
另一个因素是转向架内的焊接位未能完全缝合。
[编辑] 后续
[编辑] 法律
2002 年8月， 德铁两名官员及一名工程师被控误杀罪。因为在德国，公司是不会被送上刑事法院审讯的，只有自然人才会[1]。 案件于2003 年4月审 结，每名工程师被罚款10,000欧元（约 12,000美元）[1]。
[编辑] 技术
事发后数星期内，德铁把所有相类似设计的车轮，以另一种车轮取代。
在事发现场的拯救人员，进入车厢拯救乘客时遇上困难；主要是因为ICE列车的铝合金车身及防爆破玻璃窗，令拯救人员使用重型拯救设备时遇上重大阻 力。故德铁也把所有列车的车窗，更换为在紧急时可用锤子击破的玻璃窗，以策安全。
[编辑] 参见
- 金属疲劳
- 铁路事故列表
- 德国磁浮试验线碰撞事故（首宗磁浮列车致命事故）
- 重返危机现场 （国家地理频道）
[编辑] 参考资料
[编辑] 外部链接
- ICE/ICT网
- Eschede – Zug 884（德国纪录片，由 Raymond Ley制作）
- 事发经过动画（德文）
The Eschede train disaster was the world's deadliest high-speed train accident. It occurred on 3 June 1998, near the village of Eschede in the Celle district of Lower Saxony, Germany. The toll of 101 people dead and 88 (estimated) injured surpassed the 1971 Dahlerau train disaster as the deadliest accident of the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. It was caused by a single fatigue crack in one wheel which, when it finally failed, caused the train to derail at a rail switch.
Chronology of events
Wheel fracture
InterCityExpress trainset 51 was travelling as ICE 884 "Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen" on the Munich toHamburg route; the train was scheduled to stop at Augsburg, Nuremberg, Würzburg, Fulda, Kassel,Göttingen, and Hannover before reaching Hamburg.[1] After stopping in Hannover at 10:30, the train continued its journey northwards. About 130 kilometres (80 mi) and forty minutes away from Hamburg[1]and six kilometres south of central Eschede, near Celle, the steel tire on a wheel on the third axle of the first car broke, peeled away from the wheel, and punctured the floor of the car, where it remained embedded.
What ensued was a series of events that occurred within minutes yet took investigators months to reconstruct. The tire embedded in the rail car was seen by Jörg Dittmann, one of the passengers in Coach 1. The tire went through an armrest between where his wife and son sat. Dittmann took his wife and son out of the damaged coach and went to inform a conductor in the third coach. The conductor, who noticed vibrations in the train, told Dittmann that company policy required him to investigate the circumstances before pulling the emergency brake. The conductor took one minute to go to the site in Coach 1. Dittmann said that by then the train had begun to sway from side to side; Dittmann said that the conductor did not show a willingness to stop the train immediately at that point; according to Dittmann the conductor wished to investigate the incident more. Dittmann said that the crash occurred just when he was about to show the armrest puncture to the conductor.[1]
Derailment
As the train passed over the first of two track switches, the embedded tire slammed against the guide rail of the switch, pulling it from the railway ties. This steering rail also penetrated the floor of the car, becoming embedded in the vehicle and lifting the axle carriage off the rails. At 10:59 local time (08:59 UTC), one of the now-derailed wheels struck the points lever of the second switch, changing its setting. The rear axles of car number 3 were switched onto a parallel track, and the entire car was thereby thrown into and destroyed the piers supporting a 300-tonne roadway overpass.
Car number 4, derailed likewise by the violent deviation of car number 3 and still travelling at 200 km/h, passed intact under the bridge and rolled onto the embankment immediately behind it. Two Deutsche Bahn railway workers who had been working near the bridge were killed instantly when the derailed car crushed them. The breaking of the car couplings caused the automatic emergency brakes to engage and the mostly undamaged first three cars stopped. The detached front power car stopped completely long after passing the Eschede train station, some three kilometers (two miles) further along the track.
Bridge collapse
Coaches one and two cleared the bridge. Coach three hit the bridge, which began to collapse. Coach four cleared the bridge, moved away from the track, and hit a group of trees. The bridge pieces crushed the rear half of coach five. The restaurant coach, six, was crushed to a 15 cm (six inch) height. With the track now obstructed completely by the collapsed bridge, the remaining cars "jackknifed" into the rubble in a zig-zag pattern: Cars 7, the service car, the three first class cars numbered 10 to 12, and the rear power car all derailed and slammed into the pile.[1] The resulting mess was likened to a partially collapsed folding ruler. An automobile was also found in the wreckage. It belonged to the two railway technicians and was probably parked on the bridge before the accident. [1]
The crash made a sound that witnesses later described as "startling," "horribly loud," and "like a plane crash." Nearby residents, alerted by the sound, were the first to arrive at the scene. Erika Karl, the first person to walk into the accident scene, photographed the accident site. Karl said that, upon hearing the noise, her husband believed initially that the accident was an aircraft accident. After the accident, eight of the ICE carriages occupied an area slightly longer than the length of a single carriage.[1]
At 11:02, the local police declared an emergency; at 11:07, as the magnitude of the disaster quickly became apparent, this was elevated to "major emergency"; and at 12:30 the Celle district government declared a "catastrophic emergency" (civil state of emergency). More than 1000 rescue workers from regional emergency services, fire departments, rescue services, the police and army were dispatched. Some 37 emergency physicians, who happened to be attending a professional conference in nearbyHanover, also provided assistance during the early hours of the rescue effort, as did units of the British Forces Germany.
While the driver and many passengers in the front part of the train survived, there was little chance of survival for those in the rear carriages, which crashed into the concrete bridge pile at a speed of 200 km/h. Including the two railway workers who had been standing under the bridge, 101 people died. ICE 787 had passed under the bridge going in the opposite direction (on the Hamburg to Hanover route) only two minutes earlier.
By 13:45 authorities gave emergency treatment to 87 people. 27 of the most severely injured passengers boarded airlifts for hospitalisation.[1]
Accident statistics
- Passengers: 287 (ICE-1 max. is 651)
- Train crew: 6
- Maintenance crew: 2
- Fatalities: 101
- Severe injuries: 88
- Minor or no injury: 106
Causes
Wheel design
The ICE 1 trains were equipped with single-cast wheels, known as monobloc wheels. Once in service it soon became apparent that this design could, as a result of metal fatigue and out-of-round conditions, result in resonance and vibration at cruising speed. Passengers noticed this particularly in the restaurant car, where there were reports of loud vibrations in the dinnerware and of glasses "creeping" across tables.
Managers in the railway organisation had experienced these severe vibrations on a trip and tried to have the problem solved. In response engineers decided that to solve the problem: the suspension of ICE cars could be improved with the use of a rubber damping ring between the tire and the wheel body. A similar design had been employed successfully in trams (known as resilient wheels), though at significantly lower speeds. This new wheel, dubbed a "wheel-tire" design, consisted of a wheel body surrounded by a 20 mm thick rubber damper and then a relatively thin metal tire. The new design was not tested at high speed before it was made operational, but was successful at resolving the issue of vibration at cruising speeds.
At the time, no facilities existed in Germany that could test the actual failure limit of the wheels, and so complete prototypes were never tested physically. The design and specification relied greatly on availablematerials data and theory. The very few laboratory and rail tests that were performed did not measure wheel behaviour with extended wear conditions or greater than cruising speeds. Nevertheless, during a period of years the wheels proved themselves apparently reliable and, until the accident, had not caused any major problems.
The Fraunhofer Institute was charged with the task of determining the cause of the accident. It was revealed later that the institute had told the DB management as early as 1992 about its concerns about possible tire failure. During the months prior to the accident, Üstra, the company that operates Hanover's tram network reported that the tires employed in its trains were failing much earlier than expected based on the failure limit estimates; it decided to replace the wheels much earlier than was required legally by the specification. In doing so, it reported its findings in a warning to all other users of wheels built with similar designs, including Deutsche Bahn.
It was soon apparent that dynamic repetitive forces had not been accounted for in the statistical failuremodelling done during the design phase, and the resulting design lacked an adequate margin of safety. The following factors, overlooked during design, were noted:
- The tires were flattened into an ellipse as the wheel turned through each revolution (approximately 500,000 times during a typical day in service on an ICE train), with corresponding fatigue effects.
- In contrast to the monoblock wheel design, cracks could also form on the inside of the tire.
- As the tire became thinner due to wear, the dynamic forces were exaggerated, resulting in crack growth.
- Flat spots and ridges or swells in the tire increased the dynamic forces on the assembly dramatically and greatly accelerated wear.
During July 1997, Üstra discovered fatigue cracks in dual block wheels on trams running at about 24 km/h (15 mph). It began changing wheels before fatigue cracks could develop; Üstra then messaged other railway companies. According to the tram company, during autumn 1997, when Üstra notified Deutsche Bahn, they replied by stating that they had not noticed problems in their trains.[1]
Failure to stop train
Failing to stop the train permitted the wheel to disintegrate, resulting in a catastrophic series of events. Had the train been stopped immediately it is unlikely that the subsequent events would have occurred.
Valuable time was lost when a passenger tried to warn the train crew about a large piece of metal coming up through the floor, instead of pulling the emergency brake himself. The train manager refused to stop the train until he had investigated the problem himself, saying this was company policy. This decision was upheld in court, absolving the train manager of all charges.
Maintenance
About the time of the disaster, the engineers at Deutsche Bahn's maintenance facility in Munich used only standard flashlights for visual inspection of the tires, instead of metal fatigue detection equipment.[2]Previously, advanced testing machines had been used; however, as the equipment generated many false positive error messages, it was considered unreliable and its use was discontinued. During the week prior to the Eschede disaster, three separate automated checks indicated that a wheel was defective. Investigators discovered, from a maintenance report generated by the train's on-board computer, that two months prior to the Eschede disaster, conductors and other train staff filed eight separate complaints about the noises and vibrations generated from the bogie with the defective wheel; the company did not replace the wheel. Deutsche Bahn said that its inspections were proper at the time and that the engineers could not have predicted the wheel fracture.[1]
Other factors
The design of the overbridge may have also contributed to the accident because it had two thin piers holding up the bridge on either side, instead of the spans going from solid abutments to solid abutments. The Granville train disaster of 1977 had a similar weakness in its bridge. The bridge built after the disaster is a cantilevered design and does not have this vulnerability.
Another contributing factor is the use of welds in the carriage bodies that "unzipped" during the crash (seeModern Railways December 2004, p16).
Consequences
Memorial with the names of the victims
Legal
Immediately after the accident, Deutsche Bahn paid 30,000 Deutsche Marks (about 19,000 United States dollars) for each fatality to the applicable families. At a later time Deutsche Bahn settled with some victims. Deutsche Bahn stated that it paid an equivalent of more than 30 million U.S. dollars to the families of victims and survivors.[1]
During August 2002, two Deutsche Bahn officials and one engineer were charged with manslaughter. The trial lasted 53 days with expert witnesses from around the world testifying for both sides.
The case ended in a plea bargain in April 2003. According to the German code of criminal procedures, if the defendant has not been found to bear substantial guilt, and if the state attorney and the defendant agree, the defendant may pay a fine and the criminal proceedings are dismissed with prejudice and without a verdict. Each engineer paid 10,000 euros (around 12,000 USD).[1]
[edit] Technical
Within weeks, all wheels of similar design were replaced with monoblock wheels. The entire German railway network was checked for similar arrangements of switches close to possible obstacles.
Rescue workers at the crash site experienced considerable difficulties in cutting their way through the train to gain access to the victims. Both the aluminium framework and the pressure-proof windows offered unexpected resistance to rescue equipment. As a result, all trains were refitted with windows that have predetermined breaking seams.
Legacy
Udo Bauch, a survivor who became disabled by the accident, built his own memorial with his own money. Bauch said that the chapel received 5,000 to 6,000 visitors per year. One year after Bauch's memorial was built, an official memorial, funded partly by Deutsche Bahn, was established.[1]
See also
- Metal fatigue
- List of rail disasters
- 2006 Lathen maglev train accident – high speed crash in Germany
- Granville rail disaster - a similar accident in Australia, 1977
- National Geographic Seconds From Disaster episodes
References
- The Eschede Reports
- ICE Train Accident in Eschede – Recent News Summary
- Official Eschede Website showing memorial (German)
- Private Eschede Website (German)
Numbered References
Further reading
- O'Connor, Bryan, (NASA), "Eschede Train Disaster", Leadership ViTS Meeting, May 7, 2007
External links
 | Wikimedia Commons has media related to: DBAG Class 401/Eschede train disaster |
- The ICE/ICT pages
- Eschede – Zug 884, a German documentary film about the disaster by Raymond Ley (2008, 90 minutes).
- "Das ICE-Unglück von Eschede" ("The ICE accident in Eschede") (German)
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