No Radio, No Hope: The 1988 Horka Train Collision.
By: Max S
Tags: Accident, Germany, Railways, History, Technology

Aftermath

Two truck drivers happen to pass over the track on a bridge just seconds after the collision, only a few meters away. They drive off to find a telephone to call for help, the dispatchers on both sides do the same thing. Several fire departments head into the woods to help, as well as forest workers and emergency trains from Germany and Poland. Cutting the mangled passenger cars open 4 people can be pulled from the wreckage alive, 2 Germans and two Polish citizens. The crane brought in by the DR finds itself unable to pull the wreckage apart, later in the day a nearby officers school sends an armored recovery vehicle (think of a tank, but with a crane or winch instead of a large gun) is brought in and the wreckage can be pulled apart at last. At the time the accident is largely kept quiet in the media, the railway line is back to normal operation within a week while investigators go looking for the cause.

It’s clear that the Polish train was at fault, it evidently ran a red signal. But with the driver dead and there being no data-logging at the time it can never be clarified why he did so. In 1990 the investigation ends without a definitive cause named. Examining the freight cars showed that the pneumatic brake system was damaged, but on paper the train should’ve still had enough braking power to stop at the signal, or maybe slightly past it (but in safety). In the end the report lists two causes, the initial one being that the freight train ran a red signal and a secondary cause being the absence of a radio-system to warn the drivers. Unofficially it’s rumored that in 1988 the DDR wasn’t doing too well already, so money that could’ve gone into installing radios in the DR’s locomotives was spent elsewhere instead. A few years later radios became mandatory for trains in Germany, and nowadays the “Indusi”-System which can stop a train after running a red signal is found all over Germany also. With that, there cannot be a repeat of the events.

Responders working on cutting the wreckage apart for removal.

The Węgliniec–Roßlau railway, returned to double-track status and electrified in 2001 is still an important freight-route for trains headed to and from eastern Europe today, while passenger service (which was halted between 2002 and 2018) plays a very minor role. Trains carrying railway employees stop in 1998, since then employees have to take regular passenger trains or, if there is no connection, go by car.

The Polish ST43 is retired in 2019 due to a lack of spare parts. Towards the end the thirsty, loud locomotives were obsolete due to advancing electrification of freight routes.

After German reunification the DDR’s V100 is essentially obsolete, and most are retired starting in 1992. Today only a handful of the 1146 locomotives are still in existence, except for one in a museum (pictured further up) all of them are in private hands and have been modernized.

A refurbished and upgraded V100 pulling a construction train in Germany in December 2020.

_______________________________________________________________

Join the discussion about this post on Reddit!