Train accident at Voorschoten: the circumstances, the victims and the damage

Two trains collided with a rail crane belonging to construction company BAM near Voorschoten early on Tuesday morning. An NS double-decker with dozens of passengers derailed and ended up in the adjacent meadow. A BAM employee was killed in the accident and nineteen people were injured, several of them seriously. This is clear about the accident at the end of the afternoon

Circumstances

The accident took place just before half past four at night just south of Voorschoten station. Two trains, a freight train of rail transport company DB Cargo and a double-decker of NS collided with a so-called krol, a crane on wheels that is used for work on the track. The locomotive of the freight train was severely damaged. The freight train, on its way from sorting station Kijfhoek near Rotterdam to a steel company in Beverwijk, had 26 wagons and transported lime, not dangerous cargo, according to DB Cargo. The NS train with about fifty passengers derailed.

At the time of the accident, planned maintenance work was underway on the stretch. According to a ProRail spokesperson, it was “standard work”, such as checking the rails, sleepers and overhead lines. Two of the four tracks were therefore closed to train traffic, which was routed over the other two tracks. The work was in its final phase.

The rail crane was on a track that was not used, says ProRail. Nevertheless, the trains collided with it. During an inserted press conference, ProRail CEO John Foppen could not say which of the two trains hit the crane first. It is also not clear whether there were problems with the crane at the time of the collision.

Victims

A BAM employee was killed in the accident. ProRail says that it concerns the driver of the crane, but it is not known whether he was in the heat at the time of the collision. Nineteen passengers of the NS train were taken to five hospitals in the area. An unknown number of them were seriously injured. Three of them are still in intensive care on Tuesday afternoon. Their situation is described as “very serious, but stable.”

Other travelers were taken care of by local residents or arranged other transport themselves.

The NS driver was also injured, NS CEO Wouter Koolmees reported at the press conference. He is in hospital with broken bones. The conductors of the train, en route from Leiden to The Hague, are doing well “under circumstances”. The driver of the freight train escaped unhurt, a spokesperson for DB Cargo reports. Aftercare is arranged for the man.

Track supervision

Rail manager ProRail has a central center where it monitors rail safety day and night. No signals have been received at this Operational Control System Infra in Utrecht that could have prevented the accident, a spokesperson reports. There was also no understaffing at the time of the incident, which the service had to contend with more often last year. “If there had been understaffing, part of the train traffic would have been shut down,” says the ProRail spokesperson. “Safety comes first, this will not have played a role.”

Read alsoThis report from Voorschoten

To research

Various authorities are investigating the accident. The Dutch Safety Board immediately started work on this. In addition, the police, the Labor Inspectorate, the Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate and the Public Prosecution Service are investigating the circumstances and whether criminal offenses have been committed.

Consequences for rail traffic

Between The Hague and Leiden, no train traffic will be possible for days due to the “enormous” damage caused to the track by the accident. Train traffic between Leiden and Haarlem and Utrecht was resumed in the course of the afternoon.

Worst accident since 2012

The train accident at Voorschoten is the biggest since 2012, when a sprinter collided head-on with an intercity between Amsterdam Central and Sloterdijk. Some 190 people were injured, 20 of them seriously. A 68-year-old woman died of her injuries a day later.

By far the largest train disaster took place in 1962 at Harmelen. There, a slow train and an express train collided. Due to dense fog, the driver of the express train had missed a yellow signal, a sign to slow down. The two vehicles collided at full speed. The collision killed 93 people and injured 52 people.

With the cooperation of Titia Ketelaar

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