[Germany] Sheep in tunnel derail an ICE

In a 7-mile tunnel near Fulda, an ICE from Hamburg to Munich hit a herd of sheep. Four of the twelve cars derailed, and three people suffered injuries. One of many articles about this bizarre accident is here at Reuters:
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCr ... SL27139780
The URL of this link may change, so you may have to search in Google News.

Thanks for the link , still working at the moment .
I guess hitting 20 sheep in a confined space is enough to derail a train , its amazing how much damage a seemingly fragile animal can do .

bild.de now has both a Reuters video and several photos posted. One of the photos shows the damaged low nose of the ICE. Another photo shows sheepskins along the roadbed. Another shows rail damage.
----
Because this video and these photos appeared on bild.de, I suspect they will begin to show up on other German websites.
Joe

David Benton wrote:Thanks for the link , still working at the moment .
I guess hitting 20 sheep in a confined space is enough to derail a train , its amazing how much damage a seemingly fragile animal can do .

Has anything like this happened in NZ - a country with more sheep than people?

not at 120 mph , George !
Recently , a freight train hit a bull and derailed . i can remember seeing a railcar disabled by hitting a sheep , but it didnt derail . its amazing the amount of damage hitting animals can cause . the old steam trains had sheep catchers , but the more modern diesels seem to be abit vulnerable .
i remember been on the night bus from Darwin to Brisbane , and the shock through the whole bus as we hit kangaroos on the road . unfortunately a common occurance .
according to a mechanic i was talking too , the worst animal to hit in a car is a pig , they are very solid , and go under the car , usually writing off the chassis .

In Thurigia (between Arnstadt and Ilmenau) after the tunnel-sheep incident, a Regionalzug slaughtered a herd of reindeer.
http://de.reuters.com/article/domesticN ... 7920080429
----
A video of the clean-up of the reindeer accident is available now on the site of an Augsburg newspaper:
http://www.augsburger-allgemeine.de/Hom ... ,4288.html
A Frankfurt newspaper has a photo here:
http://www.faz.net/s/RubB08CD9E6B087466 ... ntent.html
Joe

thanks for the links . i presume you can read german , is there any outrage form the animal rights groups etc . i would say those peictures o dead raindeer would be fairly upsetting to many .

One thing about the sheep incident btw: The police is investigating two things in that regard - one being the shepherd who claims that the herd basically ran away and sought shelter in the tunnel. The grazing area of that herd is fenced off on three sides, and has a small creek on the fourth side. Police is investigating whether a dog or similar was interfering with the animals, chasing them out of their patch and into the tunnel.

The other investigation is into that apparently a ICE going in the other direction hit a (single) sheep in the tunnel a few minutes earlier. Driver checked for damage and reported the incident. However, the "message" never made it to the train that derailed five minutes later.

As for the second incident with the RB train... uh, not reindeer. It smashed into a herd of cattle ("Rinder") that had broken out of their fenced-off area, were walking down the tracks as sort of a convenient path, and were hit by the train coming around a curve at only 80 km/h. Out of 27 animals, 13 were killed by the train, 5 injured animals later put out of their misery by police, the other 9 survived unharmed.

There haven't been any outcries really - a few calls for highspeed lines to be fenced off, but that's it.
You can't realistically fence off tens of thousands of km of rail lines all over Germany. For wild animals, "green bridges" are being increasingly built (as part of common animal wandering trails, which also include forrested corridors between habitats), in particular across highspeed lines and highways.

David Benton wrote:Thanks for the link , still working at the moment .
I guess hitting 20 sheep in a confined space is enough to derail a train , its amazing how much damage a seemingly fragile animal can do .

If the train is a german first or second generation ICE: yes!
I dont think that a TGV or a Shinkansen would derail in such a situation.

But first and second generation ICEs are bad constructions: Too heavy, too weak and please put no sheeps in his way...

They should be pulled out of high speed traffic as fast as possible. Maybe they can be used as ordinary InterCity trains with speeds between 140 and 200km/h.

Thomas I wrote:Maybe they can be used as ordinary InterCity trains with speeds between 140 and 200km/h.

Doubt that, as DB wants to slowly exterminate the entire InterCity system starting in 2015, replacing them with ICE connections.
Starting in 2018, between 80 and 120 new ICE trains are supposed to be procured. There are currently around 110 ICE 1 and ICE 2 sets, the modern EMU ICEs number around 140 units (plus around 20 DMUs).

kato wrote:

Thomas I wrote:Maybe they can be used as ordinary InterCity trains with speeds between 140 and 200km/h.

Doubt that, as DB wants to slowly exterminate the entire InterCity system starting in 2015, replacing them with ICE connections.
Starting in 2018, between 80 and 120 new ICE trains are supposed to be procured. There are currently around 110 ICE 1 and ICE 2 sets, the modern EMU ICEs number around 140 units (plus around 20 DMUs).

Not really. But they want to buy an EMU which can be used for slower ICEs as well as for InterCities.

The DB has made an advertisement in the EU Official Journal for EMUs. There are rumours that Alstom and Siemens have made offers which where too expensive in the eyes of DB.

Possible DB will consider her idea of the all purpose EMU...

I miss the TEE Rheingold (Both the Diesel sets and the standard streamlined cars sets!)

On a serious note, I'm glad few were hurt in either accident. I was on Amtrak 3 one time when Billy and Bobby decided to shortcut across the tracks, and stuck their pickup on the tracks. P-42 is a pretty good crushing machine.