[Germany]ICE-3 on fire yesterday

[Motorman]

https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/pan ... perrt.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Nobody was hurt, all 520 passengers rescued. The ICE-line Cologne-Frankfurt/Main will be blocked at least until next Monday.
First reports confirm that a failure in a transformer underneath the secondlast coach has caused the incident.
The train consisted of two coupled sets,
<-------(M+C+M+C+C+M+C+M)-(M+C+M+C+C+M+Cfire broke out+Mbadly damaged)
M=Powered car/C=non powered Coach.

[David Benton]

wow , 520 passengers.
Thanks for the report link .

[Motorman]

Service will resume on Saturday.
But due to the extensive damage to the affected concrete-railbedding, some services will still be redirected or slowed down on the accident site.
Final examinations, considering the damage to the affected tracks, are underway. More repairs have to be made. The overhead is already in place again.

[ExCon90]

Motorman, thanks for keeping us up to date on this; European rail news doesn't get much coverage over here.

[ALR997]

Hi, thank you for this news from Germany (while I was abroad). Just in addition to your information: DB expects the re-introduction of the damaged rail in several weeks up to months, because the whole underground has to be cleaned and rebuilt. Due to the construction as a consecutive "roadway" it is not possible just to replace the damaged section but in worst case a section of many hundred metres.

Nevertheless: the other track is usuable, the lines 41 (Munich via Nuremberg) and 42/43 (Munich/Basel via Stuttgart/Karlsruhe) are running hourly services again on the "KRM", as well as a commuter-special-service between Montabaur and Frankfurt. Other trains and lines are cancelled or detoured. So better watch out for just-in-time-information if you want to travel in western Germany in the upcoming months.

Best regards from eastern Europe

[litz]

That was quite a fire ...

[David Benton]

Yes, a lot more damage than I expected. Perhaps they will need to consider this in future track design. I'm thinking more of fires other than train fires , which are fairly rare.

[litz]

well fire+heat+concrete does not end well; we learned that here in Atlanta with I-85.

I can well believe that there's damage to track structures, since it's apparently concrete ties.

Then you've got all the "stuff" from the firefighting that is now down in the ballast, and now you have substructure issues, too ...

Maybe ballast washouts from water flow as well.

Wonder what went wrong ...

[Motorman]

Good news:
Full service will resume on November, 18th.
https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/presse/ ... ar-3399388" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Investigations about the incident are still underway, it may take some months 'til the final results will be published.