Accidents
- 15 January 1917
- A train rear-ended another train that had stopped unexpectedly in front of it between Oberbarmen and Wupperfeld, causing the trailing car of the stopped train to fall off the track. There were two minor injuries. Subsequently, a safety device was developed to make derailments nearly impossible.
- 21 July 1950
- The Althoff Circus organised a publicity stunt by putting a baby elephant on the floating train at Alter Markt station. As the elephant started to bump around during the ride, she was pushed out of the car and fell into the river Wupper. The elephant, two journalists, and one passenger sustained minor injuries. After this jump, the elephant got the name Tuffi, meaning 'waterdive' in Italian. Both operator and circus director were fined after the incident.
- 11 September 1968
- A truck crashed into a pillar and caused a section of track to fall. There were no trains in the area at the time. This incident led to the use of concrete walls in pillar anchors.
- 25 March 1997
- A technical malfunction caused a rear-end collision in Oberbarmen station between a structure train and the Kaiserwagen. There were 14 injuries, but no derailment.
- 12 April 1999
- The only fatal accident of the Schwebebahn Wuppertal occurred close to Robert-Daum-Platz station during maintenance work in the early morning hours of 12 April 1999. Workers had forgotten to remove a metal claw from the track on completion of scheduled night work. The first eastbound train of the day hit the claw at a speed of around 50 km/h, derailed and fell about 10 metres into the river Wupper, killing 5 passengers and leaving 49 injured. The salvage operation took 3 days and nights to complete. 8 weeks after the accident the Schwebebahn returned to operation. The the cost of the damage was approximately 8 million Deutsche Mark.
- The judicial proceedings following the accident highlighted that the disaster was not caused by technical defects or system failure, but by negligence by workers having fallen behind in their schedule during the preceding night, and abandoning the work site hastily 10 minutes before the train departed from the depot. Contributing to the circumstances was a lack of control of their activities by site supervisors.
- The Works Manager in charge of safety and the workers dealing with the steel claw at the time were acquitted of all charges by the District Court of Wuppertal. The site supervision personnel, having neglected their duties of control, were sentenced for involuntary manslaughter in 5 cases and bodily injury caused by negligence in 37 cases, but let off on probation with verdict 4 StR 289/01 dated 31 January 2002.
- 5 August 2008
- The Schwebebahn collided with a crane truck making deliveries under the track, causing a 10-metre-long tear in the floor of one of the cars. The truck driver was seriously injured, and the train driver and some passengers were treated for shock.
Read more about this topic: Wuppertal Schwebebahn
Famous quotes containing the word accidents:
“We are the men of intrinsic value, who can strike our fortunes out of ourselves, whose worth is independent of accidents in life, or revolutions in government: we have heads to get money, and hearts to spend it.”
—George Farquhar (1678–1707)
“Depression moods lead, almost invariably, to accidents. But, when they occur, our mood changes again, since the accident shows we can draw the world in our wake, and that we still retain some degree of power even when our spirits are low. A series of accidents creates a positively light-hearted state, out of consideration for this strange power.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“The day-laborer is reckoned as standing at the foot of the social scale, yet he is saturated with the laws of the world. His measures are the hours; morning and night, solstice and equinox, geometry, astronomy, and all the lovely accidents of nature play through his mind.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)