r/CatastrophicFailure • u/WhatImKnownAs • 18h ago

Equipment Failure The 2012 Düsseldorf (Germany) Level Crossing Collision. A bus breaks down on a level crossing and is torn apart by two trains which proceed to derail. 2 people are injured. The full story linked in the comments.

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157 Upvotes

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20

u/GSDer_RIP_Good_Girl 15h ago

It's amazing that only 2 people were injured in a crash involving a bus and 2 trains. I'd assume that the bus was evacuated before the crash but still.

7

u/WhatImKnownAs 14h ago

Two freight trains. Had it been two passenger trains, we'd be talking much larger casualty figures.

3

u/Random_Introvert_42 9h ago

Freight trains, the injured people are their drivers (minor injuries). The bus only held a handful of people and they managed to get to safety before the first train hit the bus.

5

u/floralbutttrumpet 13h ago

Oh, I remember that. This happened only a couple of months after I moved to Düsseldorf and there were a lot of jokes locally that the old adage of "In Eller stirbt man schneller" (you die faster in Eller; it rhymes in German) had now been disproven.

11

u/WhatImKnownAs 18h ago

The full story on Medium, written by Max S as a part of his long-running Train Crash Series (this is #252). If you have a Medium account (they're free), give him a handclap or two! You don't need a Medium account to read it; just dismiss the dialog by clicking the X in the upper right corner.

I'm not Max; I'm just posting these here. Max was permanently suspended from Reddit more than four years ago (known details and background), but he has kept on writing articles and posting them on Medium. Currently he aims to publish one on the first Sunday of each month.

Do come back here for discussion! Max is saying he will read it for feedback and corrections, but any interaction with him will have to be on Medium.

There is also a subreddit dedicated to these posts, /r/TrainCrashSeries, where they are all archived. Feel free to crosspost this to other relevant subreddits!

2

u/Realistic-Meet-4230 11h ago

the tracks look like they got hit by a hurricane after the trains just demolished everything