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Accident locomotives at the accident site in Wolfsburg: "No local fire brigade can do that"
Photo: Moritz Frankenberg / dpa
Rail travelers on the Berlin-Hanover route have to allow for a delay of 50 to 70 minutes.
After the collision of two locomotives in Wolfsburg, one of the main lines of the railway is closed.
Long-distance trains are diverted and stop in Braunschweig instead of Wolfsburg, as a railway spokeswoman said.
Deutsche Bahn expects that the rescue work and the delays of the long-distance trains will last all Thursday.
Trains were also delayed in regional and local traffic.
The ENNO trains ran between Wolfsburg and Hildesheim with a delay of around 20 minutes.
On Wednesday evening, a locomotive collided with the locomotive of a freight train at Fallersleben station in Wolfsburg, as a spokesman for the federal police said.
No one was injured.
It is assumed that the recovery of the locomotives will take until after Easter.
Elaborate clean-up work
Deutsche Bahn, responsible for the clean-up work, did not want to make a concrete forecast on Thursday about the duration of the line closure.
The federal police are expecting a high six-figure damage amount.
Whether a technical defect or a human error was the cause of the accident is determined.
One locomotive derailed after the collision, the other remained crooked on the rails.
The clean-up work is time-consuming.
The vehicles would have to be lifted and recovered with a special crane that had to be brought on rails.
"No local fire brigade can do that," said the federal police spokesman.
To rescue the locomotives, the overhead lines would also have to be moved aside and the electricity switched off.
The accident occurred between two coupled electric locomotives and a freight train, as it was said.
They drove in parallel until one of the locomotives rammed into the side of the freight train's locomotive.
A switch was probably set incorrectly, said the federal police spokesman.
wit / dpa