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emergency services near the scene of the accident
Photo: Matthias Balk / picture alliance / dpa
The collision happened around 4:35 p.m.
Two S-Bahn trains collided head-on near the Ebenhausen-Schäftlarn station in the Munich district.
The terrible result a few hours later: one dead, 18 injured in the hospital, some of them seriously injured, as a spokesman for the Munich police headquarters announced in the evening.
Around 95 people were on board the two trains.
According to the police, more than 200 helpers from rescue services, the police and the fire brigade were on site.
Injured were flown to clinics with rescue helicopters.
Police expect the route to remain closed for at least several hours.
The B11 federal road leading past was also closed after the accident.
A police spokesman said in the early evening that one of the trains had probably derailed, but both trains were still standing.
The "Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR)" reported that one of the S-Bahn trains involved in the collision had been lifted off the track bed by the impact of the trains.
A crane would now steady the car so it wouldn't slide down an embankment.
The fire brigade confirmed that they had also been used with heavy equipment.
She had to help several people off the train and free a trapped man.
Most of the passengers were taken to the Schäftlarn monastery for further care.
Not the first incident on the route
There was conflicting information about the identity of the dead man.
Individual media had reported that it was one of the two engine drivers.
The German press agency, however, reported in the evening, citing the fire brigade, that the deceased was a passenger.
The background to the accident is still unclear.
According to the police, the route is single track at the site of the collision.
Why did both trains run in opposite directions at the same time?
How fast were they going?
Neither the police nor the railways wanted to comment on the possible cause of the accident or details of the collision on Thursday evening.
"The investigation is still ongoing," said the police spokesman.
It is not the first dangerous incident on the route between Munich and Wolfratshausen in Upper Bavaria
in the south of the state capital.
In August last year, two S-Bahn trains ran into each other several kilometers from the current accident site on the single-track route.
That evening, however, both train drivers were able to react in time and slow down their trains.
Both S-Bahn trains were relatively slow at the time, stopping about 150 meters apart.
When asked by SPIEGEL on Monday, a spokesman for Deutsche Bahn did not want to comment on what the subsequent investigations into the cause at the time revealed.
One thing is clear: in recent years, accidents have repeatedly occurred on single-track lines.
In 2016, two trains crashed into each other near Bad Aibling in Bavaria, killing twelve people.
A dispatcher had played with the mobile phone and had distracted it from giving false signals.
He was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for involuntary manslaughter and was released two-thirds of the time.
»It is shocking when you see the forces at work«
“Of course, it's not yet possible to say how the current accident happened.
But single-track routes are a key risk factor for accidents," Lukas Iffländer, deputy national chairman of the Pro Bahn passenger association, told SPIEGEL.
On double-track routes, technical errors or human error would not lead to accidents as easily, “because the trains usually run on different tracks”.
Nevertheless, there are still far too many single-track rail connections in Bavaria, for example.
"At least in the S-Bahn area, we urgently need double-track routes everywhere, if only for reasons of capacity." Politics is needed here.
In the evening, Bavaria's Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) also commented on Twitter about the train disaster: "We mourn with the relatives and wish all those injured in the S-Bahn accident a speedy recovery." Söder added: "Thanks to all the rescue workers for their rapid deployment.«
Transport Minister Kerstin Schreyer (CSU) drove to the scene of the accident.
"It's shocking when you see (...) what kind of forces are at work," she said.
In the "BR" she explained whether there was a connection with the near-collision last August, "we don't know today".
