After the serious S-Bahn accident near Schäftlarn, the rescue of the two trains has begun.
The work takes place under difficult conditions.
Schäftlarn
– On Thursday, 10 a.m., the rescue of the two damaged S-Bahn trains in Ebenhausen began.
Under the most adverse conditions imaginable: it rains again and again, there are gusts of wind, which the extremely calm-looking operations manager from the railway emergency management, Werner Bögl, dismisses as "fans".
He has been on site with 20 people since 6 a.m., the railway is supported by special companies, also initially present in Poststraße above the railway line: the technical relief organization with 50 people headed by Andreas Frank.
At around 10:23 a.m. something is happening for everyone to see – a bogie, the base of one of the damaged engines, so to speak, is lifted by the 120-ton crane.
Then swings over the interlocking S-Bahn snouts, from which foam rubber swells, metal and plastic parts.
Now Bögl also takes two photos with his cell phone.
At this time, the expert has been on his feet for four and a half hours, twelve of his people are from the equipment train team, five are employees of the Steinhausen workshop.
S-Bahn accident near Schäftlarn: lengthy preparations for salvaging the trains
At around eight o'clock, a nine meter wide, 120 ton Schmidbauer crane was positioned on the B 11;
The contact wire of the overhead line had already been removed by railway specialists on Wednesday night, and an overhead line mast that had been damaged in the accident was removed.
During the course of Wednesday, the area around the damaged lanes had been cleared up, parts of the equipment had been thrown out of the lanes during the accident.
Also on Wednesday, half of the train, i.e. the rear four wagons of the train that had come from Munich, was towed to Munich with a diesel locomotive.
To the Steinhausen S-Bahn station.
S-Bahn accident near Schäftlarn: Stormy Thursday makes the conditions more difficult
The first major measure on this windy, rainy Thursday morning, which journalists are also allowed to watch, is to lift one of the two derailed bogies over the wagons onto the B 11.
A bogie weighs ten tons, and within a few minutes it can no longer be seen from Poststrasse.
Now, again with the help of the crane, the Zugspitze of the train, which had come from Munich, can be lifted back onto the second bogie that is still there.
At the same time, this first car also has to be lifted at the rear, where the bogie was also heaved out of the rails on impact.
The parties involved work until 12 noon to put the car back on the track.
The plan is then: to tow this S-Bahn with a diesel locomotive via Baierbrunn to Munich.
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S-Bahn accident near Schäftlarn: difficulties with the second train - removal on rails impossible
An S-Bahn train consists of ten bogies and 20 axles, carrying two vehicles with four cars each.
Total weight of both S-Bahn: 112 tons times four, they were built between 2000 and 2005.
According to Werner Bögl, what comes next will be tricky – namely the recovery of the second S-Bahn, the one that went from Ebenhausen towards Munich and crashed into the train standing in the curve at 57 kilometers per hour.
The front part, i.e. the fully pressed-in driver's cab including the adjoining first car, has to be disposed of on the road using a low-loader that is already waiting, a transport on rails: impossible.
To do this, the car must be separated from the rest of the train with a cutting torch.
What could be difficult, the train is compressed on one side, towards the embankment, pulled apart on the other side, "there's a lot of tension here," says even Bögl, who otherwise seems so calm.
Read here what happened in the seconds before the accident:
"Sch..., there's a train coming"
S-Bahn accident near Schäftlarn: Nobody knows how long the rescue will take
It is also not yet possible to estimate whether the 120-tonne crane alone will be able to lift the car.
In an emergency, a rail crane that came specially from Fulda is ready in Munich.
Its load capacity: 160 tons.
When it comes to lifting the 21 meter long, 21 tonne first car, the top power car, Bögl does not see any major difficulties.
Of course it has to hang horizontally, so it has to be well adjusted, which works with traverses on the crane.
The rest of the S-Bahn is then to be pulled to Ebenhausen with a two-way vehicle.
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Whether all this can still be done today, how far the work can be done, no one can say in the morning.
At some point it starts to rain, the wind whips the rain in the faces of the emergency services.
Pleasant working conditions look different.
S-Bahn accident near Schäftlarn: lengthy rescue work with some pitfalls
First of all, it's not time yet.
First of all, Bögl reports that this operation is special, but not the first of its kind. Something similar has already been done in Neufahrn at the airport, and in Munich, too, damaged S-Bahn trains have had to be salvaged in complicated manoeuvres.
Bögl estimates that the track body could be bent over a length of 200 meters.
Even he cannot say how long it will take to straighten the tracks or to carry out repairs to sleepers, ballast and overhead lines.
At 12 o'clock the preparations for putting the first car of the S-Bahn from Munich on its bogie are still going on.
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