Investigators said last night it could take weeks to establish the precise cause of the German train crash. Serious doubts were being cast on theory that a car had fallen onto the tracks from a bridge. Investigators said the car may have been flicked onto the track by the accident - rather than causing it.
They were puzzled as to why the engine and the front carriages of the train escaped the crash with only the rear carriages crashing into the pillars of the bridge.
The inter-city express was travelling from Munich to Hamburg at 200 km per hour (125 m. p. h.) when it hit the bridge near the town of Celle at about 11 a.m.
Rescue workers from the Red Cross were joined by the army and the air force to create an emergency team numbering more than 1,200 people. Local hospitals were soon overwhelmed by the number of injuries to be treated and casualties were taken by the air ambulance to hospitals throughout northern Germany. The Red Cross appealed to donors of all blood types to come forward.
The crash was the first serious accident in Germany involving an inter-city express train. The train, 410 metres long, was capable of carrying 759 passengers. But it was still not clear last night how many people were on board at the time of the accident.
Sleek, white and very fast, the express is the Concorde of German rail travel. Passengers pay premium rates for its comfortable seats, personal TV screens and multi-channel audio entertainment.
The crash will almost certainly unleash a wave of soul searching in Germany, a nation in love with train travel. But most attention was focused last night on the rescue efforts which was still attempting to uncover the last two carriages from the rubble. Many victims have yet to be identified and of the estimated 300 injured survivors up to 50 were in a critical condition last night.
Despite this, the train, part of a 104-strong fleet of high-tech aerodynamic trains, is considered to be the safest train in Germany.
"There had been no accidents in which passengers were hurt of killed before Wednesday's fatal crash," said Mr Hartmut Sommer, a spokesman for German Railways. "The train is considered to be the safest in Germany."
The high-speed inter-city trains have dramatically cut travel times and lured travellers away from airplanes and roads in Germany. Rail travel is up 35 per cent and plane travel is down 10 per cent on competing routes. The high-speed train only needs five hours and 40 minutes to travel the 823 km between Hamburg and Munich, the journey undertaken by the train before it crashed.
All seats have headphones providing music and some have video screens. Passengers can make and receive telephone calls or use computerised information terminals in each carriage. The trains are also equipped with a conference centre, restaurant and bar. Each of the high-speed trains cost 50 million marks.
The crash is the worst in Germany since the second World War. In June 1945, 102 people died in a train crash in Assling, south of Munich, when an American troop transport train crashed into a train carrying German war prisoners.
In July 1967, 77 people including 44 children, died in a train collision near the eastern town of Magdeburg. In May 1971, 41 people died in a collision between passenger and goods trains near Radevormwald in the Ruhr area. The same number were killed in July 1975 when two express trains collided near the Southern German town of Warngau in Bavaria.
Other fatal train crashes in Germany in the last 10 years include:
July 5th, 1997 - Six people were killed and 15 injured after the side of a passenger train was ripped open by a passing freight train near Frankfurt.
October 16th, 1995 - One person was killed and 16 people injured when and intercity train and a local train collided head-on near the eastern city of Zwickau.
September 29th, 1994 - Six people were killed and 60 injured after a head-on collision between two trains near the northern city of Hamburh.
November 15th, 1992 - Ten people were killed and around 52 injured after a passenger train smashed into a derailed freight wagon at Northeim on the main north-south line between Frankfurt and Hamburg.
July 27th, 1991 - Three people were killed and 21 injured after a collision between a freight train and a passenger train in the Dresden to Cologne line.
