Norwegian rail controllers tried to telephone two train drivers to tell them to halt before the collision that killed up to 33 people on Tuesday. But they had an incorrect list of numbers, and could not reach the drivers in time, according to a television report yesterday. Emergency workers had last night recovered 11 bodies from the burned out wreckage. They suspended work at nightfall and relatives and friends staged a memorial service and left flowers on the snow.
Officials said it was unclear why the two trains, carrying 100 people, were on the same track. They collided on a curve about 160 km north of Oslo.
Independent TV2 said rail controllers in the nearby town of Hamar realised the trains were on collision course and tried to call the drivers on mobile phones. But, quoting anonymous sources, the television station said the list of phone numbers was wrong.
Rescuers were powerless to help as screaming passengers burned to death in the wreckage, witnesses said yesterday.
"It was the worst moment of my life. We had to abandon people who were screaming in the carriages," said Mr Ola Sonderal, a member of one of the first ambulance crews to arrive at the scene in Aasta after the crash.
"My men saw unspeakable scenes. Some of them had tears in their eyes when after four hours of effort they brought a woman out alive," said one of the senior rescuers, Mr Steffen Solberg.
A 300-strong team of firefighters, civil protection officers and soldiers were searching through the still smoking wreckage yesterday.
The accident may prove to be Norway's worst rail crash, surpassing an 1975 accident in which 27 died further north on the same line.
"Whether there was a lack of clarity about [mobile phone] usage, and whether this had any significance for the accident is among the issues that will be investigated," the state railway network said in a statement.
Officials admit that mobile telephones are the only way to communicate with drivers along the line apart from signals. A more advanced warning system is due to be installed in the summer.
One of the trains was an express travelling from Trondheim, on Norway's west coast, south to Oslo. The other was a local train travelling north from the town of Hamar, one of the host towns for the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics, to Rena.
On the normal schedule, the northbound train waits four kilometres (2.5 miles) down the line at a crossing point.
Most of Norway's rail network is electrified, meaning that controllers can simply cut off power in an emergency. The trains in Tuesday's crash were both diesel powered.
Police say that 67 people of the 100 aboard the two trains survived the accident, some with severe burns, leaving 33 feared dead. Twenty-four were reported missing.
If the death toll is as high as 33 it would be worse than Europe's last big rail accident, in which 31 people died near London's Paddington station in October.
A catamaran ferry sprang a leak yesterday after hitting a floating object in the Ruane fjord but was able to make it into Bergen port. None of the 28 passengers and four crew were injured. "The vessel took on a lot of water, but despite everything it was able to disembark," a Bergen police spokesman said.