The Cost of Comfort: The Eschede Train Disaster 1998 | Plainly Difficult Documentary

Comments · 1.6K

• PL

  @PlainlyDifficult · 3 years ago · pinned

  Any other railway suggestions let me know!! <br><br>This weeks outro video: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8GMl6aQC-g">https://youtu.be/k8GMl6aQC-g</a>

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• HA

  @hartmutholzgraefe · 3 years ago

  I was on another ICE the very same day, cellphones were not really a thing back then, neither was WLAN, so only when I returned home the next day I learned about the accident, and was greeted by an answering machine that had reached its call limit as everyone wanted to know whether I was fine ...

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• PE

  @peischtipeir · 3 years ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob6mQM6Ul7M&amp;t=872">14:32</a> you mentioned a core aspect of neglegance briefly, I feel like this should be stressed more: after the trams were discovered to have unexpectedly high wear, the ICE wheels were inspected by ultrasonic devices. They detected microscopic cracks (caused by fatigue) left right and center, after which management decided the method was unreliable and went back to visual inspections (which obviously didn&apos;t spot the microscopic cracks). There were no false positivs!

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• AL

  @AldanFerrox · 3 years ago (edited)

  I actually was inside of the salvaged cars from the crash. They were stored at a military base near my hometown (which is about 40km from Eschede), and when I was in the military, I got the chance to look inside of them (that was in 2005). They were still in the same condition as they were when they had been placed there for safe keeping, and it was very a eerie sight. Dust and splintered glass and ceramic everywhere, old bleached out magazines and other things made from paper, but also dried out blood and other liquids that I couldn&apos;t identify (I wore PPE, though). And even some luggage was still lying around. It was pretty scary to see all this in front of me, despite knowing I wasn&apos;t in any kind of danger at this moment. Some time later, after the base had been closed, the cars were send to the scrapyard, although one of them is still conserved at a German university as a object for research.

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• VE

  @veritastrix · 3 years ago

  One thing to note: The train yards were significantly understaffed, resulting in non-essential repairs not being executed. Thus, there was a lot of pressure to report damage to the wheels as &quot;not-so-bad&quot;. Greed for higher profit margins in the newly-privatized Deutsche Bahn resulted in the death of 101 people and not a single person responsible for this was punished. Huge black pill for many Germans.

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• 19

  @1990Judson · 3 years ago

  An incredible sad day that could have been much worse. <br>According to the time tables at that point that ICE and the ICE in the other direction were supposed to pass each other. The other ICE ran a minute early and this one a minute late so they passed each other a few kilometers up the line. With a litte difference in the timing we could have had another train barreling into the crash site with 200+ km/h.

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• LI

  @lilywho-onrails · 3 years ago (edited)

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob6mQM6Ul7M&amp;t=580">9:40</a> One Important and tragic detail that I remember from a book I once read is, passengers had actually alerted the train personnel to the car being rather unsteady while cruising, several times, and everyone had been told not to worry. So it had been noticed that something was wrong even before the tyre penetrated the passenger compartment.

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• DE

  @DeputatKaktus · 3 years ago

  A friend of mine was one of the first responders on site. Once he shared some of the experiences he had during those days. I genuinely do not want to share those here because it is beyond harrowing. I well up just thinking about it. He and a bunch of other people have had extensive therapy after that. Not everyone of them is around today because they could not take it anymore. According to him, there are two polar opposites of people when it comes to coping afterwards. The one type has seen their fair share of bad stuff and they have also seen how quickly things can be over. They are better at rationalizing things. On the other side of the spectrum you have often younger, less experienced people who - in grossly oversimplified terms - think they are invulnerable &quot;save the day&quot; superheroes. The latter type is the one who tends to fall into a deep hole afterwards. They suddenly have their whole world view upended and called into question, faced with the stark realization that they are neither invulnerable nor superheroes. The often cannot cope with the fact that sometimes, through no fault of their own, they just cannot save the day. And this often leads those characters into very, very dark places from which some never return.

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• DF

  @DFDelta · 3 years ago

  I was twelve when this happened. My homeroom teacher was supposed to be on that train, had a seat reservation and everything.<br>She was spending a week with some friends from her university days. According to her they partied late into the night, and she overslept hard, waking up at 1 pm. She heard about the train from the hotel worker when she made a self-deprecating joke about being stupid and missing her 10am train while she was checking out.

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• HA

  @Happymali10 · 3 years ago

  There&apos;s a great documentary by German tv-station NDR called &quot;Die Narbe: Eschede&quot; (&quot;The scar: Eschede&quot;) where they visited the site and survivors over 20 years onwards and it shows how deeply affected both responders, witnesses and survivors still are. Like one firefighter who still has the dirty, bloodied jacket in his shed. He says he can&apos;t have it in his home, can&apos;t wear it, but he also can&apos;t get himself to throw it out or wash it. I watched it when writing an article on the accident, and it&apos;s really interesting showing a side of such tragedies that&apos;s often forgotten.<br><br>I visited the memorial this year, and to say it&apos;s an eerie atmosphere is a WILD understatement.

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• AD

  @adamstormont2953 · 3 years ago

  This disaster received a lot of coverage in Australia because it shares similarities with our worst rail disaster. On 18 January 1977, an interurban train comprising an electric locomotive and 8 steel-framed, wooden-bodied passenger carriages travelling at 80km/h derailed at Granville in Sydney’s western suburbs. The train demolished a stanchion supporting the overhead wires which tore open the first passenger carriage. It also demolished the piers of the adjacent road bridge, which subsequently collapsed on the third and fourth passenger carriages. 84 people were killed and more than 200 people were injured. The primary cause was poor track maintenance due to years of underfunding.

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• CO

  @CompleteRobot · 3 years ago

  I&apos;m studying safety engineering in Germany, and this incident is one of the main case examples for civil protection classes; as tragic as it is with the ~100 deaths it was still insightful into what structures worked and what needs to be improbed.<br>One other thing worth pointing out is that the conductor did not realise he lost the train cars until the switchstation in Eschede informed him about the missing train carts.

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