Passengers describe German maglev crash to police

Sep 25, 2006, 17:53 GMT

Lathen, Germany - Passengers who survived last week's crash of a futuristic German train that hovers on a magnetic field have described the last seconds before it slammed into a track maintenance vehicle, a prosecutor said Monday.

However Alexander Retemeyer said the testimony would not be published until all 10 survivors had been interviewed.

Prosecutors said earlier that the Friday crash of the Transrapid train on its test track near Lathen, north-west Germany with the loss of 23 lives appeared to have been caused by a blunder of supervisors.

Retemeyer said recordings of radio traffic before the crash were indistinct and still being studied. Video recordings from a camera in the train's cockpit, where a driver only seized manual control of the computerized train at the last minute, were also being analysed.

At the crash site, an elevated concrete track, engineers were meanwhile checking if there was a danger of the trestles collapsing. Forensic tests on the shattered TR08 train have almost finished.

Amid calls from the environmentalist Green party to terminate the project, Transport Ministry spokesman Dirk Inger said in Berlin a parliamentary committee would be briefed Wednesday about the crash and the future of the technology, under development for 30 years.

A German economist and expert on transport, Gerd Aberle, said the test loop had had an 'antiquated' approach to safety, with only drivers in sole charge. Controversy after the disaster would probably prove 'fatal' to the magnetic-levitation (maglev) technology.

Speaking to Germany's WDR television, the University of Giessen professor said he would have assumed the track had had sensors to shut down operations if anything blocked the line, but it did not.

'People may reach conclusions that could spell the end of the Transrapid.'

The manufacturer of the train, a consortium of Siemens and ThyssenKrupp, said it would complete the TR09, a replacement for the smashed prototype, in April next year and deliver it to the test track. It would meet 'all' safety standards.