Great Western Coffee Shop

Emergency workers found another body under the rubble of a train that derailed in southern Germany on Friday, bringing the total number of deaths to five.

Rescuers continued looking for survivors this morning following the disaster in the picturesque mountainous region north of Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria.

A regional train travelling from the Alpine ski resort to Munich spun off the tracks, causing at least three carriages to overturn.

Authorities said five people are confirmed dead and 44 are hurt, including three passengers who are being treated in hospital for serious injuries.

A police spokesperson said a major operation to free people from the wreckage had been completed.

‘As far as we can tell, all the people have been rescued from the train,’ the spokesperson said, adding that removing the overturned wagons would ‘certainly take a few days.’

On Saturday, however, Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said it was possible that there could still be bodies trapped underneath the rubble, saying some seven people were still unaccounted for.

Around 140 people were on board when the accident happened.

After several failed attempts, cranes succeeded on Saturday in hoisting at least one carriage of the train which had rolled off the tracks.

Prosecutors have launched an investigation into the cause of the incident...

German railway company Deutsche Bahn (DB) is set to complete an inspection of concrete sleepers in its rail network by the end of the month.

DB experts have been testing around 200,000 sleepers across the country since July, with repairs expected to cost several hundred million euros.

The work is being carried out as a precaution following an accident near Garmisch-Partenkirchen on 3 June. Five people were killed and 68 injured when a regional train derailed on the Garmisch-Partenkirchen - Oberau line in southern Germany.

Although the investigations into the accident have not yet been completed, DB has decided to investigate sleepers across the network. The first preliminary findings from technical reports by independent testing institutes now suggest that there is a manufacturer error.

Developing Story with the enquiry into this, widespread (200,000) sleeper inspections across the DB network in progress, construction fault suspected.

More (Use Google Translate)  ....

https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/zugunglueck-burgrain-betonschwellen-hersteller-gibt-sich-bedeckt,TFD7zss

spun off the tracks

I can understand a car spinning off the road due to ice or water, but how does a train spin of the tracks?
Or just more journalese?

DB to replace 137,000 sleepers, rail traffic in Germany at stake again
Published on 07-09-2022 at 10:30

Following a manufacturing error in thousands of concrete sleepers across the German railway network, Deutsche Bahn is now on a mission to replace them. Specifically, the German company will need to replace around 137,000 sleepers in 225 locations around the country. Works have already been completed in 70 locations, with 155 remaining and possible traffic disruptions on the way.

The manufacturing error on the concrete sleepers was uncovered in the wake of the 3 June derailment near Garmisch-Partenkirchen that left five people dead and dozens injured. Independent testing institutes joined DB to investigate the derailment, subsequently uncovering that there might be a manufacturing error with the sleepers used at the derailment site.

As a result, DB had to identify where else those concrete sleepers had been used. It soon put traffic restrictions in 165 locations across Germany, but mainly in Bavaria, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. Works to replace sleepers in the remaining 155 locations commenced on 6 September.

‘The prestressed concrete sleepers laid at the site [of the derailment] showed signs of damage indicating a loss of tension within the sleeper. This led to a failure of the structure and to the breaking away of the rail support in the direction of the initiated forces’, the interim report concluded.

On the previous day DB had issued a statement noting that further investigations into the accident remained in progress and that a definitive cause had yet to be determined.

In addition to the inquiries in progress by the Federal Bureau for Investigation of Railway Accidents and the public prosecutor’s office, DB has commissioned an independent internal investigation from a law firm. This is intended to determine whether the accident is related to ‘possible internal failures’.

DB said that under its programme of preventive sleeper replacement following the accident, as many as 480 000 sleepers were being replaced this year. This compares with around 80 000 in a normal year. The replacement work followed an urgent inspection of sites across the network where identical sleepers had been laid.

The programme meant that 400 worksites were in place across the network, leading to inevitable delays for passengers and freight customers. Sleeper replacement work would continue ‘at least into next year’, DB warned.

It's reported in Railway Gazette (https://www.railwaygazette.com/infrastructure/interim-report-finds-faulty-sleepers-caused-garmisch-derailment/64391.article) that an interim report (published on June 1 by the Federal Bureau for Investigation of Railway Accidents) has confirmed those sleepers as causing the accident:

I guess, given the mention of a law firm, that those "internal failures" are human or organisational ones in the procurement area, rather than structural ones inside the sleepers.