Photo Gallery Sheep Derail High-Speed Train
A special crane was put in place on Monday to remove the cars from the Landrücken Tunnel, near Fulda in the state of Hesse.
The Intercity train was traveling at 220 kilometers per hour when it struck a herd of sheep, derailed, and slid for another kilometer before coming to rest in the tunnel.
Workers had to dismantle overhead cables and set salvage vehicles in motion before they could pull out the derailed cars.
The Landrücken Tunnel is 11 km (7 miles) long. The train itself, as well as the tunnel and rails, were damaged.
Shepherd Norbert W. has been threatened with legal action. But witnesses say an earlier train also ran over a sheep. It made an emergency stop, but wasn't damaged. Railway protocol says the oncoming engineer should have been warned.
Nineteen passengers were hurt, but no one killed (except for twenty sheep). All the passengers, though, were delayed.
It's still not clear how or why the herd breached an electric fence as well as a stream to congregate on the rails. "No sheep willingly walks through a tunnel," a representative for sheep farmers told Reuters on Monday.
