Ghost Rider Train Courses through Germany without Driver
Germany's national railway has not had a good year. First, a July derailment in Cologne raised questions about the safety of a new generation of high-speed ICE trains. Tiny cracks were found in an axle of the derailed train -- leading to time-consuming checks of the entire fleet and resulting in massive delays and train cancellations this autumn.
Then, in October, Deutsche Bahn cancelled its long-awaited initial public offering in light of the financial crisis and resulting stock market crash. Last week, German rail even ceased looking for investors, essentially admitting that any IPO won't come until at least 2010. Deutsche Bahn has had to come up with a completely new financial plan for the period of 2009 to 2013 as a result.
But getting rid of train drivers? On Tuesday, Deutsche Bahn confirmed a report in the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung that a regional train travelled for 40 kilometers (25 miles) through the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt, crossing a number of roads, before finally coming to a halt. There were no passengers on board, but neither was there a driver or any other train personnel.
Deutsche Bahn said that it had launched an investigation into how and why the train's locomotive set itself in motion early on Monday morning. On those roads with modern railroad crossings, gates dropped automatically when the train passed, preventing cars and pedestrians from harm.
It's not the first such instance in the recent past. Just over a year ago, an empty train car in Bavaria travelled for 20 kilometers by itself before it could be stopped. No one was injured in that incident, either. More recently, in mid-November, a coal-laden freight train with 31 cars rolled for five kilometers by itself after its brakes failed. It only came to a stop when it crashed into a warehouse. The two drivers were slightly injured when they jumped out of the locomotive prior to impact.
