Switzerland's worst railway accident
Not far from the ITJ headquarters in Basel is the site where, 130 years ago today, on 14 June 1891, Switzerland's worst train accident in terms of casualties (73 dead and 171 injured) occurred. A bridge designed in 1875 by the French engineer Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923) over the river Birs near Münchenstein collapsed while a 300 t train was passing over it.
The two locomotives, three goods wagons and four passenger carriages fell into the flooded river. Five passenger wagons remained unharmed on the track, while a sixth got stuck at the bridge head and was torn apart. The bridge had been damaged in a flood ten years earlier.
Investigations into the disaster, which was carried out by Empa's predecessor founded in 1890, met with an international response and placed most of the blame on the railway operator, the Jura-Simplon Company, which led to the nationalisation of the Swiss railways some ten years later.
Eiffel, who was already under pressure due to the bankruptcy of the Panama Company in 1889, was also found to be partly to blame, and he largely withdrew from his company's business after that. (ah)