At least one person — a construction worker laboring on the tracks — was killed in a nasty derailment, above, in the village of Voorschoten in the Netherlands at 3:25 a.m. April 4. The double-decker intercity train carrying over 50 passengers ran into a construction crane involved in track work. At least 30 others were injured.
Eleven were cared for by local residents while the rest were taken to hospitals. That train’s engineer was hospitalized with broken bones.
“We have no idea how the crane got on the track that was still open for traffic,” John Voppen, chief executive of the government’s ProRail management, told a press conference. A freight train running on an adjacent track also hit the crane.
“We heard a bang first and then later, a much more intense one,” one local resident told the press. “Then we heard people screaming. It was not good.”
The damage means the tracks — used for train travel from Amsterdam to Brussels and Paris — are out of service. The government said it has opened an investigation.
Four days earlier, two passenger trains derailed in Switzerland, leading to a number of injuries in both cases, one in Luscherz and the other near Bern.