German railway had been planning repairs on deadly crash route – Welt

BERLIN (Reuters) – State-owned rail company Deutsche Bahn had been planning rail repairs on the track section in southern Germany where a train derailed last week, killing five and injuring 44, newspaper Die Welt reported on Monday.

The planned work on the line between Oberau and Garmisch-Partenkirchen including the accident site in Burgrain can be found on a list of construction measures by the state-owned Deutsche Bahn’s infrastructure subsidiary DB Netz AG.

According to the schedule, DB Netz AG had been planning a “track position correction” on June 25 between Oberau and Farchant and a “track renewal” on July 1.

“We cannot comment on this at the moment due to the ongoing investigations,” a Deutsche Bahn spokesman told Die Welt on Monday, adding the group was supporting the authorities in clarifying the cause of the accident.

Excessive speed had been ruled out and the focus of the investigation was now on technical failure of the train or the infrastructure, the newspaper quoted a spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Railway Investigation (BEU) as saying.

(Reporting by Zuzanna Szymanska; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)