Following Accident With Sheep

German Train Plows into Herd of Cows

Three days after a high-speed train accident caused by sheep on the line, a German regional train has hit a herd of cattle. No passengers are dead, but eight cows have lost their lives. The accidents have raised concerns about safety on the German rail system.

A train rumbling between the villages of Arnstadt and Ilmenau in rural Thüringia, central Germany, plowed into a herd of cows at a rail crossing late on Tuesday morning, said a police spokesman in the nearby town of Gotha. "We don't know any other details, the accident just occurred at 11 a.m.," the spokesman said.

The accident comes three days after a higher-profile derailment caused by a herd of sheep near Fulda, in the state of Hesse. That train was travelling at 220 kilometers per hour when it struck the animals and hopped the rail in a tunnel between Fulda and Würzburg on Saturday evening. Nineteen people were injured, and twenty sheep killed.

The shepherd responsible for the animals has been threatened with a fine or even time in jail. But critics of the rail system have wondered if Deutsche Bahn handled the crisis correctly. Local papers reported on Monday that a train running in the other direction had run over a sheep only a few minutes before. That train made an emergency stop but was unaffected.

Critics have said system operators should have temporarily closed that stretch of rail. At the very least, writes the Fuldaer Zeitung, the second train should have been warned against running at full speed. "The locomotive driver of the northbound train looked at the damage and reported that he had collided with a sheep," a Bahn representative told the newspaper.

Whether system operators then took the proper next steps is still not clear.

Still a Mess in the Tunnel

How the sheep found their way onto the tracks is also a mystery. "No sheep willingly walks through a tunnel," a representative for sheep farmers told Reuters on Monday. But other experts said it was possible they were frightened onto the tracks.

"The pasture was correctly fenced in and even separated from the tunnel by a stream," said Dagmar Rothhämel, who heads a sheep-breeding association in Hesse. "Maybe some people scared the herd and separated them. Some people find that funny."

The accident has caused delays on the route between Hamburg and Munich. Only on Tuesday morning were the first derailed wagons pulled out of the tunnel -- which at eight kilometers is one of the longest in Germany.

msm/ap/reuters