Luxury tourist train in fatal crash
PRETORIA – A luxury train filled with foreign tourists, many of them Americans, sped downhill out of control before derailing on Wednesday, killing a pregnant woman and another crew member – both South African – and trapping passengers in the mangled coaches.
Rail officials advised passengers and crew to jump from the train as it sped into Pretoria, South Africa’s capital, after their attempts to apply the brakes did not work.
Train carriages smashed into each other and flipped onto their sides, forcing emergency workers to cut holes into the roofs of the antique wood-panelled cars to rescue survivors.
Another five passengers were critically injured in the incident, nine were seriously hurt and 35 slightly hurt, according to reports from the scene.
The passengers included 44 Americans, four each from France, South Africa and Britain, and three from Germany,
Associated Press said the Rovos rail voyage had begun in Cape Town and was close to its destination in Pretoria when it stopped for what is usually a routine change from an electric to a steam locomotive.
The train began moving after the electric locomotive was removed but before the steam engine could be attached, and gathered speed while rolling down a slope.
Seventeen coaches derailed just outside a station in Pretoria.
“Patients were strewn all over the scene,” said Werner Vermaak, spokesman for a private ambulance company ER24, the South African Press Association reported.
Emergency worker Chris Botha said the pregnant woman went into labour immediately after the crash, possibly from the force of the impact, but neither she nor her baby survived.
Ian Jarrett
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