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GENEVA — Rescue workers who cut apart the mangled wreck of two trains that crashed in western Switzerland this week have determined no passengers were stuck inside, police said yesterday. Police in the canton of Vaud had expressed concern that more people might be stuck in the front carriage of one of the trains, which was smashed in by eight metres in the head-on collision yesterday evening.
The crash took place outside the station of Granges-pres-Marnand, a small town between the Geneva and Neuchatel lakes in Switzerland’s French-speaking region.
“Rescue workers have worked all night to cut apart the wreck of the locomotive . . . and have thus been able to establish that no one is inside,” police said in a statement.
The 24-year-old French driver of that train, which had been travelling north from the lakeside city of Lausanne towards the town of Payerne, was killed when a southbound train on the same line apparently failed to respect a signal.
His body was pulled from the wreckage early Tuesday.
Twenty-five people were injured in the crash, most of them lightly, and by Wednesday, only one person remained in hospital, police said.
Public prosecutor Stephan Johner has launched a criminal investigation into the crash to determine the cause.
Investigators have already said they believe the driver of the southbound train, operating a slower service between a string of communities, caused the crash by ignoring a signal and failing to wait for the faster northbound service to pass. — AFP.
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