Cause of Glacier Express crash remains a puzzle

The Glacier Express is one of the best-known tourist attractions in Switzerland but now its operators are struggling to explain one of the worst accidents in its 80-year history.

There are still no clear answers as to why the train run by the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn (MGB) and the Rhaetian Railway (RR) derailed in the canton of Valais on Friday, leaving one passenger dead and 40 others injured, seven of them seriously.

Three of the train’s six cars jumped from the tracks and two of them overturned at 11.50 am on a curve of the railway between the towns of Fiesch and Lax, Valais cantonal police said.

The train was carrying 210 people, including 77 tourists from Japan, to St. Moritz from Zermatt on one of the most pictureseque routes in Switzerland.

The accident killed a 64-year-old Japanese woman from Osaka and left two other Japanese women, aged 71 and 62, in critical condition.

On Sunday MGB and RR resumed operating the Glacier Express, which regularly carries 1,000 passengers a day through the Alps.

But the difficult work of establishing how the train on Friday left the tracks is still under way.  

“The investigation could take several weeks or several months,” Walter Kobelt, head of the federal public transport accident investigation service, told Le Matin Dimanche.

Kobelt said the rails had been measured and checked and a geologist had been engaged to examine the terrain.

One of the possible avenues for the investigation is recent work conducted on the rail section, and information to be released on Monday should determine whether the train was travelling at a safe speed.

Jean-Marie Bornet, a spokesman for the Valais cantonal police department, told a weekend press conference that terrorism was not suspected “from all outward appearances.”

Bornet said authorities had used all the means at their disposal to respond to the accident.

Nine helicopters were mobilized and 15 doctors and 30 medical assistants and volunteers were transported to the site, where 70 fire fighters and 40 police officers attended.

For uninjured passengers who wanted to continue the journey to St. Moritz, MGB arranged for buses to transport them.

Now the job of reassuring tourists - particularly those from Japan - of the safety of Swiss trains is under way.

“We must show that we can rapidly shed light on the tragedy and that way gain a return to confidence,” Bornet said, underlining the economic importance of the tourist train to the region.

The operators of the train are remaining circumspect about the accident.

There is no mention of the derailment on either of the company’s websites.

Launched in 1930, the Glacier Express now links Zermatt and St. Moritz in seven and half hours.

The operators have dubbed it the “slowest express train in the world,” one that slices through the heart of the Swiss Alps, covering 291 kilometres on track through 91 tunnels and more than 290 bridges.

The Glacier Express carries about 250,000 passengers annually and operates year -round.