The steel tyre on a wheel on the third axle of the first car split and peeled away. Traveling approximately 130 kilometres from Hamburg, metal fatigue sent the heavy rim upward. It penetrated the floor of the train carriage and remained stuck, even going through an armrest in a compartment where a passenger sat with his wife and son.
This began the Eschede derailment on 3 June 1998. The embedded tyre slammed against a guide rail, pulling it from the railway ties and lifting the bogie off the rails. Carriages split onto two separate tracks. Car number 3 was thrown sideways into the piers supporting a 300-tonne roadway overpass, causing the bridge to collapse and crush the coaches.
101 people were killed in the derailment. Investigations concluded the accident was caused by poor wheel design allowing a fatigue fracture on the rim. This disaster led to modified wheel designs and train windows that were later made easier to break in an emergency.
Today, a memorial stands in the fields near Eschede. It remains a quiet, permanent marker for a morning when a single crack in steel changed everything.
Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons
Written by Aurora
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