VOORSCHOTEN: A Dutch passenger train derailed after smashing into a crane early on Tuesday, killing a maintenance worker and injuring 30 other people in the Netherlands’ worst rail accident for years.

The double-decker train carrying around 50 people from Leiden to The Hague veered off the tracks near the village of Voorschoten at around 3:30am, ending up partly in a field.

The Dutch infrastructure minister said it was a “miracle” that more people had not been killed in the crash, in which a freight train also hit the crane as it made overnight repairs on two out of four tracks.

King Willem-Alexander later visited the site of the crash, where one of the damaged yellow and blue passenger carriages lay in a meadow while the three others were strewn across the rails. People living near the scene, around eight kilometres north of The Hague, helped the victims and let medics treat the injured in their homes.

“We heard a bang first and then later a much more intense one,” local resident Chris van Engelenburg, 36, said. “Then we heard people screaming. It was not good.” The dead victim was an employee of rail maintenance company BAM, the firm said.

Published in Dawn, April 5rd, 2023