vos Rail train. Photo: AFP A South African luxury train derailed outside the capital Pretoria on Wednesday, killing two workers, including a pregnant woman whose baby was stillborn after the accident. 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. Two South African women working in the luxury private Rovos Rail train were killed. One of the women was pregnant and gave birth after the crash, but the foetus did not survive, said Chris Botha, spokesman for emergency medical services operator Netcare 911. The US embassy said it was investigating reports that a US tour group was aboard the train. Ambassador Donald Gips went to the scene to determine how many Americans were involved, spokeswoman Sharon Hudson-Dean said. “We are looking into that right now,” she said. Five people were reported to be critically injured and nine others seriously hurt in the accident that happened 50 days before the start of the football World Cup. Thirty-five people sustained minor injuries, Mr Botha said. “It’s absolute carnage,” Mr Botha said from the accident. “Some of the railway coaches are lying on top of each other and [are] absolute wreckages. They had to use hydraulic rescue equipment to cut some of the people free.” Trained dogs were sweeping the wreckage for signs of survivors, he said. “The crumpled remains of the coaches were spread over a large area with the passengers still trapped in the wreckages,” Netcare 911 said in a statement. The company said it was “miraculous” that 35 people had escaped with just minor injuries. Rovos Rail confirmed the accident but said it had no details on the nationalities of the passengers involved. A spokesman said much of the company’s business is from Europe and the US. “We had a derailment of one of our trains. It was an inbound train from Cape Town to Pretoria,” David Patrick, marketing manager for Rovos Rail, said. "The
Report I read elsewhere said that train ran away while the locomotives were being changed. The cars built up speed until they derailed. Train consisted of all steel luxury sleeping cars, but the dining car was wooden-bodied on an steel underframe. When the derailment happened the sleeping cars telescoped the dining car wiping the underframe clean. Train used Vacuum brakes.