The blaze in a railway tunnel near Kitzsteinhorn in the Austrian Alps, in which at least 170 skiers died, is the latest in a succession of train disasters in Europe that have caused heavy loss of life.
Below is a reminder of some other major rail disasters:
- In January this year, two passenger trains collided in Norway, 150km (100 miles) north of Oslo, overturning several coaches and setting off a huge blaze. A total of 19 people died.
- In October 1999, 31 people were killed when a high-speed passenger train approaching London's Paddington Station was in collision with a local commuter train.
- In June 1998, more than 100 people were killed when a German high-speed train travelling from Munich to Hamburg went off the rails at Eschede.
- Germany suffered another major rail disaster in 1967, when a train collided with another carrying petrol tanks near the city of Magdeburg, causing an explosion that killed 94 people.
- The most horrific European rail accident of recent years happened in Russia in June 1989. A gas explosion erupted beneath two trains carrying more than 1,200 people near the town of Ufa, killing about 400 and injuring 600.
- Days later the country suffered another tragedy when 31 people died and 66 were injured when an express train ploughed into a bus which had stalled on a level crossing in southern Russia.
- The UK's worst crash remains the collision between two trains, one carrying troops, at Quintinshill near Gretna Green, Scotland in May 1915. The crash claimed 227 lives.
- The UK capital has also suffered its share of fatal smashes. A total of 112 people were killed and 340 hurt in a crash at Harrow and
Wealdstone in north west London in October 1952.
- The Clapham Junction crash in December 1988 killed 35 people when three
morning rush hour trains collided in south London.
- France suffered a rash of disasters in the mid to late 1980s. Thirty-three died and 165 were injured in a head-on collision between two trains in southern France in August 1985.
- In September that year 43 lives were lost and
30 people were injured - 30 when a holiday express crashed near Argenton-sur-Creuse, north of Limoges.
- Then in June 1988 a rush hour train ran into the back of another
at Paris's Gare de Lyon killing 59.