Austrian train engineers are to begin Tuesday removing the burnt-out wreck of a funicular train from a tunnel where 155 people died last November, officials said Monday.
The operation to remove the 16-tonne wreckage from the tunnel at Kaprun in western Austria will "take weeks," said spokeswoman Maria Boehm of the Austrian OeBB train company.
In all 92 Austrians, 37 Germans, 10 Japanese, eight Americans, four Slovenes, two Dutch, one Briton and one Czech national died in the blaze in the funicular tunnel leading up to the Kitzsteinhorn glacier on November 11.
Only 12 people survived the blaze, one of the worst ever tragedies in the Austrian Alps. The conclusions of an inquiry into the tragedy are expected in mid-February.
Several US lawyers' firms have filed suits against Austrian companies and an Italian-US consortium which built the train, as well as against an Austrian electricity-producing firm and the company which operated the service.
The cost of removing the train is estimated at six million schillings (436,000 euros, 400,780 dollars). The train will be removed along with the rails on which it ran up through the steep, narrow, more than three kilometer (two mile) tunnel -- VIENNA (AFP)
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