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Staff member of Zimbabwean rail company said up to 18 people were injured in the train crash.
The Rovos Rail steam train arrives at Heidelberg Train Station in Heidelberg, south-east of Johannesburg, 28 September 2024. Picture: Nigel Sibanda/The Citizen
A South African luxury train carrying foreign tourists to Zimbabwe for Easter collided with another locomotive on Friday, derailing carriages and injuring several people on board, the operating company and a local rail employee said.
More than a dozen said to be injured
Four crew members of the Rovos Rail train, which was going from Pretoria to the tourist hotspot of Victoria Falls, were hurt in the collision with a freight train in Zimbabwe, the luxury service’s spokeswoman Liezl Maclean told AFP.
“There were no injuries in terms of the guests that we are aware of,” she told AFP, adding some were under observation.
But a staff member at the local rail service, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was unauthorised to speak to media, put the total number of injured at 18.
He said 14 of them were admitted to Gwanda Provincial Hospital, and four to Mater Dei in Bulawayo.
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He did not specify how many were passengers or crew, nor if the count included any injured on the freight train.
Rovos Rail train collided with freight train
Images shared on social media showed rescue workers carrying a man on a stretcher through a gap in the mangled roof of the wreckage.
The incident in Zimbabwe’s southern town of Gwanda involved the Rovos Rail train and a freight train operated by the Beitbridge Bulawayo Railway service.
At least 47 tourists were on the Rovos Rail train at the time of the accident, according to Maclean.
It was not immediately clear what had caused the accident.
Established in 1989, Rovos says it offers “bespoke train safaris through the heart of Africa”, with trips from South Africa’s Cape Town to Tanzania’s coastal city of Dar Es Salaam.
The Victoria Falls package features a three- or four-night 1 400-kilometre journey going from Pretoria in South Africa to Zimbabwe’s second city of Bulawayo.
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