Eschede disaster the worst for decades

Thirty five people died at the Clapham rail disaster in 1988

The high speed train crash in Germany is set to become one of the worst train disasters in European history. It is also Germany's worst rail smash for 50 years. Below is a look at some of Europe's other major rail disasters:

• 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.

• In June 1945, 102 died in a train crash in Assling, south of Munich, when an American troop transport train crashed into a train carrying German prisoners of war.

• 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 a passenger train and a wooden prop in Gretna Green in Scotland in May 1915, which 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.