The derailment of the overnight passenger train at Bruehl, outside Cologne, is the latest in a succession of train crashes 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.

• Last October, 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 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.