Train fire inquiry focuses on steward

Investigations into the sleeping car blaze that killed 12 people on a Paris-Vienna express train on Wednesday are focusing on a German steward, who was absent from the carriage when fire broke out.

The steward was supposed to remain with his carriage but he has admitted to investigators that he was in another sleeping car when the blaze started in his kitchenette.

The steward, who has not yet been named, was brought from hospital in a stretcher on Thursday night to take part in a re-creation of the accident, using another German sleeping car, parked in railway sheds near Nancy station in eastern France.

The man, an employee of the German state railways, Deutsche Bahn (DB), inhaled toxic fumes while trying to force his way back into his blazing carriage. He was due to be released from hospital in Nancy last night.

Each sleeping car has its own steward who is not supposed to leave his carriage while his passengers are asleep. A senior DB official said on Wednesday that the "steward is the fire alarm". The public prosecutor for the Nancy area, Michel Senthille, said that the steward in the carriage which caught fire had admitted that he was absent at the time. The cause of the fire is believed to be a short-circuit in the wiring of the small kitchen used by the steward to make hot drinks.

Railway workers saw flames and smoke pouring from the first carriage of the train as it passed through Nancy station. The overhead electrical current was cut to halt the train. All the passengers in five sleeping compartments of the blazing carriage were dead.

The 12 victims were killed by toxic fumes. Among them were five members of an American family – a 72-year-old grandmother, a mother and father and children aged 12 and eight. The others were Germans aged 33, 37 and 55, a minister in the Bylorussian government and his wife, both 43, a Greek woman, aged 41, and a Hungarian man, aged 33.