As many as 25 people were injured when the two trains crashed shortly after 12 p.m. between the towns of Schrozberg and Niederstetten, west of Nuremberg, according to police and firefighters at the scene.

Two coaches flipped onto their sides, while one train's engine derailed and slid down an embankment. The second engine lay crosswise over the tracks, a twisted metal wreck.

Both trains' engineers died, along with a women and what appeared to be her three children. The family was believed to be on its way to a summer bike ride in the countryside "based on the scattered children's and adult cycles," said Stefan Mappus, a transport official for the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg.

There were conflicting reports about the number of injured. Germany's state-run railroad, Deutsche Bahn, said 15 people were hurt, while officials at the scene put the number at 25.

Deutsche Bahn said one of the trains had been running late when the other departed down the single-track section of the route, a rarely used branch line linking the towns of Aschaffenburg and Crailsheim.

(China Daily June 12, 2003)