One survivor said heavy ''rattling'' shocked passengers about minutes before the derailment.

The rattling subsided, then restarted a moment before coaches jumped the tracks at 125 mph and jackknifed into the base of an overpass.

''I held on and ducked down because you had the feeling you'd be thrown through the air,'' Wolf-Ruediger Schliebener, a passenger from a rear coach, said.

''Thank God, it came to a standstill,'' Mr Schliebener said. ''Then I saw in the distance to the front where all the cars were chaotically laying all over.''

Then, he heard the screaming.

Several coaches had wedged together, some sticking up at various angles and others buried under the overpass, which had collapsed.

Mr Schliebener said that ''Minutes before the crash there was an uncomfortable rattling and I had the feeling that maybe something was lying on the tracks''.

''People looked at each other shocked, and then it was as if: 'That's over now'.''

But then, he said, the rattling ''started up again''.

Hannelore Domkewitz saw the train speed past from her kitchen window.

''Then there was a loud boom, a dust cloud, and then silence,'' Mrs Domkewitz said.

She ran back to get blankets and bed sheets to cover the injured and dead. ''But there were also survivors who went by with their luggage. They were all in shock.''