Train derailment blamed on faulty switches Clean up: Railway workers on Sunday at the site where a train derailed south of Paris on Friday. A rail joint that worked loose from a track switching point appears to have caused France's worst train accident in years, an official with the national rail company said. The crowded intercity train, leaving Paris at rush hour before a holiday weekend for the city of Limoges, jumped the tracks 32 kilometres south at Bretigny-sur-Orge station. The seven-car train split into two, with some cars riding up the station platform and flipping over. Six people died, two were in critical condition and seven more were in a serious condition, officials said; 21 others were still in the hospital. More than 190 people were treated at the site for lesser injuries. Officials said the death toll might rise as the wreckage was removed, because some people might be beneath the overturned carriages. Railway investigators discovered that a metal clip joining two rails as part of the switch, which guides trains from one track to another, had worked loose and disconnected from its normal position, said Pierre Izard, the director for infrastructure at the national rail company, SNCF. "It broke away, became detached and came out of its housing," he said. It moved into the centre of the switch, and in this position it prevented the normal passage of the train's wheels and seems to have caused the derailment. SNCF president Guillaume Pepy said engineers would check the condition of 5000 similar switches along the rail network. The first two carriages of the train seemed to have passed along the tracks without difficulty, but the third car was the first to derail, just before the station. The train had left Paris 21 minutes before with 385 on board and was not scheduled to stop at the station.