BRETIGNY-SUR-ORGE, France, July 13 AP - A powerful crane will start lifting smashed train cars over buildings to clear tracks after a derailment killed six and injured nearly 200 people south of Paris.
Investigators believe the accident may have been a case of equipment failure.
Human error has been ruled out by France's transport minister and the focus of the investigation is on a detached piece of metal in a switching joint on the tracks.
The national rail company, SNCF, has already taken blame for Friday evening's crash at Bretigny-Sur-Orge station, which occurred at the start of a busy holiday weekend.
"The SNCF considers itself responsible," rail company chief Guillaume Pepy said.
"It is responsible for the lives of its clients."
The packed train, carrying around 385 passengers, was travelling below the speed limit at 137km/h when it derailed, skidded and slammed into the station platform in the small town outside the capital.
It was 20 minutes into a scheduled three-hour trip to Limoges in central France.
The 700-tonne crane, sent from northern France, towered over small buildings that surround the railway station to begin work on clearing the tracks.
The operation is an "extraordinarily difficult technique given that we are in a train station," Pepy said.
"For the moment, we don't know how long it could take."
He said the operation could last through Sunday, which is the July 14 Bastille Day holiday, and into Monday.
Pepy stressed the crane operators will be careful and slow in lifting the cars, because authorities need to verify that nobody is trapped underneath the wreckage.
He said investigators found that a 10-kilogram piece of metal he compared to a staple between two rails in a switching system, which guides trains from one track to another, apparently "detached itself from the rails, lifted and constituted the initial cause of the derailment."
Investigators were looking into how this happened since another train had travelled safely through the station about 30 minutes before.
In addition, they were trying to determine why the train's third car was the first to derail.
Pierre Izard, another SNCF official, said the metal piece "moved into the centre of the switch and in this position it prevented the normal passage of the train's wheels and it may have caused the derailment."
But Pepy said track failure was a likely preliminary cause.
"There can be no (definitive) answer in a few minutes, in a few days," he said at a news conference.
Passengers and officials in train stations throughout France held a minute of silence at noon to commemorate the accident.
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