Two rail maintenance workers died and another was seriously injured after a trolley car fell from a bridge into a river around midnight Friday on the JR Kisei line in Owase city, Mie Prefecture, police said Saturday.
The dead men were named as Teruyoshi Mizutani, 54, and Eiji Kitamura, 28, both from the town of Miyama in the prefecture, the police said. Masanobu Sugishita, 43, from Owase, suffered serious injuries.
The trolley, consisting of three cars carrying flagstones, left Kata Station in southern Owase at 10:56 p.m. Friday and was on its way to a maintenance site, the police said.
The front car, carrying the three maintenance workers, fell about 8 meters from the bridge into the river. Two other Central Japan Railway Co. employees were aboard the last car. , the police said.