The Dahlerau train disaster, the worst railway accident in West Germany, kills 46 people and injures 25 near Wuppertal.

The Dahlerau train disaster was a railway accident that occurred on May 27, 1971, in Dahlerau, a small town in Radevormwald, West Germany, in which a freight train and a passenger train collided head-on. Forty-six people perished in the accident; forty-one were senior year pupils of the Geschwister-Scholl-Schule in Radevormwald. It was the deadliest accident in West Germany since its foundation in 1949, surpassed after German reunification by the Eschede train disaster in 1998.

Wuppertal is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, in western Germany, with a population of 355,000. Wuppertal is the seventh-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia and 17th-largest in Germany. It was founded in 1929 by the merger of Elberfeld, Barmen, Ronsdorf, Cronenberg and Vohwinkel, and was initially called "Barmen-Elberfeld" before adopting its present name in 1930. It is the capital and largest city of the Bergisches Land.