UK - Overhaul of track inspections after crash

[John Ashworth]

Overhaul of track inspections after crash


Dan Milmo, transport correspondent
Wednesday September 5, 2007
The Guardian

Network Rail will undergo an urgent overhaul of its track inspection regime after admitting that the catalogue of errors that caused the fatal west coast train crash could be repeated.

In a systemic failure of safety procedures leading up to the incident on February 23 this year, an inspector cut short a trackside check metres before a broken set of points which later derailed a Glasgow-bound Virgin Pendolino train.

The crash in Grayrigg, Cumbria, killed an elderly woman and injured 22 other people. In a report published yesterday, Network Rail admitted a litany of errors including a "poorly planned and poorly managed" change in the local inspection regime; a relationship breakdown between track patrollers and supervisors going unchecked; and lapsed safety certification for some track inspectors.

Iain Coucher, Network Rail's chief executive, admitted changes were needed to ensure the Grayrigg incident was not repeated. Campaigners for victims of rail crashes and MPs repeated calls for a joint public inquiry into the derailment and the Potters Bar disaster in 2002, which claimed seven lives and was also caused by broken points.

"We do recognise that if it happened here, it always has the potential to happen somewhere else," said Mr Coucher.

Under a series of recommendations put forward by the report, dedicated points inspection teams will be introduced, report forms will be changed and the design of thousands of points across the network will be reviewed. The report found that a set of points, used to switch trains from one set of tracks to another, was allowed to deteriorate despite being inspected more than a dozen times in the months leading up to the crash, when faults were already becoming apparent.

As a consequence, the bars holding the points rails apart were allowed to come loose, allowing one of the rails to slip out of position and lift the high-speed Pendolino off the tracks at 94mph.

Mr Coucher said the crash would have been avoided if a regular track inspection on February 18 had not been abandoned a few hundred metres from the faulty rails. Network Rail admitted that it does not know why the inspector cut short his patrol, which a manager then failed to spot. "His records show that he stopped short," said Mr Coucher. "The supervisor did not pick up on the fact that the inspection had not been carried out. We do not know why he finished early."

The rail infrastructure company insisted the dysfunctional state of the Cumbria inspection regime was not replicated elsewhere in the UK. It said 120 sets of points similar to the faulty Grayrigg set would have their stretcher bars replaced and the local workforce had been changed.

A 46-year-old Network Rail employee has been arrested by British Transport police in connection with the crash, which killed Margaret Masson, 84, from Glasgow.

Louise Christian, a solicitor representing seven people injured at Grayrigg, said the "horrific" report confirmed the need for an inquiry into the Grayrigg and Potters Bar incidents. "It's not good enough for the same thing to happen again," she said. "My clients are upset about this. They feel that there is complacency within Network Rail, that people will sit back and let this happen again."

The TSSA rail workers' union welcomed the critical report. Gerry Doherty, its general secretary, said: "All too often in the past the industry has played the blame game and passed the buck."

The Liberal Democrat MP Tim Farron, whose constituency includes the crash site, said: "I welcome Network Rail's response to this accident. However, this internal report does not answer all the questions. Given the similarities between the Grayrigg and Potters Bar crashes, the government should hold a public inquiry into track maintenance."