The 12:45 King's Cross to King's Lynn train derailed, on the 10th of May 2002,
just before the bridge
leading into Potters Bar station. Striking the bridge, the last carriage of the
semi-fast train rolled sideways onto both platforms leaving destruction and
death in its wake.Extensive damage was caused to the platform, waiting room and associated
structures. The rail bridge to the station was damaged, along with power
lines and support towers. Wreckage was thrown on to cars below.
Seven people died, a dozen had life-threatening and serious
injuries and another 70 or so escaped with just minor injuries. It is
remarkable that so few were killed; the fact that three of the four
carriages remained upright after the derailment, and the low number of people
on the platform must have played a significant part.
Everyone must be grateful that the accident did not occur during the evening
rush hours, as commuters made their way home for the weekend, or late afternoon,
when the platform would have been crowded with school children. Had it done
so, the casualty figures could have been massive.
It is possibly too early to speculate upon the cause of the crash, however,
video footage from news crews at the scene showed the rails were
severely buckled, just after a set of points leading into the station.
Whether the rails were buckled before, during or after the crash remains to
be seen, but an area at those points was soon covered with tarpaulin, and later
completely enclosed by an incident tent.
Presumably to ensure that evidence at the scene was protected, pending a full
investigation, so it would appear that the initial problems were related to
the points or connecting tracks.
Whether this was a problem of points failure,
or a change in point settings while the train was passing over them is
something which the investigation will cover; it would explain why the rear
carriage was thrown from the line, while the front two carriages remained
on the rails. There appeared to be buckling on other tracks which
feed off the points in question indicating that some severe shock wave did
pass along them.
This was the third major rail crash in Hertfordshire in the last six years.
That the Potters Bar crash, like the Hatfield one before it, involved a
derailment brought back haunting memories to the rescue services, train
operators and the public.
The Hatfield investigation reported that the crash there was caused by a
section of track which had failed. Their revelations that the track at the
crash scene, and elsewhere, had been known to be defective sent shudders
through the travelling public, and a massive exercise was undertaken to bring
the whole line, and the rest of the country, up to expected standards.
Potential passengers have had their confidence shaken in the wake of the
Potters Bar incident, and are wondering whether the promised improvements
and retrospective repair work has been implemented as well as it could have
been, or whether the infrastructure has once again been allowed to fall into a
state of dangerous disrepair.
Numerous travellers have already come forward to state that they had
experienced severe jolting when approaching Potters Bar in the days
before the derailment. Indeed, from my own experiences, there are a number of
places on the down line where this occurs. Unfortunately, most people put
these down to signs of poor quality, and do nothing to complain, believing
it to be not worthwhile, or that their complaints will simply be ignored, or
lost in the myriad of different groups involved in running the railways.
Whatever the cause of this latest blow to rail safety, the consequences for
rail travellers is once again going to be massive. And not just the significant
delays for those attempting to get to and from London, on a usually busy Friday
afternoon and evening.
The destruction at Potters Bar station, and the nearby railway bridge, will need
to be cleared away, and structural repairs must be undertaken before the
line is allowed to fully open again. Continuing investigations into the cause
of the derailment, and the sequence of events, will delay efforts to clear the
line until investigators have completed their tasks. Further checks on the rails
and reduced speed limits are inevitable in the aftermath.
It may be reassuring to know that rail travel is one of the safest forms of
travel, however, 34 major incidents over the last 50 years, shows that a rail
disaster occurs in the UK, on average, once every 18 months.
Accidents involving road vehicles may be more commonplace, but, in general, the
resulting chaos afterwards is more short lived. Commuters and passengers can
but expect inconvenience, delays and disruption in the weeks following the
recent accident.
Railtrack, now in receivership, will once more come under the spotlight as it
still has responsibility for track, signals, rail bridges, and other
infrastructure of the railways.
13th of May - In the Aftermath
The outcome from the almost immediate investigation after the crash confirmed,
as predicted, that, "points failure", was the cause of the crash. Nuts, that
should have held the points in place, "failed", as the carriages went over
them, throwing the fourth carriage off the track and into the platforms.
The failing nuts are an interesting item. It isn't clear how these failed yet,
but there are allegations of sabotage and vandalism being made. Quite how
such sabotage and vandalism could take place, just yards from a busy station,
has not been fully explained, but they look suspiciously like excuses for
a failure in maintenance, which is the other likely cause. At least there's
no suggestion that the unfortunate driver is in any way to blame.
Sabotage and vandalism could have some credence given that Jarvis, the company
responsible for track maintenance, checked the points the day before, and
everything was okay. Unfortunately, it would appear that this may not have been
the case, or the visual check was less than perfect.
It has already emerged that written criticism of the points and track at Potters
Bar had been made three weeks before the crash. Local television news reports
also featured shots of many tracks where nuts were missing from parts of the
track in that area which were not related to the incident. It does, once again,
look like there has been a failure of maintenance, but only the full
investigation will bring out the truth.
Whether it was a maintenance problem, or an unfortunate, catastrophic, one-off
failure, it didn't stop Stephen Byers, Secretary of State for Transport, going
on air and saying there was nothing generically wrong with the points on the
rest of the system, and the rail network was safe.
How his initial comments will fare once the full investigation is complete can
only be imagined, but it didn't stop the opposition parties from criticising
his statement, on the grounds that treating this as a one-off incident,
inferred there was, "Nothing to be learnt from the crash", which pre-judged
the result of the inquiry.
With the possibility that the crash was a result of failings in the company
responsible for ensuring safety at the infrastructure level itself, it looks
like it will be hard for Byers to resist a call for a Public Enquiry.
This is the second crash on this line in under two years, and, like Hatfield,
the responsibility seems to be lying with the contractors. Jarvis managed
to take the contract from Balfour Beatty after Hatfield. If it is their failing,
the public will want to know why contracted out essential maintenance has such
an abysmal record, and why no one is checking the work.
Byers, responsible for the railways, will also be back in the spotlight again.
14th of May - Jarvis : Putting Their Nuts In a Vice
The interim report from the Health and Safety Executive has ruled out vandalism,
sabotage, signal failure, driver error, and has firmly put the blame on points
failure. A small relief to some, and a focusing for the finger of blame to move
in the direction of the maintenance contractors.
It appears that the points failed while the fourth carriage was passing over
them. This caused the rear bogey of that carriage to be diverted up a different
line to the rest of the train, turning it sideways as the rear moved away from
the front, with the result that the carriage eventually tore free and rolled up
onto the two platforms.
The reason the points failed appears to be a lack of securing nuts on the
points. Jarvis has now admitted that there had been a problem with the nuts,
and they had been found to be missing, or loose ( it's hard to determine exactly
what the situation actually was ) a week or so before the crash. These had
been "re-fitted" then, and Jarvis still maintain that a check the day before
the crash revealed nothing as being wrong.
The HSE are saying, however, that the nuts were missing at the time of the
crash.
At this early stage it looks like a maintenance problem, which Jarvis either
failed to resolve, or assumed would not be problematic. They haven't put their
hands up to take responsibility, but if this is the case, it is most certainly
not the one-off catastrophe Steven Byers would have us believe it is.
If maintenance failure has occurred here, there is every chance it has occurred
elsewhere, indeed anywhere on the network.
Joining Byers and Jarvis in the spotlight, is now the whole issue as to whether
the responsibility for track safety should have been placed into the
hands of contractors, or should have been kept in-house. The whole issue of
rail privatisation is back on the table.
18th of May - Sabotage or Smokescreen ?
Jarvis have gone on the offensive.Kevin Hyde, chief operating officer of Jarvis, said that it was believed that
sabotage lay behind the Potters Bar crash; that some, "informed person", had
deliberately removed the missing nuts with an, "utterly perverse", intent.
Jarvis say that their theory should be treated more seriously than it had been,
but others, including rail expert, Christian Wolmar, have accused Jarvis of
desperately throwing up a smokescreen, as evidence mounts that the maintenance
company was responsible for the failures which lead to the crash.
The British Transport Police and HSE investigations are concentrating upon why
two nuts were missing from the points when the derailment occurred. Jarvis claim
that there is no maintenance requirement for the nuts to be removed; presumably
to cover the allegation that they were taken off during routine maintenance, and
someone forgot to refit them.
Hyde said that the nuts found missing on points a week before the crash
may also have been a work of sabotage. If that is the case, then one would
have expected there to have been some warning made about suspected tampering
at the time, and an investigation undertaken. If the best Jarvis could manage
was, "Some c--t's undone the nuts", and left it at that, they are not out of
the frame yet.
Asked who would cause such sabotage, Hyde would not speculate, but
said the theory was, "Based on evidence of real experts with decades of
experience of examining metal".
British Transport Police said that neither it nor the HSE had any concrete
evidence to indicate sabotage, pointing out that such speculation was, "Based
on secondary evidence in the form of photographs". They would not however rule
out the possibility of sabotage, although the HSE had specifically rejected
such a claim in its preliminary findings on the 11th of May.
Wolmer says that if it is sabotage, it's a particularly serious piece of
deliberate vandalism; the missing nuts cannot just be simply undone, and the
points thrown out of alignment.
Roy Bell, a consultant signalling engineer who advises on rail safety, also
thought that sabotage being the cause was unlikely. He told the BBC that, "It
would take an awful lot of know-how", and, "Would also incur a tremendous
amount of risk ... in close view of a main line station and where trains are
travelling at 100 mph".
The HSE's interim report also said that sabotage would have to have been of
an, "Extremely sophisticated and daring nature".
What these experts and the HSE fail to acknowledge is that sabotage may not
have needed to have gone much further than loosening or removing the nuts alone.
One can only believe that Jarvis did not deliberately sabotage the points
themselves, the missing nuts having either been left loose, or off, during
routine maintenance, or they worked themselves loose, and fell off, during
operation.
Sabotage does indeed seem highly unlikely, but may be simpler to accomplish
than believed. It may also have been lot easier to get at the points than some
would claim, and the risk of being hit by a train is greatly reduced over night
and can be avoided by having look-outs elsewhere on the track. Who would want
to go to such lengths, and why, however, is hard to visualise.
Could it have simply been the case of trespassers on the railway having found
a big spanner, who then thought, "This'll be a laugh", without realising the
horrific consequences which would follow ?
The missing nuts are key to the HSE's investigation into how the crash
occurred, and the reason for them being missing will explain why it happened.
If it is, as many claim, so difficult to remove these nuts, the earlier incident
should have set alarm bells ringing, if it was easy to remove the nuts, then
sabotage is a simple task, and a failure of maintenance could also have
contributed to their dislocation.
Jarvis have, in many ways, put themselves in that proverbial location between a
rock and a hard place. If it's so difficult to undo the nuts, and requires
specialist knowledge, how could this sabotage have been carried out. If the nuts
do come off simply and easily, why did they do nothing to stop the problems that
this could cause ?
If it was vandalism, albeit extreme, why was nothing done to make sure that it
didn't happen again ?
Cynics say that Jarvis have formulated the sabotage theory simply to
protect themselves. If that is the case, it's a very clever ploy.
If the investigation does conclude that it was the missing nuts which caused
the points to fail, and the derailment to occur ( and it seems likely that
it will ), the focus will be on why the nuts were missing.
Unless Jarvis, or
one of their employees admits to having made a mistake, there is going to be
little evidence which can nail Jarvis as being responsible. With Jarvis saying,
"It wasn't us Guv; it was someone else", it's going to be equally hard to
prove that no one else had sabotaged the line.
Jarvis, if they are responsible, will have avoided direct blame, and will
be able to deflect criticism, simply because it can't be conclusively proved
that it was their fault.
If Jarvis are not responsible, and it is indeed a work of sabotage, they will
find it incredibly hard to throw off the perception that they were somehow
responsible for the crash.
For Jarvis, however, it's not public opinion that decides their fate, but what
the government and other commercial organisations think of them. If they can
come through without any official blame lying at their door, they will be able
to continue running their business, as if nothing had ever happened.
20th of May - Endemic Safety Failures
Jarvis took the opportunity to tell the London Stock Exchange about its views
on the Potters Bar crash, fuelling accusations that they are more concerned
with the profitability and future of the company than admitting that they may
have been partly to blame for the tragedy.Jarvis say that the photographs support their suggestion that sabotage was
the root cause of the crash, but as their theory was formulated by looking at
those photographs, it's hardly an inspiring conclusion. This is not additional
evidence, but the original statement turned round.
Their recent statements and press releases have also created confusion
about when the alleged sabotage may have taken place.
It is claimed that the photographs show some nuts had been adjusted in the 48
hours before the derailment, but statements that the Potters Bar site was last
inspected on the 9th May, the day before the crash, and the points were
compliant with standards at that time doesn't make it clear if the tampering
was detected then or not.
Saying that the nuts were adjusted in the preceding 48 hours, rather than
between the last inspection and the crash, infers that the tampering was not
noticed, and only became evident later.
If that is the case, people must be wondering just how effective safety checks
are.
The Daily Mirror decided to undertake its own safety checks, taking its
undercover photographer on a survey of a 10 mile stretch of track between
Liverpool Street station and Colchester. No less than 30 potentially dangerous
faults were discovered, all of which had been reported but had been left
without repair.
The track maintained by Balfour Beatty, the contractor responsible for looking
after the failed track which caused the Hatfield crash, is in a truly dreadful
state, showing a variety of faults and failures, any of which could lead to
another catastrophe if left to deteriorate.
Local newspapers have also performed their own track safety surveys, with
Hertfordshire on Sunday finding debris and other components left near lines at
Arlesey, north of Hatfield, following routine maintenance.
Although the track was considered safe, despite a faulty weld being found, the
potential for vandals to use the debris to attempt a derailment of a train was
obvious. Railtrack's statement that the left-over parts of track would be
impossible to lift by a vandal was clearly wrong given the photographic
evidence the paper presented.
Alistair Burt, the local MP, has said he will be raising the issue in
parliament, and wants to know why the debris was left, and if this is common
practice.
Railtrack's response has been to threaten the reporters and photographers
involved with prosecution for trespass on the railway.
With many people in the rail safety industry coming forward, albeit
anonymously, to say there are numerous problems on the railways, confidence
in the network, and those who are meant to keep them operating safely, is in
free fall.
4th of July - Jarvis's nuts under the spotlight
The second interim report from the HSE confirms not only that it was nuts on
the set of points which have been the focus of attention in this disater that
were missing, but that 20% of nuts on nearby points were not fully tightened.
The HSE continues to reject claims by Jarvis that the points failure was a
result of sabotage, although British Transport Police are having little
success in identifying, or locating, five "Ghost workers" captured by CCTV on
the track just hours before the disaster.
Jarvis appear to be determined to stick to their claim, and are adamant that
the cause of the disaster was sabotage, consequently hoping that blame does
not rest with them.
The HSE are being equally unmovable in their opinions, and it looks like they
are winning the battle.
Transport Secretary, Alistair Darling, said after publication of the damning
report, that, "The state of the points at Potters Bar was clearly appalling.
Safety is of paramount importance, and maintenance and inspection are
fundamental to the continued improvement of safety on the railways".
You don't often hear a Minister give public criticism in such an open way,
and it is obvious that he accepts the HSE's findings, and believes the
appalling state of affairs track-side to be due to Jarvis's failure to maintain
and inspect the track as it should have done.
Stating his continued intention to create a single body to take responsibility
for the safety of the railways, Darling admitted that the problems were a result
of the privatisation in the early 90's.
Admitting that the decision, "to contract out, not only maintenance, but key
decisions about what should be maintained, does not work", is something that
most of the public had already realised over the last decade. It is good to
hear that a Transport Minister is finally on the same wave length as those
who elected him, and perhaps this time, something constructive will be
achieved to overcome the problems that everyone has known about for years,
but the rail industry and government chose to ignore.
Kings or King's
One thing the almost continual television coverage of the Potters Bar accident
highlighted was the lack of consensus on whether it's Kings Cross, Kings Lynn,
and Potters Bar or King's Cross, King's Lynn and Potters' Bar.
It's almost impossible to determine what's correct, although the possessive,
with an apostrophe, would seem to be the most likely.
Railtrack, British Rail before them, and the rail operators continue to use
different spellings, and sometimes both together despite the obvious confusion
it causes. Signs at the railway stations themselves are no help, conflicting
with each other, depending upon where they're placed.
Although this isn't a major problem, except when trying to do accurate searches
on the internet where the apostrophe can be important ( and it's somewhat
pedantic to require the station signs to be correct ), it doesn't look good,
or inspire confidence, for an integrated railway system when those running it
don't even know what the names of the stations are.
