botach wrote:
Quote:
nicycle "It seems that in this indicent larger scale work had been carreid out by a contractor who seemed to have forgotten to replace the points."
Forgive me for asking why that titbit has not surfaced - would have thought that at least one broadcast company would have brought that up - to get a juicy story.
And why none of the industry related newspapers have to date reported this revelation.
The points in question lead the track from one set of rails to another, and are used to transfer trains from one line to another in emergencies - they are NOT part of the regular routing system.
Whilst it was monitored by the signal system, it was operated manually, usually to park maintenance locomotives while work was being carried out during major works to keep the line up to standard. This is often carried out at night - a condition where small details can be overlooked even under the GLARE of arc lights.
Many of the Network Rail employees are in fact former employees of the outside contractors who were sub-contracted by Railtrack. Even John Armitt - the Chairman of Network Rail is the FORMER head of Railtrack!!
There is maintenance along this section of track somewhere on an almost daily basis - the only difference is the van livery now says Network Rail, instead of Jarvis!
The initial report states ONLY that ONE of three stretcher bars was
missing while TWO were fractured - the REMAINING two. Of these one was said to be fractured during the accident.
There were loose nuts on the track. In this respect it is identical to the Potters Bar accident - where amazingly, it was never possible to identify WHO had worked on the points in question!!
On Wednesday 21st of Feb. a new monitoring train had passed through this section of line, and videoed it. However it's primary function is to scan the rail with ultrasound, and this would not necessarily show up the missing stretcher bar. The video of the track is not routinely viewed, except when a fault is detected by the ultra sound scan.
Draco's point is well made - over reliance on electronic monitoring and less on the visual inspection of experienced railmen will lead to further incidents like this.
We have already had TWO derailments since Cumbria that I know of - they are usually fairly routine - but not usually with the consequences we have suffered here. But unless we redress the balance of experienced men and managers to more youthful employees, then a catastrophic failure is more likely.
It's possible that inexperienced eyes had viewed the points with the missing stretcher bar without realising that something was missing - especially if this had occurred on more than one occasion. Certainly some of the men I have seen working on the line are young and enthusiastic, but not experienced!
The reason the press are less tolerant of rail crashes is because they can score points by making political mileage out of exposing lack of investment in the rail infrastructure by the Government, and mismanagement by the rail authorities. It's a shame they are not more diligent BEFORE the events!
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