Author Archives: Tim Hall

Boing Boing tells us of the latest tale of ambulance-chasing.

A Jeanette, Pennsylvania woman is suing Norfolk Southern railroad because a train hit her when she was walking along the tracks. Patricia M. Frankhouser suffered a broken finger, cuts, and pain. From Pittsburgh Live:

“Defendant’s failure to warn plaintiff of the potential dangers negligently provided plaintiff with the belief she was safe in walking near the train tracks,” the suit states.

The term ‘Frivolous lawsuit’ is totally inadequate to describe nonsense like this. Norfolk Southern should countersue for the emotional distress suffered by the traincrew.

There’s now a preliminary accident report (in PDF format) for last Saturday’s crash. It concludes (as if there was ever any doubt) that the crash was not the fault of the railway industry. It conforms that the level crossing was in working order.

The ‘media feeding frenzy’ I predicted earlier doesn’t seem to have materialised. The most stupid statement of the week seems to be from rail union leader Bob Crow, a 70s dinosaur with a background in London Underground, who doesn’t seem to understand main line railways. His call for every single level crossing in the country to be replaced by bridges or underpasses regardless of cost has been widely and deservedly ridiculed.

The terrible crash has raised the subject of level crossing safety. Christian Wolmar has some very sensible things to say to those demanding “something must be done”.

The unions are saying ‘Oh, we should have underpasses everywhere’. The cost of that would be in the order of billions of pounds.

Level crossings have been taken out on main, very heavily used lines but you can’t possibly have underpasses everywhere, I’m afraid. In terms of risk assessment it is not worth doing. The money would be better spent on kidney machines or the NHS or something.

These are generally little used roads. There are about 10 people killed a year on level crossings but in terms of international comparisons that is quite a low rate. It is just like road accidents – they happen and sometimes there is not an enormous amount you can do about them.

The question of whether or not level crossings should be replaced by bridges cannot be answered without also asking the question “Who’s going to pay for them?”. Money doesn’t grow on trees, and money spent on one thing is money not available for something else. And I cannot see why rail passengers should be asked to foot the bill for something which is only made necessary by the recklessness of a small percentage of road users. If thousands of bridges or underpasses are ‘needed’, perhaps they should be funded by a surcharge on motor insurance premiums?

Sadly, the train driver was among the dead. First Great Western have made the following statement:

Our thoughts are with our customers and staff who were involved in tonight’s incident at Ufton Nervet in Berkshire.

We have been informed by the emergency services that our driver died in the incident and there were further fatalities and customers who have been injured.

We would like to express condolences to the families of those customers and our driver. The family of the driver have been informed and we would ask that media respect their privacy at this difficult time.

The service involved was the 1735 from London Paddington to Plymouth which collided with a vehicle on a level crossing between Reading and Newbury. Four of our staff were on-board … two Train Managers, a Customer Host who was serving in the buffet and the driver.

We are working with the emergency services to do all that we can to help deal with this situation and assist our customers and staff.

We will be co-operating fully with the investigation

Bad news. The BBC are reporting one person dead when a High Speed Train collided with a vehicle and derailed near Aldermaston in Berkshire.

So far, the report does not specify whether the fatality was from the train, or on the vehicle it hit

Update:. The incident happened at Ufton Nervet, which is an AHB (Automatic Half-Barrier) level crossing (reported on the SWRG mailing list). Too early to say exactly what happened, but 99% of level crossing accidents turn out to be the fault of the road user. Bear this in mind when we get the predictable media feeding frenzy about ‘rail safety’.

Further Update: Sky News are reporting “several fatalities”. The report mentions “9 derailed coaches”, which sounds like pretty much the entire train, with some coaches at right angles to each other. This is bad.

Update: Police are now reporting six deaths. There are some suggestions (not confirmed) on mailing list postings that the car driver deliberately stopped on the crossing as a suicide attempt. This may be a baseless rumour, but Christian Wolmar did suggest this as a possibility on the TV news. There have been suggestions that the car was heading up the track.

If the election result wasn’t bad enough, commuters in Washington had another shock. Not leaves, this time.

For the second time in a week, one of Richard Branson’s shiny new wobbly trains has failed to stop at the end of the line.

Rail passengers are facing delays after a Virgin train hit the buffers at Liverpool’s Lime Street Station for the second time in a week. The Pendolino train hit the buffers at platform seven, at lunchtime on Tuesday. It is not thought that anyone was hurt.

I hope this isn’t symptomatic of a wider problem with these trains. I’m reminded of the early years of the Thames Turbos (class 165 and 166), where one ran through the buffers at Slough during the leaf-fall season, and ended up sitting on platform five (just missing the famous glass case containing the stuffed dog). I also remember waiting for a class 455 EMU at Datchet that overshot the platform by seven car lengths and had to reverse back in, at the same time of year. But the very urban approach to Liverpool Lime street isn’t exactly prime leaf-fall territory.

We shall have to see what the cause of these incidents turn out to be. Let’s hope any problems get identified before there’s a more serious incident