RAILSTAFF JUNE 2018
FOR 2017
Investigations) fell last year to under 10 months. In 2017, 71 recommendations were made in the 19 published reports. The annual report notes that, “it is now four years since a track worker was last killed by a moving train” and that overall what it describes as the “level of harm” has been steadily dropping since the 1980s. However, Simon French adds that the RAIB “remains concerned about the number of narrowly avoided collisions between trains and track workers”.
He lists no fewer than eight such incidents from his 2017 reports including their class investigation into accidents and near misses involving track workers outside possessions. I am aware and indeed every month find myself writing about such occurrences.
Driver did not understand The most recent near miss I know about happened on 2 March this year at Stafford station and involved a train
driver. He was driving the 12.35 pm Manchester to London Euston Virgin Train service and stopped at Stafford station to attend to a fault. It was around 1.34 pm when an “unsolicited brake application” caused the train to stop. When the driver released the brakes they automatically applied again. He spoke to the signaller and asked for the train to be routed into platform 1 for examination. However, the signaller could not do so as another train was already routed onto the Up Stafford Fast line.
TRACK SAFETY
17
Colin Wheeler.
What (as described in the report published on 23 May) followed was a lengthy conversation with information repeated back several times including point numbers and listings of protecting signals. However, the driver did not understand that he was not being provided with protection on the Down Stafford Fast line. The signaller did not record the line blockage details at the time nor did he read them in summary from to the driver reminding him that the Down Stafford Fast line was still open to traffic.
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