Freight safety

Rail freight is a rapidly evolving, reliable, safe, and green sector that contributes £2.45bn to the economy annually.

Rail freight is vital to the whole country. Its logistical efficiency supports the economy, reduces road congestion, and produces lower emissions than road and air freight.

After substantial improvements in 2020/21 and 2021/22, there has been an increase in freight derailments this year. There were six freight derailments on the running line during the reporting period, which is more than the last 3 years combined.

One, at Audenshaw in September 2024, is being investigated by RAIB. The investigation will seek to identify the sequence of events that led to the accident. It will also consider the condition of the infrastructure at the time of the derailment, and the status and condition of the wagons involved, including any underlying management factors.

A factor in freight derailments can be the condition of wagons on the rail network, although most do not relate to this cause. A priority project within the sector’s Freight Safe Programme has been the Wagon Condition Programme. The risk review of the Wagon Condition Programme was published in October 2024.

The review found that the monetised safety benefit from further risk reduction was low, the Wagon Condition Programme workstreams will

enhance all associated activities including train preparation, maintenance, and service delivery, but that there was a modest case to do more to prevent wagon condition related incidents at an industry level.

While derailments are the major safety risk associated with freight, the SRM v9 shows that train collisions have the next highest safety risk. SPADs are a major contributor to that risk. There were 64 SPADs involving freight trains in 2023/24. This is a 9% increase on last year.

Analysis shows that the number of freight SPADs in yards, depots, and sidings have not increased as much and that the increase has mostly been due to running line SPADs. Since freight trains encounter around 2.3 times as many red signals as passenger services, they are more likely to be involved in these type of incidents.

Figure 7: Freight derailments