Read this edition's corporate memory, written by Greg Morse
This edition of Right Track continues to preserve rail's corporate memory.
On 8 October 1952, a passenger train passed a caution and two reds in fog before striking a commuter service waiting in the platform at Harrow & Wealdstone. Soon after, a third train struck the wreckage, leading to the loss of 112 lives.
Today, 1952 seems like ancient history. It was soon after WWII but before the end of rationing, before many things we now take for granted – like train protection, Harrow occurring shortly before Automatic Warning System (AWS) testing began.
In time, AWS would help reduce the number of fatalities in train accidents significantly. But it was not the solution to all our SPAD problems, as an accident almost 50 years later would prove.
At around 08:09 on 5 October 1999, a Class 165 bound for Bedwyn passed SN109 signal at danger and struck an HST as it made for Paddington. Thirty-one people were killed.
The driver of the ‘165’ had cancelled three AWS warnings before the collision. Something better was needed and this led first to trials of a European-style Automatic Train Protection system, which automatically restricted the speed of a train on the approach to a red. But it was expensive. What was cheaper?
Train Protection and Warning System was cheaper but so effective that it helped cut SPADs to a level that staff in 1952 could have only dreamt about. Yet Ladbroke Grove was about more than train protection, for the driver’s trainer had taught him to drive the train but didn’t provide route knowledge.
GTR’s Dominic Morrow discusses the improvements we’ve made in this area on page 9, but as GTR’s Justin Willett notes in our SPADtalk feature (page 7), it can still cause problems. To help the industry today, RSSB has produced a good practice guide to improve the effectiveness of route training. It does help, though, if you can see all the signals properly.
The approaches to Paddington had been re-signalled for bi-directional working in the early 1990s. Many new signal heads were required, and as space was tight, most were mounted on gantries. The trouble was, the curvature of the formation meant it wasn’t always obvious to an approaching driver which one was for which line.
Later OLE installation obscured the signals even more. The latest Rail Industry Standard on signal sighting takes all this on board and combines the best of the old standards with new guidance to support compliance with updated regulations.
The old and the new? That’s railways. For many, Ladbroke Grove is fading into memory; others weren’t even born when it happened. But its lessons remain important and the best of them need to be taken forward into our new digital age. After all, corporate memory matters.
You can read the reports into the accidents referred to in this article by searching ‘Wealdstone’ and ‘Ladbroke’ on the Railways Archive. Meanwhile, the signal sighting standard can be found by searching RIS-0737-CCS on our website.
