Thanks for sharing pictures, i think it's important to share pictures (that aren't graphic) of incidents involving transport as it's all part of reality and we shouldn't shield ourselves from how dangerous vehicles can be. If we don't know the consequences then we may become complacent.
Apparently the first incident where the first train derailed, took down all the signalling in the area. The second train therefore got no signal to stop. I don’t understand why some sort of failsafe didn’t kick in, but no doubt that will come out in the investigation. I hope it wasn’t vandalism that caused the first incident.
Ah jeez that's bad. Glad everyone made it out safe. I agree I really really hope someone wasn't stupid enough to vandalise the track/signals
Some useful reaction from the excellent Gareth Dennis, putting the slight scaremongering into perspective.
Very sad news. I feel for him / her. Not what you really expect to happen when you go to work even though we all know there is always risk of something like this happening
Very unfortunate news. Though looking at the cab it’s easy to understand why. Shame the earlier reports weren’t fully accurate.
My Thoughts are with all the people and family involved and I wish the driver well. Reading an article earlier on a lot of reports are now saying it may have been a signal failure that caused the SWR train to collide with the GWR train which caused it to derail.
Early findings from RAIB indicate it was likely caused by a SPAD, due to low adhesion. https://twitter.com/philatrail/status/1455568926469808131 Investigation is ongoing, however, and the 'derailment knocking out the signalling' theory has pretty much been ruled out.
I thought it was a bit strange because I always thought if a signal fails it will always show a danger aspect and if a signal is out for whatever reason then drivers should take this as a signal at danger and the AWS and TPWS will also treat the signal as a danger aspect.
Breaking news update http://news.sky.com/story/train-inv...-past-stop-signal-investigators-find-12458826 Interesting with how it was initially reported by Network Rail. I'm still a bit confused though.
Must have been quite the wheel slip. Presumably prior to the red there would have been the double yellow/yellow signals slowing the train down. The speed limit was 20mph. But the second train was still going fast enough to wheel slip quite a significant distance - despite impacting the rear of the first train.
It was ‘wheel slide’ and happened during both the service braking (from before the caution signal prior to the red signal) and the emergency braking (after 12 seconds of normal braking) as the driver was trying to stop the train, and the train hit the side of the other train not the rear. Wheel slide happening isn’t an indication of how fast the train was going as it can occur at any speed, and the train will slide until it gets better adhesion. It was likely that there was next to no adhesion between the rail and train wheels for the slide to occur for so long in this case. Wheel slip occurs during acceleration (slow or stationary train, fast spinning wheels), wheel slide occurs during braking (moving train, stationary wheels).
Yeah, you can slide for a long while, have a look at this training video from the early 2000s (which has been circulated in light of the low adhesion theory), in response to an incident involving a 170 which slid for about 2 miles. 158s don't exactly have a track record of being particularly good with adhesion (they were even taken out of service completely one autumn, and were re-introduced as hybrid units, with a Class 156 car). I believe they still are only disk braked, which is a nightmare for this sort of stuff, whereas more modern trains use a combination of tread and disk brakes IIRC.
I still expect that newspapers and late running passengers will scoff at "Leaves on the line". This shows how little adhesion trains actually have with the track in poor conditions. Even in the best of conditions the contact patch is minimal.
Here's their interim report for those who like reading: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/collision-between-passenger-trains-at-salisbury-tunnel-junction
Line Speed drops from 90 to 50 for the trains coming from London - so the 159 would have been carrying some speed on approach. Also on the SW there was a near miss where a 450 slid through two stations after hitting a mix of ice and leaf mulch - it came within about 150m of a 455 that was in front and was still doing some speed at the time
I was sent a video today of what I think was a 66 or similar trying to pull it out. As they sat throttling it up there must have been a hell of a lot of resistance. This is the rails afterwards where the train was trying to pull it out. It's melted them with the friction I guess I don't know the photographer for this so cannot credit unfortunately
It was a 59, the predecessor to the 66 first built in the 80s for Yeoman. It certainly was struggling but I'm surprised as how bad that is.
The video mentioned in the above posts. It doesn't seem a very safety conscious way of going about it. Quite impressive to watch though. (Slight language warning)
It does seem rather haphazard. Piece of "rope", not taking up the slack 1st, standing close to said rope. Tricky place to get equipment into I suppose, what with it being in a cutting without much access, so they had to try a bit of improvisation. Here's some more views. It shows how wedged in the 158/9s were. I believe they have got them out now.
I don't think it was. That doesn't look to be in the same place. I'm not even sure that's in the UK, the track and sleepers look different.
You've got me questioning it too. I was sent it by my dad who has friends on the railway. I'm questioning it. HMMMMM I may have been Fake News'd by them
If that line had parted, there would have been four orange-clad half-workers there. WTF didn't they first use a dozer to free the wreck?
And there was that incident at Chalfont and Latimer where a Chiltern train came within 30m of a met line train at the station.