Train crash between Bedford and Luton

[june35]

Hope everyone is okay but it looks serious. I wonder what caused it, you don’t hear of many train crashes these days.

That's not possible. There are too many safeguards in place on a modern track circuit to prevent that. Any faults on a track circuit result in all the signals going to red.

Yes you could bring down the rail network by tampering with the IT (and that is a possibility eg deliberate hacking) but it would not result in a crash. It would just stop trains running.

There really isn't a way for someone to deliberately cause a train crash - other than to put some into the line to cause a derailment (eg Upton neffet crash where a suicide car driver stopped on a level crossing)

There isn't a simple failure that would have resulted in the crash & it will be a combination of failures, the biggest being lack of ETCS on the line (which would have prevented the corby train entering the protective 'envelope' around the stationary nottingham train) a signal passed at danger (SPAD) & then the awkward location of the nottingham train (stopped due to technical fault not at a signal) so that the automatic braking system failed to stop the corby train in time.

Rail accident investigation is very thorough (on the same level as air accident investigation) so the causes will be identified.

There won't be a conspiracy theory/russians/chemtrails or the COVID vaccine involved. I can guarantee that for you!

The Nottingham train was stationary due to a technical fault so in awkward position on the track circuit (between signals)

The line still uses AWS/TPWS rather than the newer ETCS system so a SPAD combined with an awkward position could have meant that automatic braking couldn't stop the train in time.

The investigation will be thorough & complex but I hope it leads to recommendations that all lines are upgraded to ETCS as the accident would have been impossible on a line where that was fully implemented

The ones in France at the start of the Olympics were fires being deliberately started weren't they?

As I recall it the French action in 2024 resulted in network disruption but didn't result in any accidents.

There's been a handful of small aircraft accidents in the US in the last few days but no one is jumping to the conclusion that's down to terrorism...more likely down to way randomness works.

The new Universal United Kingdom Resort is due to be constructed very close to where the accident happened. Local councillors and residents are concerned that the current road & rail infrastructure is completely inadequate for the expected number of 8.5 million visitors a year, so it is likely that this rail line is earmarked for upgrading in the near future.

I didnt mean for seatbelts particularly, I more meant that you pay the same amount to stand on an hours trip crammed in like a sardine as you do sitting down for that hour. And yes from a safety point of view having several hundred people slamming around onto each other while a train crashes is surely less safe than a carraige where half the amount of people are sitting in their seats?

Believe it or not, crowded trains have proved safer in accidents than half-empty ones. The biggest cause of injury in train crashes is people coming into contact with solid objects.

Studies have also shown seat belts would not make trains safer.

There was a passenger fatality as a result of the crash near Talerddig in wales in 2024. It was a head on but still quite a similar situation.

You're right, although wasn't that a single track line with passing places rather than a main line?

@TransportNerd Arguably the Talerddrig and Waterloo crashes have causes that bear some similarity to Clapham. We do need to make sure as an industry that we don't forget why those controls were introduced. That is a side issue, though.

The RAIB will be doing a thorough investigation, and it does little good to speculate until their report is complete. We have a very safe rail system, however; you are still much safer in a train than in a car.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/collision-between-two-passenger-trains-near-elstow

TL;DR - the signalling system was working correctly. For some reason, yet to be determined, the train that crashed into the rear of the stationary one passed a red signal. It's almost 99.99999999% certain now to be driver error.

Not terrorism. Not hackers. Not dark forces acting maliciously.

Massive shout out to the community spirit of all the taxi drivers in Bedford on Friday afternoon, who provided a free service to anyone who needed it, including hospital staff called into work and for stranded passengers.

That's a worry about the preliminary findings. More will come out, no doubt.

@TransportNerd I didn’t get that near certainty on driver error from that statement at all. My reading was until the recovery operation is complete they won’t be able to assess the functioning of on board systems. It’s still looking to me like system error is a possibility alongside driver error (or a combination of the two). Have I missed something?

@partystress I don't think you missed anything, I just read the report and it says the train passed a red light moments before the crash. They have yet to say how close the train was to the light when it turned red, or how close to the stopped train the red light was, or at what point the brakes came on. Far too many questions still to be answered before any conclusions can be drawn.

Hasn't Trump reduced the number of air traffic controllers?

That's a long story but there's been an increasing shortage of ATC'rs in the States for quite some time now, pre-dates Trump and is (possibly) down to T&Cs....

The current administration has promised to fix it.

There may have been an issue with the Automatic Warning System, but even so, that's there as a driving aid, and not an absolutely foolproof safety system.

Rail signals never, under normal circumstances, change from green to red as trains approach, unless there's a sudden fault or emergency. The report states clearly that the driver encountered a single yellow at one signal, followed by a red at the next, in the normal sequence, with no faults detected in the system.

The stopped train would have turned signals red behind it.

While we certainly still don't have 100% certainty on why the train passed a red signal, there's enough information there to rule out any form of hacking, interference or foul play.

Yes, the way I read the report was that it's still unknown whether the automatic warning system worked as normal (giving the driver the horn sound because of the upcoming red light) and whether the driver responded as normal (acknowledging the warning sound), but he still passed the red signal.

It says the brakes were on for nine seconds, reducing the speed from 76 to 49mph on collision.

Exactly. AWS is only there as an additional warning of an upcoming red signal, and at the sort of speeds the train was travelling at, won't stop it in time.