Nicholas Lewis
Established Member
The railway inspectorate ran investigations before RAIB and were equally thorough and its from those reports that the bulk of lessons were learnt that make todays railway so safe.
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How long should it take to clear up after an accident?
- Thread starter SteveT
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R
RailUK Forums
Well hardly. In the Bedford incident all the vehicles of both trains remained on the formation, with substantially flat fields around. At Grayrigg they fell down an embankment. As wikipedia further says "The momentum of the other vehicles caused the front of the second passenger carriage to jack-knife against the back of the first coach, eventually pushing it down the embankment and through 190 degrees, to face in the opposite direction to travel. The resulting forces led to the remaining seven coaches derailing, with all but one coming to rest in the adjacent field."
From tonight's TV pictures it would seem they have already poured the concrete pad and made good progress with laying the trackway.
Nicholas Lewis
Established Member
This was an aerial view of the site https://x.com/philatrail/status/2068779781227688122
RUK
Member
Who owns the land that the access road is being built on? Wouldn’t they need planning permission to build a road?
Lloyds siding
Member
No. As 'Statuary Undertakers' bodies like Network Rail can, in an emergency, do whatever is 'reasonable' to access their railway for recovery, repair, etc.
Being 'reasonable', they will pay compensation.
The concrete pour is for the pad that the cranes will sit on. You can see the ground works gave started for that in the top of the aerial image linked above.
The track way being laid will likely be metal panels. Readily hired from multiple suppliers and in use for all sorts of temporary road access. An unusually large amount of it probably available at the moment because of no Glastonbury which would normally use miles off the the stuff.
Nicholas Lewis
Established Member
Not sure if Ainscough are still the heavy lift crane framework supplier to NR but they've undertaken recovery jobs like this in the past as well as the installation and removal of plenty of large rail infrastructure assets so have a good working relationship with NRs other civil framework suppliers.
Yes, there's a big Ainscough telescopic visible on Look East. Seems it is on four big load spreaders on the bare earth. Two ?360 carriages have already been lifted off the track to where it can pick them up. Two other ?810 carriages still on the track but turned onto their sides. With a lot of daylight left they are making good progress.
Nicholas Lewis
Established Member
Impressive response and have to give to those leading the recovery they have moved at pace. It also suggests RAIB have released the site as well. Bizarre why two of the 810 vehicles are on their side
Some footage here of the recovery
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZ46TeMt2Zc/
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Footage good. Some ill-informed and tasteless comments there as well!
Thought you might have a theory about the tipping. Presumably they are a write-off as there will be a lot of collateral damage to the sides now. They seem to be upright again for the big lift. (My experience more to do with wind turbines.)
LTM1500 seems OTT, perhaps it was nearest or they needed the reach. At least they didn't in the end have to wait for any concrete to cure (even if using a postcrete-like mix).
61653 HTAFC
Veteran Member
Railway accidents are far rarer, and because road collisions are so common the police will get plenty of practice on how to quickly gather evidence before handing the site over to the clean-up team. Unless there's been a fire (or a particularly heavy impact or a load being shed) the road surface itself is unlikely to be damaged beyond some broken glass needing to be swept up. A derailment is almost certain to have caused some damage to the track, and any damage at all renders it unsafe.
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I'm not sure this is the case now, due to crumple zones. Modern rail vehicles are designed to absorb energy, so structurally they're sacrificial.
There's been a sort of upturned bathtub curve of crashworthiness- from vehicles being reduced to matchwood, to being extremely strong thus transferring the energy of impact onto the occupants (but hey, at least you can repair the vehicle), to now having strategic weaknesses (crumple zones) built in to increase survivability.
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renegademaster
Established Member
Is there kind of a PR aspect as well, as in they don't want people to see smashed up carriages as they go past and get put off train travel? Whereas in historical incidents that would have been the case
Falcon1200
Established Member
Perhaps because road collisions occur far more frequently than those on rail, and rail accidents each have their own unique circumstances - I cannot recall the last time there was a rear-end collision on the UK rail network. There is also no need to examine signalling systems in forensic detail for road accidents!