cjmillsnun
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BR were trialling an enhanced AWS back in the 60's. It could show the aspect of a 4 aspect signal in cab. Unfortunately it was seen as too costly.
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Bedford (Elstow) collision reporting by Daily Express: is this accurate or misleading?
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MarlowDonkey
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Is this perhaps the problem? Would the driver have been anticipating at worst a Double Yellow and cancelled the warning out of habit without registering the red.
I'm not sure that would tally with evidence the train was going 76mph in the section - would that not be too high for double yellows?
Annetts key
Established Member
I'm not going to speculate. But the problem of some drivers getting in the habit of automatically acknowledging the AWS horn because it's become something routine is a long standing issue since AWS installation became widespread.
Please don't take this as me saying anything bad about train drivers. They are normally a very safety conscious bunch.
But they are human.
Given the line speed I dont think 76mph is unreasonable at double yellows. Service braking is FROM the double yellow (or yellow in 3 aspect signalling) TO the red.
wolfman
Member
You mean you belive the Daily express
GRALISTAIR
Established Member
Exactly. Imho the Daily Express is the least reliable of all the well known papers. Wikipedia will not allow citations from it.
DerekC
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I don't know where the double yellow came from. The latest RAIB update is quite clear. 1H46 got a yellow as it left the slow line platform at Bedford, another yellow from the signal protecting Bedford South junction where it crossed to the up fast, then passed the next signal at red. I can speculate as to what was going through the driver's head but I am not going to.
It's OT anyway - I hope we are all agreed that the Daily Express's reporting is (as usual) misleading rubbish click-bait. All we can do is make sure that what we put on this website is informed and accurate.
glynmonhughes
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'Axed' and 'huge' are both search-engine optimisation expressions which generate clickbait. It happens all the time.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Partly agree with you. On the other hand, there are a lot of people on here who are commenting and making suggestions as to how journalism works with no idea how it works in practice.
nom de guerre
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Very much this.
I wonder if something else going on in the cab, just at the inopportune moment, might distract a driver from observing a signal properly in the few seconds they have before passing it after the AWS horn. After that, there's no reminder in the cab of that last red aspect.
A fast-accelerating merging and closely following maneuver like this may sometimes see the 1st signal after the junction stepping up from red to yellow right in front. That could reinforce the assumption, and perhaps they may fail to recheck that it has actually cleared after first seeing it at red in that short window of visibility.
I also worry that the late braking and high speed of collision implies the 360 may not have been on course to stop at the next signal either.
Davester50
Member
And remember, Wikipedia is not a reliable source, so should generally be taken with a pinch of salt.
Now they've banned a co-founder form editing.
riceuten
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Every source has a bias - but I would trust Wikipedia over the Daily Express
bramling
Veteran Member
There is, unfortunately, always the possibility that when the facts come out we find that the driver was distracted by something at a crucial time, either an in-work task, or - worse - a non-work one. Unfortunately this is something that *has* been a factor in incidents recently, most notably the Kirkby station buffer stops collision.
I don’t think we should go too far down the non-work task road until more facts come out though, as the individual at the centre of the incident is tragically not around to defend himself, and there is currently no positive evidence to suggest that this could have been a factor.
I could understand the driver essentially forgetting about the single yellow, but in that situation it would be expected for the train to still have made a last-minute brake application upon sighting the red aspect. The fact this didn’t happen suggests there is more to this, but we’ll have to be patient and hope RAIB manage to work out what that might be.
It's hilarious how little people know about how Wikipedia really works.
It's only by a small margin, but Wikipedia actually considers the Daily Express to be more reliable than the Daily Mail.
What this means in practice, is that in the Wikipedia article about this rail crash, you cannot cite the Mail in any way. Even if a Mail journalist was on the train, even if they are a respected journalist who has interviewed Prime Ministers, if they wrote about the crash under a Mail byline, you cannot use it. You cannot even refer to it. Officially, it does not exist.
They effectiveley cancelled the Mail, all the way back in 2016, when you know who got elected. They hoped that if Wikipedia didn't treat the Mail as if it was a real newspaper, the rest of the world would follow suit. And that's been a huge success, clearly.
By contrast, if an Express journalist merely slaps up some copy about the crash, even if it contains a glaring error, there's no actual ban on referring to it in Wikipedia. If no other "reliable source" (or the RAIB) actually contradicts the glaring error, then you can acknowledge this journalism exists on Wikipedia. You could write "according to the Daily Express [complete garbage]". It's then up to Wikipedia readers how much store they put in it.
It wouldn't matter how many people (say, from a well informed forum) invaded Wikipedia demaning it be removed. You're not "reliable sources".
You can ask Wikipedia to upgrage their dim view of the Express so that it matches the Mail. But that's all you can do, ask. By contrast, people have the legal right to force a retraction/correction of this story, based on containing a serious and glaring factual accuracy.
Welshy1717
Member
So it seems the MML will have its first service in the early hours tomorrow morning, since the incident on that fateful friday afternoon.
Corby to St Pancras International
Corby to St Pancras International
GRALISTAIR
Established Member
Great news - (and selfishly). I have a return trip booked Wednesday. Preston to Sheffield changing at Manchester Piccadilly - then Sheffield to St Pancras and return. I will see what info I can glean. Hopefully some interesting locos at Leicester too.
Pedantically, they ran 2 southbound and 1 northbound on Friday, while TL ran from 1400 till the weekend engineering works kicked in.
cornishjohn
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** ASSUMING ** constant deceleration, 9 s from 76 to 49 mph is a distance 275 yards. To finish stopping the train needed a further c. 196 yards. The next gantry I can see on google earth is about 2/3rds of a mile away.
A useful calculation.
Do we know whether the position of the brake application was consistent with the AWS not being acknowledged at WH 154 (which we know was passed at red) and tripping the brakes as a consequence. Or would that have happened nearer the signal (further north) than it did?
MarlowDonkey
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Was it not the case that the signal was not protected by TPWS, so the system was reliant on the driver not cancelling the warning and observing the signal correctly?
Not quite, it was reliant on EITHER the driver not cancelling the warning (in which case the AWS would have applied the brakes) OR the driver observing the signal correctly and applying the brakes himself.
I was enquiring if anyone has done the calcs to know where the brakes would have been applied if the driver had for some reason neither applied the brakes himself nor cancelled the warning (e.g. bc he was incapacitated).
The AWS would have done this automatically (without any TPWS as per this thread), but to know where it would have happened you need to know exactly
- where the second magnet is
- how long it takes for the AWS to recognise a failure to acknowledge and apply the brakes
- the speed of the train at the magnet and what its speed profile was until the brakes came on
Then we can add @cornishjohn's 471 yards to see where the AWS would have brought the train to rest.
Is there some confusion about the definition of "next" here?
According to the RAIB: "RAIB’s preliminary examination has found that train 1B67 was standing next to WH152 signal when the accident occurred."
The point of impact was thus ~5*26m from WH152, at which point 1H46 was (according to the RAIB) estimated to be doing 49mph. So had 1B67 continued but only as far as the next section by that moment, WH152 would have been correspondingly red and 1H46 would have had about 150 yards to stop so as to avoid having passed both it and WH154 at danger.
The collision therefore intervened before the passing of a further signal (at whatever aspect). That's how I read the relevant remark by @MarkyT
stephen rp
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Daily Telegraph has a strange extra snippet (and sensationalist headline) but doesn't seem to be from the RAIB report. Even if it was obvious what it meant it doesn't sound like it would have made any difference to this incident:
A formal letter issued to Network Rail in January 2013 by the Rail Safety Standards Board (RSSB) said that to comply with modern safety standards, an “additional signal section” – meaning an extra signal light – needed to be installed on the “Up Fast approach to Bedford South Junction”.
But Network Rail told the RSSB it opposed this, leading the safety body to conclude: "Such changes would be substantial and disproportionate to the benefits offered."
www.yahoo.com
A formal letter issued to Network Rail in January 2013 by the Rail Safety Standards Board (RSSB) said that to comply with modern safety standards, an “additional signal section” – meaning an extra signal light – needed to be installed on the “Up Fast approach to Bedford South Junction”.
But Network Rail told the RSSB it opposed this, leading the safety body to conclude: "Such changes would be substantial and disproportionate to the benefits offered."
Rail chiefs refused new signals near fatal crash site
Rail chiefs overruled a safety recommendation to install extra signals near the site of the fatal train crash in Bedford, The Telegraph can disclose.
It's been suggested in another thread that this wording could indicate a train whose front has passed the signal (at least some of the train was occupying the track circuit for WH154 and was thus protected though, this is a known fact) .
We can be sure the 360 did not pass a further signal. It crashed into the 810 at some point shortly before the next signal (which was the one the 810 was "next to").
Accepted, this is a valid point. In which case, the 360 can only be said to have been less than or equal to 150 yd from WH152 at 49mph making it more likely that the only reason it didn't inevitably pass it regardless of aspect is because it hit the 810 first.
This was the remark that led here, in which my interpretation that "next" meant WH152 might be faulty:
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