Steam train SPAD at Wootton Bassett Junction, 7 March 2015 - RAIB investigation

[whole diary]

[ellendune]

Has the court case happened then - I had not heard anything.

[Rooke]

ORR^» (Office of Rail and Road formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about) have issued a press release this evening. West Coast fined £200,000 and ordered to pay costs of £64,000.
Driver Cox received 4 month prison sentence suspended for 18 months.

[bobm]

Full story from Swindon Advertiser

THE driver of a steam train involved in a 'near miss' had his head out of the window to see where he was going because the windscreen kept misting up, a court heard yesterday.

Melvyn Cox also told a colleague to turn off safety systems which would have automatically stopped the engine before the incident at Royal Wootton Bassett.

By the time he saw the red light it was too late to stop the train, going from Bristol to London, which was left straddling the junction seconds after a high speed passenger train had passed through.

Had he got there a minute earlier the steam train Tangmere could have been involved in a 'disastrous' smash with an Intercity 125 from South Wales to London.

West Coast Railway Company Limited was fined £200,000 plus £64,000 costs.

Mark Watson, prosecuting, told Swindon Crown Court how the two warning systems fitted to the train had been switched off prior to the incident.

As a result, when the driver failed to hear the alarm going off the brakes were not automatically applied, as they should have been.

Cox had his head out of the window as the front window was misted up due to a small steam leak.

It meant when a safety system was activated for a temporary speed limit, which didn't affect them, he was late pressing a button causing the brakes to kick in.

Instead of bringing the train to a halt and contacting the signalman, as the rulebook says, he told his fireman to switch off the safety system so they could carry on.

Moments later the horn sounded to warn of a yellow signal.

When the alarm went off again for the red light at signal SN45 they again carried on until Cox spotted it flashing at the side of the track and put on the emergency brake.

Mr Watson said: "As he was travelling at excessive speed, the heavy locomotive came to a stand across Wootton Bassett junction 690 metres from the signal.

"A London bound high speed train carrying approximately 240 passengers had passed the junction on the Badminton line a minute before.

"A collision was only narrowly avoided with the potential consequences that can be imagined."

Cox, of Shirley Close, Swanage, Dorset, and his employers both admitted two health and safety offences.

David Travers QC, for West Coast Railway, said the company had changed its health and safety training since the incident.

Mark Watson, for Cox, said: "He fully recognises his breach and the fact he put a number of people at risk.

"The public are very right to expect the very highest standards of care to be exercised by train drivers on the public railways.

"He fell inexcusably short of that standard on this particular day."

The court heard the train driver, who has been in the business since leaving school as a 15-year-old more than 50 years ago, had been left a broken man by the incident.

Judge Peter Blair QC imposed a four-month jail term suspended for 18 months.

[TonyK]

That ORR^» (Office of Rail and Road formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about) press release.

Train operator fined for safety failings
27 June 2016

Train operator West Coast Railway Company Limited (WCRC) has been fined £200,000 and ordered to pay costs of £64,000. This follows a prosecution brought by the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) for breaches of health and safety laws which led to a train passing a signal at danger near Wootton Bassett on 7 March 2015.

Melvyn Cox, a train driver with 40 years’ experience, has also received a four-month prison sentence, suspended for 18 months.

ORR investigated an incident involving a steam locomotive operated by WCRC between Bristol and Southall, which passed a signal at danger near Wootton Bassett junction in Wiltshire. The train stopped almost 700 metres after the signal, across a busy junction on the Great Western main line.

ORR inspectors found significant failings in WCRC’s managerial controls. The company had not implemented appropriate procedures, training or monitoring of staff to stop intentional misuse of the Train Protection and Warning System (TPWS^▸ (Train Protection and Warning System)) equipment.

Our evidence showed the train’s driver Melvyn Cox directed a colleague to turn off this essential safety system, designed to automatically apply an emergency brake.

WCRC and Melvyn Cox both pleaded Guilty at Swindon Crown Court today.

Ian Prosser, HM Chief Inspector of Railways said:

Train operating companies and their drivers hold positions of great responsibility, with a duty to protect the safety of colleagues and passengers. Almost all undertake their roles in accordance with the rules and their training. West Coast Railway Company’s (WCRC) ineffective management led to their train driver deliberately misusing a key safety system on a train travelling between Bristol and Southall. This prosecution has led to WCRC taking significant steps to improve its management of safety, with support from the regulator. Rail safety remains one of the regulator’s key priorities and we will always take action against companies or individuals if failings are found.

[grahame]

It's unbelievable that crews still take chances with AWS^▸ (Automatic Warning System)/TPWS^▸ (Train Protection and Warning System), but sadly some still do.

A reminder of what could have been ... from Harrow and Wealdstone during the morning rush hour of 8 October 1952.   This was before the days of full AWS, and the report reminds us of the importance of such a system.

"It passed a colour light signal at caution, two semaphore signals at danger, and had burst through the trailing points of the crossover from the slow lines". 112 people were killed and 340 injured ... as there was a train stopped in the platform

The report considered a system warning drivers that they had passed a signal at caution or danger would have prevented ten percent of the accidents (and 28% of the consequent deaths) in the previous forty-one years, thereby saving 399 lives, including the 112 at Harrow.

Read more at London Connections and Wikipedia

[ChrisB]

Full story from Swindon Advertiser

he court heard the train driver, who has been in the business since leaving school as a 15-year-old more than 50 years ago, had been left a broken man by the incident.

Judge Peter Blair QC imposed a four-month jail term suspended for 18 months.

All I can say is Good. You don't play with people's lives. EVER.

[TonyK]

That this did not end in massive loss of life was certainly more down to good luck than good judgement. Had the train passed the signal a few seconds earlier, our driver would be in prison for a long time, and the company would not be let anywhere near even a model railway.

He has been left "a broken man" by the incident. As would I had it been me. To quote the Bard "The offender's sorrow lends but weak relief, To him that bears the strong offence's cross". 50 years in the industry makes his deliberate actions even more inexcusable.

[ChrisB]

One wonders just how long he'd been doing this.....

[IndustryInsider]

All I can say is Good. You don't play with people's lives. EVER.

I quite agree.  Sometimes we do go overboard on Health & Safety IMHO^▸ (in my humble opinion), but such actions have no place in the modern train driving world.  The reason these incidents are so rare is because 'professional driving' has moved on massively since the spate of crashes around the turn of the century, and TPWS^▸ (Train Protection and Warning System) has successfully intervened on several occasions where mistakes have been made to stop potential loss of life collisions.  Prior to that rules were regularly broken (the isolated ATP^▸ (Automatic Train Protection) and AWS^▸ (Automatic Warning System) of the 1997 Southall crash is a prime example), and that's precisely why there was usually a bad accident every year or two.  Prior to that, in steam days, SPAD^▸ (Signal Passed At Danger)'s were quite common and often not even recorded - I've heard stories of a friendly wave from the signaller from the window of the box to say "Never mind, carry on, no harm done." often being the way such incidents were resolved!

Any more 'rogue drivers' out there had better take note of this particular incident.

[Billhere]

The AWS^▸ (Automatic Warning System) on that HST^▸ (High Speed Train) at Southall was isolated in  accordance with the rules at that time. It quite clearly stated that the train could run with it isolated to avoid cancellation or delay.

A colleague of mine took the first call about the AWS being isolated when it was at Oxford in the early morning, and it ran to Padd like it. He took the Drivers report and passed it on, but at that time there was not any replacement set available so it ran in that state, in accordance with the rule at that time.

The set went to Swansea after that with the AWS correctly working on the Swansea end of the train. When it was ready to come back the driver reported that the AWS was isolated and the same situation arose, no replacement unit available to take it out of service so the train was allowed to run, again in accordance with the rule at that time.

The rule was changed after that event as a result of the enquiry.

ATP^▸ (Automatic Train Protection), don't know anything about that, so can't say.