http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/train-hits-car-on-edinburgh-to-helensburgh-line-1-3917088
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » General Edinburgh
"Train hits car on Edinburgh to Helensburgh line"
(29 posts)-
Posted 9 years ago #
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*Rumour*
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@OMG_Designer: @kevlindsayaslef I heard from people living across the street and the police that the car was stolen and pushed on the track...
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Posted 9 years ago # -
Scotrail stopped the whole network when it happened. My train stopped on the middle of the Forth Rail bridge, guard saying they had received an "emergency message" which meant they had no idea what was going on but wearent movingly until they were told they could.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Wife rescued me from Bathgate, the buses weren't due to be put for over an hour after I was put off the train.I was in the train behind, luckily my testing is rubbish or I'd have been on that train instead of frantically rewriting sql.
Posted 9 years ago # -
It looks as though I picked a good day to do my long commute... I was on my big bike enjoying the weather and missed it all.
I couldn't work out where this could have happened, though - there isn't a level crossing anywhere near Uphall. However from the BBC report:
"...The collision is believed to have happened close to the Roman Camp cottages at Uphall..."
and a bit of poking about on StreetView shows that the line is quite close to and at the same height as the road so you could get a car onto it there - but not by accident!Posted 9 years ago # -
Aye, that's right fimm. I've cycled that way quite few times: makes a nice route from Uphall to Broxburn. There is shared use path close to the line at Uphall, then a quiet minor road with Network Rail access gates onto the line. So it's possible they used these to get the car on the tracks.
Posted 9 years ago # -
@steveo
"luckily my testing is rubbish ...
... instead of frantically rewriting sql."identify with that. That sounds like a typical day in my working life...
Posted 9 years ago # -
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@STVEdinburgh: Teenager arrested after train crashed into a pick-up truck on track: http://t.co/RL6xrKufvg http://t.co/BMHd943YDo
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Posted 9 years ago # -
Given that we know from Top Gear that a Toyota HiLux can be dropped from the top of a block of flats, left below high water mark and still be started up it's quite impressive how much damage happened to the pick and how little to the train.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Do all trains still have cow catchers on them since the polmont rail disaster?
Posted 9 years ago # -
For a change, the Hootsmon actually has run some decent stories on this incident. From their article a couple of days ago:
"Lewis Lesley, a retired professor of transport engineering, said: “The people on this train had a lucky escape – it could easily have derailed.” He described the force of a train hitting an obstacle on the track as similar to “a bullet crushing an apple”.
“There’s a lot of energy in the train, and when it hits an object with force, the energy has got to go somewhere” he said. “One of the ways the energy can go is derailing it from its current path. If this train had been travelling faster, the outcome would have been much worse.”Read more: http://www.scotsman.com/news/joyriders-blamed-for-uphall-train-crash-1-3917088
Posted 9 years ago # -
I saw a guy skiing on the cycle path this morning. I guess his skis had wheels on them, it was hard to tell from the train.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Do all trains still have cow catchers on them since the polmont rail disaster?
Yes and no. The object deflectors were only recommended after Polmont on services with a light axle loading(16 tons) on the leading vehicle; such as the consist that hit the cow at Polmont, which had a driving trailer at the front, a rake of carriages and a powerful and heavy locomotive pushing from behind.
The DBSO carriage at Polmont that was leading the train weighed in at 33 tons (8.25 ton axle loading), the Class 47 locomotive pushing from the back is ~125 tons (20.3 tons axle loading). The trains was doing 85mph when it hit the cow (which had only moments before been reported by the driver of the train in the opposite direction that was slowing to call at Polmont.
If the Edinburgh-bound service, which had the locomotive at the front, had hit the cow, it would have been going slower anyway but also would have been unlikely to derail given the weight of the locomotive. There was also a change factor that the femur of the cow came into contact with the wheel flange of the train, causing the wheel to lift off the rail and trigger derailment...
The main improvements after Polmont were not actually the object deflectors, they were to improve the inspection of fences (as the cow had got onto the line through a vandalised fence), to fit in-cab radio to all trains capable of ~100mph or more and to change the rule book so that any livestock on the line are treated as an immediate danger and service is suspended until the animal is removed. Which is why "service delayed due to animals on the line" is a fairly frequent cause of delays now.
The multiple unit that hit the car at Uphall has an axle loading of ~10 tons and has object deflectors designed into the front, hiding hehind a plastic fascia.
The Selby crash in 2001 (where the tired driver fell asleep at the wheel, missed the bridge and drove his Range Rover and trailer onto the tracks) was led by a driving van also (slightly heavier than the one at Polmont and fitted with an object deflector), but again the light leading vehicle and heavy, powerful locomotive pushing from the rear was found to be a contributing factor to the severity of the crash.
The driving van (DVT) of the Edinburgh - London electric trains is always at the London end, therefore there's actually a marginally increased risk from travelling London-bound than Edinburgh-bound. I'm pretty sure I once read somewhere that if there's the risk of drifting snow on the line, that the locomotive would be uncoupled and attached the wrong-way round to lead from the front on the way to London (there's a secondary cab at the back), as if the DVT hit a bank of snow at high speed there's too much of a risk it would be lifted off the track and cause a derailment.
Some Scottish rolling stock also has small snow-deflectors permanently fitted, unsurprisingly for West Highland, Highland and Far North lines services.
Do let me know if you need any further information on axle-loads, object deflectors and which way round trains are running...
Posted 9 years ago # -
The vehicle at Uphall was also reportedly on its roof - I assume that this would make it more unstable, therefore more easily moved/damaged by the train?
Posted 9 years ago # -
"Do let me know if you need any further information"
Do you know which leaves cause the most delays??
Posted 9 years ago # -
How could someone hear too much about trains?
I saw a class 56 tanking though Paisley Gilmour St last week.
Posted 9 years ago # -
My poor wee ma, she came through on Sunday instead, coming out of central en route to queen street she asks an employee, Is this the bus to queen st.?He says Yes but it is also a replacement bus as the train is not running so stay on and you will be in Edinburgh for 13.15pm. In hindsight she should have walked at this point. No bus can make it to Edinburgh in 45 mins, it was 12.30. Two and a half hours later after following the route of the slow train out of central she finally arrives in Edinburgh. Apparently so bumpy she had to hold on to the seat in from for the whole journey. Mental.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Do you know which leaves cause the most delays??
The wrong sort, of course!
Posted 9 years ago # -
Yes, the should connect up Central and Queen St.
Posted 9 years ago # -
@Kaputnik
Thanks for interesting and informative post. However regarding the 2001 crash I thought there were a number of errors in that paragraph.
Minor issues are the vehicle was a Land Rover, not Range Rover and the trailer was not on the tracks but adjacent and was not hit by the train.
I am much more concerned with the following "AGAIN the light leading vehicle and heavy, powerful locomotive pushing from the rear was found to be a contributing factor to the severity of the crash." What is your source for this information ? I don't think it's true for either Polmont or Great Heck.
"Light leading vehicles" continue in use to this day, Obstacle deflectors (cowcatchers) were added but there were no modifications made to increase axle loading.
Push-Pull working also continues to this day. If light vehicles and push-pull working really were contributing factors to the severity of the crash, both had multiple fatalities, then surely there would have been subsequent changes ?
Also for both crashes the drivers activated emergency braking and therefore the "powerful" pushing locomotives were no longer pushing but providing a braking force.
Gary Hart the road driver is responsible but Great Heck is a good example of where multiple events conspired to create a serious crash. The actions of the driver, the design of the road barriers, his vehicle having a trailer and a load, the train Land Rover impact causing a derailment, points diverting the derailed train and finally there being a train travelling in the opposite direction to collide with.
Posted 9 years ago # -
@Dangerous
Thanks for taking time to reply, I was in retrospect falling victim to attempted abbreviation of detailed facts and series of events for the sake of fitting into a digestible post, I wasn't trying to be misleading. (And the details of vehicle type and what part was hit at Great Heck had come out of the depths of my brain, so obviously they had been wrongly retrieved).
I certainly wasn't trying to simplify either accident into a case of "pull mode good, push mode bad", both were a series of unfortunate, conspiring circumstances before and after the initial impact that resulted in accidents far more severe than the sum of the parts. And I definitely wasn't trying to say that push-pull in itself is inherently unsafe; it's not and you won't find it in an official accident report saying that it is (although you will find armchair theoreticians saying so!). Indeed the report for Polmont specifically said push-pull was safe for 90mph but that given then higher speeds planned (110,125mph) that BR definitely needed to go do their homework. Anyway, what I was trying to get across was that in "push" mode, in a limited set of circumstances e.g. object strike at high speed, the risk is increased; even if the change is not that big in the grand scheme of the overall risk from train crash.
Both accident reports for Polmont and Great Heck go into these points, although I'll readily admit to being much more familiar with the former as it's shorter!
The main contributory factor to push-mode being more risky is that if you strike an object on the rail, you are more likely to derail given the lighter leading axle loading. Or perhaps to put it better, the locomotive is less likely to derail in the same scenario due to a significantly higher axle loading; both Polmont and Great Heck investigation reports note that it was less likely that a derailment would have happened in pull-mode. The Polmont report was particularly concerned about the axle loading but goes so far as to detail why it wasn't possible to increase the axle load on a Mk.II DBSO (practically or economically) and even though it was potentially desirable it noted that the axle load was still similar to multiple units running at similar speeds therefore was no more or less risky.
(Although to further muddy things, for Great Heck the report further notes that if the loco had been leading and hadn't detailed in the same manner then this could have changed the accident completely given how much of the damage came subsequently from the collision with the freight train).
The only design change the report did suggest was in the addition object deflectors, and there were many other changes such as the fencing quality / inspection regime and the in-cab radio that are probably more fundamental to improved safety as preventative rather than curative measures, as I think I did justice in my earlier post.
I admit you are right regards power, in both cases emergency brakes were applied and throttles off. Throttle signals are electronic and cut the power more or less instantly, so by implying a scenario where the locomotive was full power, pushing from behind; that was me straying into the realms of a mangled over-simplification of what I was trying to say.
So what I was trying (but failing) to describe requires a bit of delving into the realms of anorakism, which is that the braking dynamic when the emergency brake is applied is different for push and pull modes. The Polmont report goes into this in a bit of detail. When the emergency brake is applied in push mode, the brakes come on in the leading DVT/DBSO first, then propagate along the length of the train pneumatically. This takes a number of seconds. I'm not sure of the specifics for an IC225, but for the Mk.II/III/47 consist at Polmont it was estimated it would ~1s for the DBSO brakes to apply, ~3s for the carriage brakes to be applied, then a further delay of ~3 seconds before the locomotive brakes apply. The latter feature is by design; if the locomotive brake applied before the rest of the train, there would be a surging effect causing an uncomfortable ride. The driver at Polmont had managed to apply the brakes and cut the throttle, but by the time he saw the cow, had reaction time, got the brake handle applied and the braking process commenced, the train hit the cow and the leading carriage derailed; but the locomotive brakes were only just applying. That's what I was trying to put across in the previous post, you've got something big and heavy with a lot of momentum (for Polmont, the locomotive was around a third of the weight of the entire train) pushing on the couplings from behind because the brakes at the back are in a lesser state of application than those in the front.
Anyway... long story short, the train brakes in a different manner when in push vs. pull resulting in a different braking dynamic. Now this was not the reason that either accident happened at Great Heck or Polmont and I wasn't trying to make it sound like it was. Rather, once it was unavoidable that the objects in question would be struck, push-mode was a determining factor (just one of many) to the subsequent unfolding of the accident and therefore severity.
Push mode is of course safe and is used in the UK and even wider on the continent, but BR was concerned enough after Polmont that when they were designing the Mk.III and IV DVT designs that they removed the passenger compartments, increased the axle loading significantly and built in object deflectors as standard. They had Polmont in the front of their minds certainly.
Anyway, you were right to pick me up and I hope I've managed to explain myself a bit better.
Interestingly (or concerningly), at Great Heck it was found that First Class seats were more likely to become detached in an accident than Standard Class.
Posted 9 years ago # -
And now technology has moved on that the Pendolino (west coast) trains have passenger seats right up to the front. One ended up in a field at Grayrigg and only one elderly person died that day.
Posted 9 years ago # -
The Pendolino is an overgrown multiple unit, with motors throughout the entire train, and therefore a more or less equal axle loading. The rail industry has been heading in this direction for a while now, and that's great unless you yearn for a ride without the noise and vibration of traction motors under your seat.
It's worth noting that the Mark 3 coaching stock (Polmont), Mark 4 (Great Heck) and Pendolino all have extremely good crashworthiness.
Posted 9 years ago # -
As vehicles which are potentially travel at over 125mph (and have) The Bendy**os (in colloquial railspeak) have a zone with bikes/kitchen in the leading sections of driving vehicles. Only about half the driving vehicles is a passenger compartment. Mallard (225's have DVT's as do these trains when used for Ipswich and Marylebone-Birmingham. Voyagers also have that zone)
The major damage at Great Heck was produced by 2 other factors.
1) there was a siding and cross-over, which further deflected the express, into a head on course for the freight train.
2) the freight train had I think just passed under a bridge which presented a further containment.
HST's which I think are about 18T/axle have on at least 2 occasions proved remarkably good at flying having landed cleanly back on the rails after striking debris/track destressers on plain track at around 60mph. Most flying trains make very bad landings.
The 2007 Grayrigg crash which caused the death of an old lady travelling on the train is the last passenger death on a UK train service, we came very close in 2010 - thanks to a truck driver driving off a bridge and earlier this year when another truck driver pushed the parapet of a bridge on to the track and the bungling by those at the scene not following the instructions posted on the bridge, and the 999 operator/Police, failing even to use the public 24 hour contact number and the 'emergency' option, so the train which was over 15 miles away at that instant, and doing 90mph did not get a red signal or radio message to stop.
We have the damning conclusions from Great Heck (Highways Agency's failure to provide deflection barriers to contain any vehicles on the M62 at this location) and Oxshott (Surrey CC and DfT receiving 4 action point calls from the RAIL Regulator on risk management and bridge condition monitoring)
Expect the report on most recent incident (Froxfield) soon but in the bulletin, issued within 2 weeks of any major air or rail incident, there are very pointed notes on the wasting of 10 minutes in which the train could have been safely stopped.....
Posted 9 years ago # -
HST's which I think are about 18T/axle
Yes, this was the design limit because BR felt that the Deltics (also around 18t) which were geared for 100mph represented the sensible limit of track forces, and the HSTs were expected to have very high route availability whilst running at 125mph.
OS Nock noted that the HST's peak inertial force over a surface defect when running at 125mph was more severe than was tolerable, compared with a Deltic at 100mph, while the secondary peak force, into the ballast, was lower. He didn't seem to explain whether any suspension changes were made in respect of this. Reducing running speed of course lowers the inertial force but we have HSTs routinely hitting 128mph.
It was something that Henry Petroski highlighted, that great disasters often occurred only because of the specific, unpredictable and unforseen confluence of several more minor factors. Titanic didn't just sink because it scraped an iceberg; the lookouts didn't have their binoculars because someone was away with the key to the cabinet; the air temperature and the sea temperature just happened to coincide, causing a mirage that obscured the true horizon; the rivets weren't specified as Best Best iron; the rudder design was insufficient for turning effectively. Piper Alpha wasn't a disaster just because a gas leak caught fire: the permit to work system was muddled which meant jobs weren't closed out correctly; the fireproof walls weren't expected to be blastproof, and consequently generated shrapnel in the explosion; the fire deluge control panel was destroyed by that shrapnel; the safety system for the workers was flawed with no muster points accessible through smoke; the condensate injection pumps were blocked; and the oil risers didn't have cut-off valves. Who could have expected such a gross combination of events?
Posted 9 years ago # -
@Tulyar
At the risk of sounding like a broken record.
Great Heck Point 2) regarding the bridge is incorrect.
The official report says the exact opposite.
http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/HSE_HeckRep001.pdf
Excerpt from Para 12.4
"If a collision with the freight train had occurred north of the Pollington Lane bridge, then the severity of the incident may well have been much worse. The IC225, irrespective of the DVT or locomotive leading, could have run into the bridge abutments and the embankment that forms the road approach to the bridge, with similarities to the incident at Eschede, Germany
in 1998."One of the key factors regarding the severity of the crash is the colossal amount of energy involved. It holds the record as the highest speed train collision in the UK ever at 142 MPH. The combined weight of the two trains was approx 2500 Tonnes!
That James Hill, whom was Instructing the freight train driver survived is close to unbelievable.
To me the most amazing thing about Great Heck is that
Posted 9 years ago #
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