January 26th, 2019
One of the events that played a major role in my life was the heavy head-on collision at Ladbroke Grove Junction, a few miles outside London Paddington station, on the 5th of October 1999. The impact speed was higher than 125 mph, 200 km/h, and the devastation was enormous, not only because of the actual collision impact but also because a diesel fuel fire ripped through the wreckage of the high-speed train involved. Even if we take in account that despite this speed and fire “only” 31 passengers lost their lives and that, despite more than 150 wounded, a great lot of people on the morning rush hour trains actually walked away from the wreckage. It was the accident that made me start to write, in fact. In the nights following the crash I couldn’t sleep and decided to use that time to write down what I thought had happened, despite the fact that I had only been involved in a very sideward manner through getting caught up in the resulting snarl-up of trains near Reading in Berkshire, the first InterCity station out of Paddington. The Ladbroke Grove crash still is the one event on the railway that hit me harder than any of the other issues I encountered, like e.g. people that jumped in front of my train etc. These pictures and the story attached were published in the book about accidents I wrote. I’d like to discuss the images to some greater extent.
Part of my personal dealing with the aftermath of the accident, was carrying a camera to document the environment in which it occurred. Doing so obviously required me to temporarily divert my attention from driving my train, of course, but when you are travelling under signals with green aspects and your Automatic Train Protection display tells you that your speed is within what is permitted locally you can actually safely do that. If not, the system would stop you anyway and record that on the “black box”: not a jolly thing to have on your record. In the USA PTC would do that job, incidentally. Another thing is that Stanley Hall, the man with whom I wrote quite a lot of stuff on safety issues, was with me in the cab when I took the picture of the site where the offending driver that day went through a red light. The term used for such an event on the railways in Britain is a SPAD, a signal passed at danger. There were at the time two systems that were meant to prevent SPAD’s from happening, the ancient Automatic Warning System, which failed to prevent that accident, and Automatic Train Protection, which also failed to prevent the accident from happening. That was because the system wasn’t switched on on the High Speed Train and it wasn’t fitted on the local Diesel Multiple Unit (DMU) train, which all had to do with cutting cost. In fact, cutting cost was a matter that blighted decent safety on Britain’s tracks for many long years; and the UK was by no means the only network where it played a decisive role in the cause of accidents that occurred.
When looking at these two pictures we must bear in mind that signalling in the UK works on the route display principle. A signal will show a driver where he is being routed to, the driver must know what speed is permitted through that route. It makes for weeks learning of routes to get to know all these speeds by heart, never mind route refreshing exercises to ensure that lightly travelled routes remain safe to travel by trains you drive. On most other networks signalling displays a maximum speed that may be travelled at; most Continental European systems use that. Given that all signals in the end demand that you adhere to a speed limit one could argue that speed display is the best way to run trains, even if a Dutch colleague who once travelled with me, used to speed indications, was quite charmed by the fact that British signalling at least told you where you were going if you were in the middle of a large amount of trackwork, so you could start looking for the signals you were to pass. Many systems, including that in e.g. Germany and The Netherlands, will in fact show speed as well as the set route at Junctions.
Picture 1 shows the location of signal gantry 8 on a rainy day. This is where the driver of the offending DMU went through the red aspect of the signal that covered the collision site you can see on the next picture. In deciding the connection with the next photograph, have a look at that pink coloured Ladbroke Grove rail viaduct in the North London line ahead. On the next photograph you will see that same viaduct as well, but then from the other side. There are six running tracks here, numbered 1 to 6 from the track on my left. The seventh track on the far right is (was, actually, a lot changed here for the introduction of Crossrail, or the Elizabeth Line in Transport for London parlance) and the connection from the main lines to the North Pole depot, now in use for the new Hitachi trains of Great Western Trains. That seventh line to the far right can take freight for a local unloading site for roadstone and can take empty trains into the yard at Old Oak Common depot. From my side, incidentally, there is also a connection to Old Oak Common depot across a flyover (see text for next picture). This already was quite an intricate piece of railway and what’s more, it was fast. Very fast, in fact, the main lines carried a speed limit of 90 to 100 mph (155 tot 160 km/h). My train travels on line 2, under clear signals with a routing toward the Down Main Line as indicated at my signal SN107. This is not the normal line for an outbound fast train, in fact, I should have been on line 1 to my left. You can see by the rust on that track that it has been out of use for some time and there are people with high-visibility safety vests along that line, so engineering work is going on. Given the fact that they’re in shorts it’s not winter; it’s in fact the summer of 2000 when a lot of preliminary work was done to prepare this layout for the changes that would follow later on, whilst further repair of the damaged site after the October 1999 accident was carried out. The signal to my right, covering line 3, is SN109, the signal that the offending driver failed to stop at. Which is strange, because like my signal it should not only have shown a coloured light, part of the spect of that signal would always have been a letter to indicate the routing. As can be seen further to the right at SN 113 at line 5, which shows the routing to the Down Relief line. Therefore, the inbound DMU ahead, which is of the type that went through the red light at SN109 on line 3, can only travel on line 4 (most likely) or line 3. Signals cannot show a proceed aspect like these two do if the route for a conflicting move has been set up first. As far as types of route indication is concerned: signal SN105 to my left shows what is known on the Great Western as a feather or a lunar on the Southern; a strip of five white lights that indicates that the route ahead is set up for a diverging line and carries a speed restriction. In this case, that would take your train on to the line to the flyover for Old Oak Common. My route indicator is what’s called a theatre box and indicates the route with a letter or a digit. Such a route indication can only show if the signal shows a proceed aspect. One of the things the driver on the offending unit missed that day, and indicative of the fact that his route knowledge in this area was lacking. About one-and-a-half year after taking this picture I would be disqualified for work behind the windscreen on diminishing health grounds. A double whammy, in fact; first angina and then my hearing sunk through the floor.
Picture 2 shows the view from my HST towards that pink Ladbroke Grove rail viaduct. My train is also an HST set, empty afternoon rush hour stock to Paddington from Old Oak Common, sitting on the descending line from the flyover at the red aspect of signal SN118 that covers the junction with the Down Main line/ line number 1. I am awaiting the inbound passage of that High-Speed diesel train on the Up Main line/ line number 2 on my left side. Once it is passed I’ll be let onto line 1 for a moment and then under the rail viaduct crossed over to line two to follow the set shown to Paddington to form a Cheltenham service. That inbound HST is possibly doing 100 mph (160 km/h) here, more likely slowing down already to about 90 mph and not powering as a forty mph speed restriction is coming up further along the line toward Paddington. In the track the overkill of protection systems suddenly available to stop trains from going through red signal aspects; there is a stop grid for Train Protection and Warning System (TPWS) and a beacon/tag for Automatic Train Protection, whilst further back I had to cancel a horn warning for the Automatic Warning System AWS. That is never mind that set of derailing points (derailer switch) that is clearly set to dump my train in the ballast had all that train protection stuff still not stopped me (highly unlikely). Just ahead of the front locomotive of the inbound HST the junction between line 2 (Up Main) and rom the left of that line 3 is visible. Line 3 is the line that the offending outbound DMU train came along. The location of that inbound HST power car is exactly where the HST and the DMU collided. This explains that uncommonly clean ballast all over the place; it is where track was ripped apart and where the HST vehicles lay burning (the power car in fact ending up in that fence to the right) and where a lot of damaged track and equipment had to be replaced. Also, the nearby overhead electrification catenary posts are replacements for the ones that were demolished by the colliding trains; compare them to the posts further away. The fence to the right separates the what was then Eurostar North Pole depot from the open lines. This is now the Hitachi depot for the new Great Western trains and this site is hardly recognisable now; ahead of my train several tracks go into the Hitachi depot.
Picture 3 shows what a speed signalling system indicates: this is Arnhem East (Presikhaaf) Junction in The Netherlands. The main line is the line towards Germany, the diverting line is the line towards Zutphen, Deventer and Zwolle. The main signal indication is that yellow aspect, to which a digit has been added and lower down we see the triangular route indicator which in Dutch rail parlance is known as a koeiekop or a cow’s head. If the train had been signalled to Germany the white light vertically above the bottom light would have been lit and no speed indication would have been given as line speed (admittedly, on a green aspect) would have been permitted. The route indication to the right would have taken you into Arnhem freight yard, speed limit 40 km/h or 25 mph, now defunct and removed. This three-route situation made this indicator a very rare three-way variety. Our train, a plan V unit of 1960’s design and nowadays out of service, was booked to stop at Arnhem Presikhaaf halt round that corner to the left. That is why we got a yellow, instead of a less restrictive indication like a flashing green. Four signals can be seen in this picture, but the whole array covering this junction would have been two additional signals on the diverting road and an additional signal out of the freight yard. Everything is fully reversible. How does a driver read the speed indication? Multiply the indicated digit by ten and that is your permitted speed: in this case the junction permits 60 km/h (38 mph) through the switchpoints. The low building between the tracks at the junction is a sub-station for the 1.5 kV dc catenary.
Picture 4 is interesting but in a way a rather sad image. It shows the signalbox/ interlocking tower at the Eastern end of Woerden station, where in January 1962 the signaller watched things go badly wrong at Harmelen Junction further toward Utrecht (91 fatalities and a great many injured). It is awaiting demolition. The signal aspect past the box is interesting: in British terms this is a double yellow. The fact that an 80 km/h or 50 mph speed restriction indication accompanies the yellow aspect means that the next signal is showing a proceed aspect, not a red. Obviously, Automatic Train Protection in NL shows a target speed of 80 km/h 50 mph at the next signal here, not 0 km/h or mph as it does in the UK. Which in turn shows that ATP was meant for speed signalling and has its drawbacks with route signalling. The signal to the left is not yet in service, as indicated by the ubiquitous white cross, which allows a driver to pass it despite the fact that it doesn’t show a signal aspect. Once I had a serious run-in with the UK track authority, who left a rusty dead signal standing along the track without that cross, thus making every driver passing it without stopping and reporting it (a lot) commit an offence. A few further details: see the white light with the V sign under it at the end of the platform: this is equal to a British RA (Right Away) indication. This additional signal indicates to train staff that the signal ahead is showing a proceed aspect and that a train may be despatched. In this case the old signalbox might have covered the signal to a conductor who was busy to despatch the train on the platform and unable to see what aspect his signal showed; so with the demise of the box this white light probably is a goner now. The green triangular sign next to the box indicates that permitted line speed increases to 130 km/h or 81 mph. If you look to the left of the track in the foreground you see a sign between the tracks that appears to have been turned away. That is in fact a “so many car” stop sign that cannot now be used due to the fences on the platform to protect passengers from the pending demolition work and therefore had to be taken out of use. No doubt that appeared in the traincrew bulletins. This picture was made when I travelled Dutch tracks with Chris Hall, at the time inspector with Her Majesty’s Railway Inspectorate HMRI and nowadays one of the readers of this blog, to check out the introduction of LED signalling, like the one ahead, in The Netherlands (remember Chris?). The picture also was taken during the works to four-track the lines from Gouda toward Utrecht. In fact, this year that work will be finished; the second railway bridge across the Amsterdam-Rhine canal was put in place last year. That signalbox, if I may be so bold, should perhaps have been kept for posterity and used as an outbase of the none too far away railway museum in Utrecht. This is where some hefty historical ructions with respect to rail safety in The Netherlands took place, leading directly to the introduction of Automatic Train Protection to prevent SPAD’s after the already mentioned 1962 Harmelen crash. Interesting is, however, that Netherlands Railways was using US designed electric locomotive 1213 (Baldwin Westinghouse Co’Co’) already since 1959 to test the US designed GRS pulse code automatic train control system.
Another bit of Ruminating on Railways 