A UNION has called for ScotRail to ban 'museum piece' high speed trains in the wake of a damning report over rail management failings blamed for the horror rail crash near Stonehaven in which three people died and six were injured.
The Transport Salaried Staffs' Association has called for the trains to be withdrawn after investigators found that the refurbished high speed train involved in the crash were designed before modern standards were brought in with design features intended to minimise the damage to the train in case of collision or derailment.
The Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) said that it was more likely than not that the outcome would have been better if the train had been compliant with modern ‘crashworthiness’ standards.
ScotRail has dismissed the call to ban the trains saying they were not the cause of the crash. Driver Brett McCullough, 45, conductor Donald Dinnie, 58, and passenger Christopher Stuchbury, 62, died when the 06:38 high speed Aberdeen to Glasgow Queen Street train left the tracks after hitting a landslip in August 2020.
A final report into the derailment found that Network Rail, which runs the infrastructure, and railway managers were not properly prepared to deal with issues of heavy rain and had not adequately handled drainage issues that caused the landslip.
READ MORE: Stonehaven rail crash: Series of deadly management failings revealed
Manuel Cortes, TSSA general secretary has now said high speed trains should now be taken out of service.
The InterCity 125 High Speed Trains (HST), which have been in service on Britain's railways for over 40 years began getting a new lease of life by ScotRail four years ago.
One of the first made, named after designer Sir Kenneth Grange, is on display at the National Railway Museum in York.
Twenty-six HST sets, which have four carriages and 17 of which will have five carriages, were to move from Great Western Railway to Abellio ScotRail after being refurbished by Wabtec at Doncaster Works with new interiors, controlled emission tanks and automatic sliding doors.
They were to operate on services from Edinburgh and Glasgow to Aberdeen and Inverness, as well as between Aberdeen and Inverness. The first set entered service in October 2018.
ScotRail's HST fleet operates under the brand name Inter7City.
The last of ScotRail's upgraded Inter7City high speed trains arrived in Scotland last year.
According to the RAIB: "The train that derailed at Carmont was a high speed train set (HST) with four coaches and two power cars. HSTs were first introduced into service in the mid-1970s and are generally seen as having a good safety record.
"Although they pre-date a number of modern standards that are relevant to train behaviour in derailments and collisions, they are authorised to operate on the UK’s mainline network. The coaches that formed this particular set had been recently refurbished by Wabtec at its workshops."
A train built to modern crashworthiness standards created in July 1994 would have had a number of design features that are intended to provide better protection for occupants and keep vehicles in line should they collide with an obstacle or derail.
These included more robust couplers which are better able to resist the forces which they are subjected to in derailments.
The also include bogie retention features, so that in an accident, they remain attached to the vehicle bodies as far as is possible.
According to investigators, the refurbished HST that derailed at Carmont was designed and constructed before these standards came into force.
"While it is not possible to be certain about what would have happened in the hypothetical situation with different rolling stock in the same accident, RAIB considers it more likely than not that the outcome would have been better if the train had been compliant with modern crashworthiness standards," the RAIB said.
Manuel Cortes, TSSA general secretary, said: “The incident at Carmont was a tragedy, and my thoughts are with the families of the three men who died. The fact that it was a preventable tragedy makes it all the sadder.
“TSSA warned when the HSTs were bought that they were museum pieces not fit for purpose and the RAIB report shows that, tragically, this is the case. Their failings played a part in the tragedy, especially in the death of the driver. ScotRail should now seriously consider whether they need to remove all their HSTs from service.”
Ian McConnell, ScotRail chief operating officer said: “The RAIB report is clear that the high-speed trains were not the cause of the accident and there is insufficient evidence to show that a more modern train would have prevented the derailment.
“As the RAIB report notes, high-speed trains have operated across Britain for many years with a good safety record. These trains have received all the necessary legal and safety certifications authorising them as safe to operate on the rail network in Britain.”
Serious failures in the oversight of work carried out by contractors, and subsequent checks and maintenance work were also identified by the RAIB report.
The report also blames lack of staffing resources within Network Rail stating, “the railway has insufficient resource to entirely overcome the potential for infrastructure failure.”
TSSA said it was also calling for a root and branch review of how Britain’s railways are maintained to prevent further tragedies.
Manuel Cortes said, “Better oversight of contractors, better maintenance and repair schedules, all could have prevented the Carmont tragedy. It is essential that we now carry out a root and branch review, involving Network Rail, the train operating companies, and the trade unions of how Britain’s railways are maintained. What is already clear is that the problem will be exacerbated if the government continues to press ahead with plans to force staff cuts on Network Rail.
"The last thing our railway needs is to lose the approximately five thousand jobs that Network Rail are looking to cut across our railways.”
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said after the publication of the report that it would be a “disservice” to the men who died if lessons were not learned.
The RAIB said that the railway industry’s risk assessments had clearly signalled that earthwork and drainage failure due to extreme rainfall was a "significant threat" to the safety of the railway but they had not clearly identified potential areas of weakness in the existing operational mitigation measures.
The RAIB found that the train derailed because it struck debris that had been washed out of a faulty drainage system constructed between 2011 and 2012 by failed outsourcing giant Carillion.
Both Network Rail, which owns the infrastructure, and the designers of the drain were unaware that Carillion did not build it to specification and so were not able to safely accommodate the water flows that morning.
Investigators found that the drainage works were not entered into Network Rail’s infrastructure maintenance database so it was never inspected or maintained after installation.
After the drain was built, the landowner complained to Network Rail and Carillion that the land next to it was affected by surface water but neither followed this up.
High speed trains (HST) were the future of British Rail in the 1970s, with advertisements promising unheard of speeds and shorter journey times.
Better known as the InterCity 125, the diesel locomotive was only intended as a stopgap before electrification, but has linked Britain's cities for more than four decades.
In the last 10 years, most rail companies have replaced them with newer models, and East Midlands Railway (EMR) is the latest to follow suit.
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