Wrongly built drainage system led to Stonehaven train crash, not climate change
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Cunningham
From the Guardian:
A drainage system wrongly built by Carillion and unchecked by Network Rail led to the Stonehaven train crash, investigators have found, when a Scotrail train hit debris washed by rain on to the railway track.
Three people died on 12 August 2020 in the worst fatal event on the UK railways in 18 years, when the passenger train from Aberdeen to Glasgow derailed at Carmont, near Stonehaven, after heavy rainfall.
Inspectors said the drainage system and earthworks, installed in 2011-12 by the contractor Carillion to stabilise the slope above the track, “had not been constructed in accordance with the original design and so were not able to safely accommodate the water flows” when almost a month’s rainfall, 51.5mm, fell in three hours.
The changes made by Carillion, which went bust in 2018, were not noted by Network Rail, which did not inspect the upper parts of the drainage system after a handover in 2013.
The Rail Accident Investigation Branch’s final report on the disaster also found that route controllers had “not been given the information, procedures or training needed” to effectively manage the situation, and that Network Rail had not fully implemented risk measures developed after previous events involving extreme weather.
Despite a nearby landslip the same morning, and floods from the extreme rainfall, no speed restrictions were imposed and the train was travelling at 73mph when it hit the gravel washed from the drainage trench and came off the tracks, striking a bridge parapet. One of the four carriages overturned and another fell down a steep embankment and caught fire…
Andrew Haines, Network Rail’s chief executive, said the report showed there were “fundamental lessons to be learned by Network Rail and the wider industry”.
“As well as expressing our deep sorrow and regret … we acknowledge it should not have taken this tragic accident to highlight those lessons,” Haines said. “We must do better.”
You will of course remember the rush to blame climate change at the time, even though as I quickly showed, the rainfall that day was not unprecedented.
Notably, Network Rail’s Chief Executive, Andrew Haines, who is quoted above, said this at the time:
"Our climate is changing and it is increasingly challenging the performance and reliability of the railway, but incidents like yesterday’s devastating accident are incredibly rare, and our railway remains the safest major railway in Europe.
"Our network was designed for a temperate climate, and it’s challenged when we get extremes such as storms and floods.
"We’re seeing this more and more and although we can address them on the ground with precautionary measures, we are acutely aware we need a long-term resolution, and we had already secured additional funding and resources to help achieve this.
He should hang his head in shame, apologise and then resign for trying to shift the blame, rather than accept responsibility at the outset.
Network Rail even had the temerity to double down in their interim report a month later:
A few months later, the BBC’s Justin Rowlatt also blamed the tragedy on global warming:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2020/12/11/britains-weather-getting-wilder-bbc/
But don’t expect any apology from him!
For the record, the Network Rail report stated that about 50mm of rain fell in the area that morning. Nearby Dyce recorded 83mm for the day, which was slightly less than the 83.9mm, which fell there in July 1970.
There is no evidence that daily rainfall is becoming more extreme there.
https://www.ecad.eu/utils/showindices.php?f63kelc0ui2nulg0sbq7n7qdf4#
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
When I pointed out on the Rail UK forum that this was the case and that the crash had nothing to do with climate change, my post was deleted. So much for an impartial forum.
The deletion is a badge of honour. Accepting your post would mean that someone within Network Rail was held accountable for choosing Carillon and then not checking the job was done to spec. And that would never do would it?
It didnt seem that Carillion ( in liq) was ‘chosen’ for that site works. The Network Rail organisation had long term maintenance contract with GT Rail Maintenance ( in liq) who Carillion acquired.
Many thanks for the clarification Duker. However, it doesn’t change the fact that the true accountability will be washed away as successfully as the embankment.
John Wallace – Was your post immediately after the crash or more recently?
Hallo Bob – it was deleted within four hours of when I posted it
Apologies – I misread your post. My post was immediately after the crash.
This episode highlights the dreadful practice of dodgy contracting companies run by gormless arts graduates with no technical skills or knowledge. They then ‘subcontract’ the work to third parties with no proper control via technical staff to supervise the quality of the work. In Arthur Daley’s terms, ‘A nice little earner’.
“A nice little earner, but never mind the deaths eh?”
In our house when anything goes wrong, from burnt toast up, it’s “climate change” the best get out of jail free card for incompetence
🤣🤣🤣
There is no substitute for getting out of the office and walking the site. My brother was a professional civil engineer. He would always inspect work in person, sometimes to the point of taking a sledge hammer to the concrete pour to see if it was up to standard.
In the Grauniad???? Is this a change of heart or a cynical demonstration that they can cry wolf one week and then say “who me”? the next? Straight out of the KGB playbook whenever the odious Lavarov opens his mouth. The parallels are striking but then why should they not be. We are constantly being gaslighted in the media and cancelled and next you find them owning the very story they trashed you for when they can no longer hide the truth.
“…owning the very story they trashed…”
When some of us predicted five or more years years ago that a wavy jet stream would accompany Solar Cycle 25 and that there would be a consequent increase in both hot and cold spells, there was almost complete silence from the tens of thousands of ‘climate scientists’ except for the occasional raspberry. Now of course many of these ‘experts’ are pretending they predicted the present swings all along on the basis of increasing carbon dioxide levels.
RSS has published its satellite analysis for February – completely confirmatory of UAH.
The 2016 El Nino.peak seems a long time ago!.
Paul,
I think you need to get your analysis into the Times or the Telegraph. It would be good to think it could get into the BBC, but that isn’t going to happen. Perhaps also in the TCW.
Blame everything except yourself, and never accept any responsibility. We are getting too Putinized.
Which was obvious to any unbiased observer from the start. The Carillion angle’s a twist, mind you.
Power without responsibility…
We have now had the official report. If it points to negligence as the main factor in the fatal crash is the way now clear for a charge of corporate manslaughter against the senior executives of Network rail?
Did the family of victims obtain compensation from the public and employer liability insurance that the rail company and network rail must legally have?.
The families lawyers are pursuing all options and it would seem to a successful conclusion
In case you could ever forget what the Grauniad said at the time with no possibility to know what really happened so in the absence of data cry “climate change”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/12/stonehaven-tragedy-shows-rail-industry-must-adapt-to-climate-crisis
Jit at Cliscep has also written about this:
I believe that on the 12/13 August 2020 @KKeaneBBCthe BBC Scotland environment correspondent tweeted that the crash was caused by Climate Change.
He also mentioned Stonehaven in a series of tweets on 26 Sept 2021
All deleted.
Unfortunately he has a habit of purging many of his old tweets.
Oh also deleted tweets about his 10 Sept 2020 article
.. https://www.twitter.com/ColonelDelancey/status/1304096774538358790
The Sept 10th thread tweeted at midnight to 1am, does detail the inquiry preliminary findings
that ‘lots of places get a lot of rain and earth slippage
but this is the ONLY place where the track collapsed’.
However instead of asking WHY this ONE is different, the BBC guy gets a sniff of Climate change and he frames his article and Twitter thread with Climate Change.
Being fervent believer in the Church of Climate
and sees Climate Jesus in everything.
One of his next tweets is a retweet of Greta’s team, saying they think it’s Climate Change .. all Greta did was parrot his article.
The danger of living in a groupthink bubble is that every mistaken opinion is magnified and evidence that doesn’t fit the desired narrative is ignored. This will continue for as long as we are ruled by PPE graduates.
Keane’s 12 Aug deleted tweet said
It’s worth saying that climate change means the freak storms experienced in Aberdeenshire this morning ahead of this tragedy will happen more frequently and research work has been underway for some time to consider the impact of it on our infrastructure.
*Scientists* For XR tweeted
Stonehaven derailment: Report says climate change impact on railways ‘accelerating’
#TellTheTruth
.. https://twitter.com/ScientistsX/status/1308020653124194305
Greta’s account tweeted the day after the accident
5 November 2021 BBC article shouted “Climate Change” about general floods/droughts in Stonehaven
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-59163739
The day after the crash Strathclyde Uni guy was on the BBC shouting Climate Change
.. Every week he tweets about climate
.. He only tweeted about train/railways once ..that was just before COP to call for more Climate action
.. https://twitter.com/Dr_Chris_White/status/1454011727750782978
I missed part there
The Strathclyde Uni “Civil Engineering Dept” guy
ie he supposed to be talking about Civil Engineering but instead his obsession is climate doom, so he missed the main Civil Engineering point.
Network Rail is a nationalised industry. Their management will no more pay a price for this that the NCB management did for Aberfan.