Stonehaven crash: Network Rail fined £6.7m over fatal derailment
By Paul Homewood
h/t Paul Kolk
Network Rail has been fined £6.7m after admitting a series of failings which led to the deaths of three people in a train crash near Stonehaven.
The Aberdeen to Glasgow service derailed at Carmont after hitting a landslide following heavy rain.
Network Rail pleaded guilty to a number of maintenance and inspection failures before the crash in August 2020.
It also admitted failing to warn the driver that part of the track was unsafe or tell him to reduce his speed.
Driver Brett McCullough, 45, conductor Donald Dinnie, 58, and passenger Christopher Stuchbury, 62, died in the crash.
The judge, Lord Matthews, said no penalty could compensate for the loss suffered by the families of those who died and of the six people on board the train who were injured.
Speaking outside court, Ray McCullough, the father of the train’s driver, said the fine was "not enough".
"At the end of the day, the train should not have gone out," he said.
Kevin Lindsay, Scottish organiser for train drivers’ union Aslef, added that the sentence offered "no comfort".
The train hit a landslide near Stonehaven in August 2020 after heavy rain in an area where a drainage system had been incorrectly installed.
The 06:38 service to Glasgow had been unable to complete its journey due to the conditions and was returning to Aberdeen when the accident happened.
A recording of the driver showed he queried with a signaller if any reduced speed was needed to return north. He was told everything was fine for normal speed.
The train struck debris from a landslide on the track, derail and collided with a bridge parapet.
Passing sentence at the High Court in Aberdeen, Lord Matthews said that very few people who saw the images of the crash would ever forget them.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-66749546
And yet despite all of these damning facts, the contemptible BBC still want to link the accident to climate change:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-66750650
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
” Network Rail is an “arm’s length” public body of the Department for Transport with no shareholders, which reinvests its income in the railways. ”
So fining it reduces funds for the railways.
What does that achieve?
Who is penalised?
Passengers. The implicated Network Rail officials should be fined.
Let’s get real here! The Network Rail staff are not responsible for the inefficient installation of a drainage system. Neither are the contractors if they installed it according to contract. Neither are the officials who signed off on the contract provided the spec was standard and acceptable for the site.
Sometimes we just have to accept that genuine accidents do happen and that playing the ‘blame game’, which we have become world-class at in the last half-century, does nothing to advance safety but is more likely to have those involved run for cover. And the BBC, which knows **** all about railway operation or railway safety (and even less about causes of weather events) would be well-advised to butt out and stick to what it’s paid for — serious news reporting.
[Sorry, but this is a subject I happen to feel strongly about. I recommend a read of LTC Rolt’s ‘Red for Danger’ which shows exactly how Britain’s railways became the safest in the world WITHOUT criminalising every railwayman who ever turned out to be less than perfect!]
OK. I stand corrected on the officials – and I apologise to them. However, any fine on the company is paid by passengers in the end.
If Network Rail has been found guilty of a crime the courts have concluded that it was not a mishap but a gross failure to have regard to safety.
I have never understood why trains are allowed to go any faster than the speed that the driver can stop within his viewing distance.
NOAA Space weather prediction center predicting a crash in sunspot numbers during the 2030s
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/predicted-sunspot-number-and-radio-flux
Just sent off complaint to BBC. Their deliberately false attempt to attribute to/implicate in “climate change” in lieu of proven defective workmanship identified by a Judge is borderline illegal.
Well done, Ray. Won’t hold my breath for anything other than a self-serving answer.
In fact, while I was reading the post I wondered how long before someone claimed the crash was down to CC.
AFAIK the only true witness to CC was Noah.
Has to appear in everything they do. Look for the innocuous “albert sustainable production” icon at the end of most programmes, not just BBC. Dramas, quiz shows, you name it, it’s very often there.
“Telling Climate Stories – A practical pocket guide for including sustainability in any genre”
Click to access Albert-Pres-Doc-Pocket-Guide_V4-MSW.pdf
https://wearealbert.org/event/15th-september-pm-news-training/
“Before booking, please note that this training has been developed for journalists and those who work in news production. If you work in other genres please book onto our sustainable production or editorial trainings.
BAFTA’s albert project is supporting the industry in eliminating waste and carbon emissions. Our bespoke news training distils key knowledge, tools and skills required to tell the climate angle of this most pressing issue whilst at the same time covering the story in a sustainable way.”
👍👍👍 Very nicely put, Harry!!
Dennis, I’ve got loads of Albert and the Lion stories, but I’ve not come across ‘Albert and the lyin”.
Does the Judge in question have the power to compel the C to attend the Court and explain themselves, notwithstanding the judgement already made??
BBC sorry – not being rude …..
There has never been a tragedy so severe the Left wouldn’t exploit it.
The train crash and deaths are not the story to the BBC – climate change is the story.
Rather VERY presumptuous of the judge, Lord Matthews to state:
Three men were struck down in the prime of life.
This is a terrible tragedy. I am American, and thoroughly right-wing in nearly every way. Yet I am appalled that this loss of life of three men, and injury of six others, is so blithely dismissed. Adding insult to injury, it is subsumed under the all encompassing girdle of “climate change” rather than corporate responsibility! Remember, I am a creature of the right, yet I still believe, most fervently, that lack of corporate responsibility that results in the deaths of employees and passengers for transportation, should be harshly punished and the families of the injured or dead be given whatever monetary solace available for their grievous loss due to management irresponsibility.
It appears the fine goes to the government, not the families.
Twice in the last 2 weeks, trees in my neighborhood have fallen. Both cases, they fell into neighbors’ yards, not their own.
Having knowledge of these things, I looked at the trees looking for one thing: green leaves. Under US law – probably British, too – if you have a dead tree that falls into someone else’s yard, or in some way harms others, you are responsible. The theory being that you should have removed the hazard.
If there are green leaves on the trees, they are alive. Live trees being blown over is considered “an act of God,” and the property owner is not responsible. Even though it was “his” tree.
So as Ellie relates, “an act of God” is being replaced with “an act of Climate Change.”
Who said climate science isn’t a religion?
Good post
“Who said climate science isn’t a religion?”
Could the First Amendment to the United States Constitution by used here (respecting an establishment of religion) with a lawsuit under Civil Rights Act of 1871 as at least in British case law (so could be used by other common law countries) the belief in the existence of climate change is considered a philosophical beliefs?
https://app.croneri.co.uk/questions-and-answers/philosophical-belief-definition
Which makes sense as the vast majority of the nosiest follower outright (they refuse to have a balance review/discussion) oppose nuclear power (the only feasible alternative to fossil fuel for electricity generation unless you live in a place blessed with the geography for hydro & maybe geothermal), opposition to hydro in the places it actually feasible (California) & GMOs while calling people “science denier”.
Then if we take what climate scientist are saying in good faith they have basically made a prediction (educated guess based on some established science – I would assume someone has show that Co2 is a greenhouse gas in a lab set) that human emissions of Co2 and other few other gases are increasing the average temperature of the planet which to cut a long story short could possibly led to more extreme weather unfortunately there is no way to test this under the rules of a fair test (primary school science) and many have compared this to cooking the planet (but isn’t cooking generally speaking irreversible) so the only rational way based in science to address the problem is building infrastructure with extreme weather in mind, helping low lying area (the Dutch clearly have a good amount of knowledge on that) and helping the poor to develop.
This focus on reducing Co2 emissions is keeping a number of pointless bureaucrats in a job & allowing blatant violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act in the United States if we look at who funds many of the “environmental” NGOs who’s actions have clearly reduced the supply of oil & natural gas which has driven up there costs especially if we look at pipelines
Lets be honest if we had assisted poor particularly African nations to use their own fossil fuels & hydro resources and become self sufficient (even become exporters) in food over the last 30 years (imagine what Ethiopia would be like now if we had helped them develop in the 1980s instead of the white savour types who are are currently attacking it attempts to develop to preserve their own ego) instead of hypocritical lecturing & sabotaging their attempts to use their own fossil fuels (unless a European country wants them for itself e.g. Germany & South African coal) there would be a lower infant mortality rate for a start, less people dying trying to get to Europe for a better life & maybe less violence due to less wars/conflicts.
Also I would argue an “act of Climate Change” is being used to replace things that are acts of negligence or outright acts of arson to avoid the responsible party being held accountable. Its good old fashioned follow the money so likewise we have lawyers/grifters trying to find someone to sue for actual acts of God too.
On top of that we have politicians & civil servants skiving their responsibilities regarding adequate infrastructure especially when there is population growth due to immigration ( silencing people by accusing them of racism for highlighting this is a common tactic in British politics & probably other Western countries.)
My favourite examples are:
(1) the issue of adequate water supply by not building new reservoirs or dams (and other infrastructure for that matter) to keep up population growth. Southern England, California and South Eastern Australia have water supply infrastructure design to serve a lower population than those place currently have.
(2) allowing unscrupulous developers to inappropriately build on flood plains (they are ways you can build like putting housing on stilts) & in heavily forested area prone to wildfires (why are building not required to be build out of fireproof material in those places)
(3) The deliberate building of roads that the road engineers at the time said were inaccurate because civil servants thought the idea of more than 8+ lane motorways was too American.
Worked in rail industry all my career and its fair to say that drainage has hadn’t the attention that it should have done leaving much of it in a poor condition that now needs remediating. Its deemed low grade civils work and doesn’t get the attention that old Victoria structures do although in this case the drain had been rebuilt but not to spec leaving it vulnerable to a high rainfall event. The RAIB report whilst recording it was an exceptional rainfall event (1 in 144 years) it attributed the cause of the washout as workmanship not high water volumes. So no biblical event here but i dont blame NR for using climate change as a bit of leverage to get more money out of the Treasury!!
Hi Nicholas, thanks for that info. I live on the course of a disused railway line (Elham Valley) and have often wondered who is now checking the structures remaining here and in other places. There is a huge disued viaduct in Folkestone and I often think what if? Are they still likely to be safe if not actively maintained?
Jit has written about this at Cliscep:
I remember the event and the comments by the Scottish Government, and Scotrail at the time blaming the crash on climate change. I also remember some weather expert that this unusual weather was in fact usual for that area due to the local topography and the North Sea influence. Can someone else recall this or locate the item? Then we get the truth about bad maintenance and no check by Scotrail followed by deafening silence until the court case shows the collective negligence but still the climate is to blame!