-
Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
Incident at Pontypool and Blaenavon Railway
- Thread starter Drimnagh Road
- Start date
- Status
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R
RailUK Forums
autotank
Member
Doesn't look good, lets hope nobody was hurt.
anthony263
Established Member
Ow dear
The Decapod
Member
I'm not familiar with this railway and I have no idea what happened.
But when I looked at the 3 photos, a couple of things struck me.
Why is there no apparent damage to any of the vehicles involved? Although there is what looks like soil piled up against the buffer beam of the shunter.
There appears to be some sort of padding on the buffer of the grey goods van where it rests against the diesel shunter.
But when I looked at the 3 photos, a couple of things struck me.
Why is there no apparent damage to any of the vehicles involved? Although there is what looks like soil piled up against the buffer beam of the shunter.
There appears to be some sort of padding on the buffer of the grey goods van where it rests against the diesel shunter.
Last edited:
AlexS
Established Member
Lifted directly from TheSprinterMeister on WNXX for information only, a message from the P&BR:
"On Sunday the 13th November 2011, diesel locomotive 37216 ran away from the Top Shed at Furnace Sidings and down the yard past the Bottom shed. The end result was class 31 D5627 being pushed into a box van and the Hudswell Clarke industrial diesel locomotive, all of which have derailed. Until these can be recovered and moved to a safe location for investigation the extent of damage to each of them is unknown. No persons were injured in this incident. The ORR have already been to site and made some recommendations. The railway are working with the ORR and an internal investigation is also under way. It is hoped the items can be recovered using specialist equipment later this week."
Perhaps best to avoid comment beyond the P&BR's statement at this stage.
"On Sunday the 13th November 2011, diesel locomotive 37216 ran away from the Top Shed at Furnace Sidings and down the yard past the Bottom shed. The end result was class 31 D5627 being pushed into a box van and the Hudswell Clarke industrial diesel locomotive, all of which have derailed. Until these can be recovered and moved to a safe location for investigation the extent of damage to each of them is unknown. No persons were injured in this incident. The ORR have already been to site and made some recommendations. The railway are working with the ORR and an internal investigation is also under way. It is hoped the items can be recovered using specialist equipment later this week."
Perhaps best to avoid comment beyond the P&BR's statement at this stage.
Drimnagh Road
Member
The poor goods van.
Sorry to be a nuisance, but how do you view the photo. First I had to sign into Yahoo but having done that I got a message saying that I couldn't view the picture as I was under 13 years old. Then, I found that I had inadvertantly entered my year of birth as 2010 when I signed up to Yahoo Mail and they wouldn't let me change it despite the facty that I would have been 2 months old at the time if the year recorded had been correct. Then I opened a new account and then I was told to open a Flickr account, which I did.
And then, having done all that, when I clicked on the link from this thread, all I got was a message saying "This photo is private.Oops! You don't have permission to view this photo." So after trying for 35 minutes I still can't view it.
Oops indeed. Seems like FCC aren't so bad after all!!
And to make matters worse there's already a different Bedpan on Flickr so I have to be Bedpan1
And then, having done all that, when I clicked on the link from this thread, all I got was a message saying "This photo is private.Oops! You don't have permission to view this photo." So after trying for 35 minutes I still can't view it.
Oops indeed. Seems like FCC aren't so bad after all!!
And to make matters worse there's already a different Bedpan on Flickr so I have to be Bedpan1
Last edited:
westcoaster
Established Member
Sorry to be a nuisance, but how do you view the photo. First I had to sign into Yahoo but having done that I got a message saying that I couldn't view the picture as I was under 13 years old. Then, I found that I had inadvertantly entered my year of birth as 2010 when I signed up to Yahoo Mail and they wouldn't let me change it despite the facty that I would have been 2 months old at the time if the year recorded had been correct. Then I opened a new account and then I was told to open a Flickr account, which I did.
And then, having done all that, when I clicked on the link from this thread, all I got was a message saying "This photo is private.Oops! You don't have permission to view this photo." So after trying for 35 minutes I still can't view it.
Oops indeed. Seems like FCC aren't so bad after all!!
And to make matters worse there's already a different Bedpan on Flickr so I have to be Bedpan1
It looks as if the photographer has locked in the photo as yesterday if was free to look at, maybe it's to reduce bandwidth usage by Flickr, even I can't view it now.
Crimson_Quiff
Member
This must be a massive set back for the railway
Schnellzug
Established Member
i very much doubt it. It was in a siding at the shed; from the picture, the 37 had rolled into the 31 (at pretty low speed, it looked like), and those two rolled into the shunter, which ended up upending a wagon. None of them looked too much the worse for wear.
sprinterguy
Established Member
There's three of them, right there in the link in the opening post...
AlexS
Established Member
On the contrary, the owner of the 31 has posted on WNXX that it's very severely damaged indeed - nothing superficial about it.
eMeS
Member
I've come to this post late, 20/11/11, and had no difficulties seeing the 3 images.
Having seen the picture in this week's Railway Herald, how wrong I was!
The frame on the 31 has been bent so that the cab droops, although its not too clear in the posted photos.I've been a volunteer on 3 preserved lines and things like this are not uncommon. On one we were working a P-Way train with a small industrial shunter and the volunteer driver was about 70 with non too good eyesight. He was attempting to couple the engine when someone noticed that another volunteer was still inbetween it and the wagons. If somebody hadn't yelled "STOP!" heads could (literally) have rolled.
12CSVT
Established Member
- Joined
- 18 Aug 2010
- Messages
- 2,612
Although I don't know the full facts of this incident it is worrying that somebody with poor eyesight is allowed to be a driver. Aren't medicals and eye tests compulsory for anybody in safety critical roles such as driving ?
ChrisCooper
Established Member
It does vary widely. Standards are nothing like as strict as the mainline railways, but then again the same is true for lots of standards (afterall, if to mainline safety standards they would have TPWS, OTMR, Central Locking (on Mk2s or 3s, no Mk1s) etc. That's why heritage railways have 25mph speed limits though. Ok, it's possible to have a nasty accident at 25mph or even lower, but it's also possible to have a nasty accident with a car or a lot of other machinery that also has lower requirements for things like medical standards. Oviously it sounds unsafe, but then again when was the last time there was a fatality on a heritage railway?
That said, it is worrying that someone would be driving who's eyesite was that bad. They shouldn't even be driving a car (but probably were). Of cource if someone had got caught between a loco and stock being coupled then that would be more than just a failure of the driver, afterall in many cases a driver wouldn't be able to see someone on the ground near the buffers anyway. Bad communication between the person coupling, the driver and the person incharge of the move, and bad proceedures. Generally situations like that don't occur because the driver didn't see the person, they occur because the person went somewhere they should not have been and were not expected to be, or because the driver assumes it is clear when it isn't.
eMeS
Member
Is the driver's age at all relevant? Eyesight, yes, but why mention age? Unless there's some requirement that people over 45 (or whatever) aren't allowed to drive. (45 because I remember police constables being retired at 45 years ago.)
On the main line certainly. I remember one case where , when I worked trains out of London Bridge , a driver at Slade Green found that his guard was a fairly heavily pregnant woman. He refused to take the train out on the grounds that if there was a fire or any situation where she had to climb down onto the track she would be useless.
The right thing to do of course on the RPS I was on would have been to report the matter to the H&SE but it wouldn't have been very practical to carry on as a volunteer (!) and the RPS would have been in extremely serious trouble.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Well of course on the national network he would have been retired at 65 for one thing. Apart from that it helps to paint a word picture.
ralphchadkirk
Established Member
That's very unlikely to just be the driver's fault. Did the shunter inform the driver that he was going between?
I've no idea since I was clearing trees nearby.He must have known what the shunter was doing since there was no requirement for the engine to go elsewhere, only for it to be coupled. AFAIK he never drove another train there.
ralphchadkirk
Established Member
I'm not surprised - it's a very dangerous and stupid thing to do. However it generally (although can be!) isn't one person's fault (ref Swiss Cheese model).
Accidents on the railway are very rarely one person's fault. At London Bridge we had a system (informally) where if you were on an early morning start you were allowed to "telephone in" to say you were on your way to wherever your first train started from without physically going to the SOP. If there'd been an accident and the guard was found to be for example drunk it would have been the Guards fault, the Drivers fault for not reporting him , the TCS for not making him sign on in person and the Area Managers fault for allowing the system to operate in this way.
ChrisCooper
Established Member
I actually can't think of a single incident of this kind that was purely down to the driver/operators failure to see someone in a position of danger. Mostly it's either they move without authority (either from the person who is in a position of danger or from a person incharge or the movement), or a person returns to a position of danger after the movement begins. The latter is actually most common (the usual "oh damn I forgot to do x" or "i left x" or even "i should be the other side". Particularly when dealing with standard gauge stock the blindspots are such that drivers will rarely be able to see anyone in danger anyway.
It's possible that volunteers over a certain age would be required to undergo a medical (though in the case of driving that might apply to volunteers of any age), I would imagine that good eyesight would be part of this in a safety critical role. It would likely be required as part of a railway's SMS. H&S is often knocked but it has its uses.
- Status