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Railway mishaps that occured soon after introduction to service

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Failed Unit

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With the 1st Azuma getting damaged last night at NL. Is this one of the fastest incidents of a train receiving structural damage so soon after introduction.

I recall a photo of a HST on its side near Newcastle but can’t find it for the date.

I also recall one car of 158861 was written off fairly soon after introduction following a run away in Stockport. However they could use a spare body shell to as the production line was still in full swing hence why it is still about.

Do LNER own an unwanted record now?
 
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Jimini

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What about the DLR train that overshot Island Gardens during testing before it opened?
 

jfowkes

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Accidents in testing can't count surely, that's what testing is for!
 

sprinterguy

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With the 1st Azuma getting damaged last night at NL. Is this one of the fastest incidents of a train receiving structural damage so soon after introduction.

I recall a photo of a HST on its side near Newcastle but can’t find it for the date.
There were a couple of noteworthy incidents involving Eastern Region HSTs in their early days.

First a derailment of a complete HST set at speed on a trailing crossover at Northallerton on 28th August 1979 (So the set must have been pretty much brand new), although all vehicles remained upright and in line and the mark 3 design was commended in this regard:
http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docsummary.php?docID=1155
As the 13.00 Kings Cross to Edinburgh passenger train, consisting of a 10-car High Speed Train set, approached Northallerton Station under clear signals at about 70 mile/h the leading power car became derailed at a trailing crossover. The driver immediately made an emergency brake application and brought the train to a stand within about 550 m. The whole of the train was derailed on track damaged in the initial derailment but remained upright. All lines were at once protected by the Northallerton signalman who saw the accident and by the train crew. All three emergency services were on the scene within 5 minutes of being called but, although some of the 450 passengers were suffering from shock, only one lady was taken to hospital for treatment for concussion and detained one night.
And secondly, the more dramatic derailment of an HST near Tyne Yard on 1st August 1984 that sent a couple of mark 3s down an embankment, though the sets had been in service around five years by then:
http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docsummary.php?docID=1177
The train was 1S11, the 07.30 Leeds-Edinburgh HST express, which had been diverted from the Down Main to the Down Slow line at Ouston Junction due to locomotive movements to replace a failed locomotive on an Up Passenger Train, which necessitated occupying both the Up and Down Main lines. The HST was travelling at about 40 mile/h over a set of trailing points, located at the 75¼ mile post, in the trailing direction, when the derailment occurred. The train continued forward with the last 6 coaches and the rear power car derailed until the leading power car came to a stand approximately 270 yards beyond the points. The train had, by then, become divided in three places between the third and sixth coaches, all due to broken buckeye couplings. The fourth and fifth coaches slid down an embankment and turned over onto their left-hand sides; all the other derailed coaches and the rear power car remained upright. Twenty five passengers were conveyed to Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Gateshead, three of whom suffered serious injuries and had to be detained.
I also recall one car of 158861 was written off fairly soon after introduction following a run away in Stockport. However they could use a spare body shell to as the production line was still in full swing hence why it is still about.
Yes I believe 158861 had only been in service a month when it collided with runaway 47343 at Hazel Grove in June 1992.
 
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The_Train

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Does 70012 count? Not sure it ever touched a rail in the UK did it?
 

sprinterguy

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In addition, class 47 D1734 ran out of control at the head of a freight train and demolished Coton Hill South signalbox near Shrewsbury on January 11th 1965, being withdrawn two months later and subsequently scrapped after just eight months service. D1671 "THOR" became the second member of the class to be scrapped after nine months service, and also resulted in the scrapping of class 37 D6983, after the former derailed after hitting a landslip near Bridgend in the early hours of 17th December 1965 and was struck by the latter working the 02:30 Cardiff Tidal Docks to Swansea East Dock. The class 37 was itself only seven months old at the time and as a result was the only member of the class never to gain a TOPS number.

More information on the incident involving D1734 here:
http://www.class47.co.uk/c47_numbers.php?s_loco=D1734
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/rail-uk/20190424/282260961863096

And D1671 here:
http://class47.co.uk/c47_numbers.php?index=6&jndex=2&kndex=71&s_loco=1671
http://www.class47.co.uk/c47_zoom_v2.php?img=0934000301000

Other early casualties of the class were D1908, withdrawn after three and a half years service following a nasty head on collision with a class 310 EMU near Monmore Green on 8th April 1969, and D1562 which managed seven years service before an explosion in the engine room while working the 19:30 Liverpool Street to Norwich on 13th March 1971, following an ill-advised uprating of the power unit.
 
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sprinterguy

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Does 70012 count? Not sure it ever touched a rail in the UK did it?
That certainly sounds like an appropriate suggestion for this thread.

Surely I can also add the Snowdon Mountain Railway's No.1 "L.A.D.A.S", which didn't make it beyond the first day of public service before leaving the rails and hurling itself down the mountainside.
 

Failed Unit

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I forgot about that one that was dropped at Newport Docks. I doubt many trains were written off without even turning a wheel.
 

43096

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Amtrak P40 819 was written off after just 20 days in service in the Big Bayou Canot disaster.

https://meridianspeedway.weebly.com/not-just-another-p40.html
At 2:47 Wednesday morning, the Sunset thundered out onto bridge No. 196. Moving at 70 mph, the 819 struck the west end of the south girder, became airborne, and landed 150 feet away on the north side of the trestle. The locomotive landed nose-first, dove through 15 feet of water, and buried itself halfway into the bottom of the bayou. Both of the F40's, the baggage car, dormitory car, and two coaches followed the 819 into the water. Leaking diesel fuel ingnited, setting the surface of the bayou ablaze. All three of the crewmen on the 819 died, as did two dining car workers in the dormitory car and 42 passengers.
 
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Dieseldriver

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66521 had been in service for 2 1/2 months when it was involved in the Great Heck crash which led to it being written off.
 

hexagon789

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First a derailment of a complete HST set at speed on a trailing crossover at Northallerton on 28th August 1979 (So the set must have been pretty much brand new), although all vehicles remained upright and in line and the mark 3 design was commended in this regard:

Was the the one caused by a gearbox seizing?
 

Failed Unit

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52212 (part of the disbanded 150212 set) - must have also not had much service life when it hit the engineering train near Scarborough.
 

Floor

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You could also technically include the IC4 built in Italy for DSB (Denmark), that mysteriously reappeared in Gaddafi's Libya- never even entered the country!
 

Neptune

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156491 hit the blocks at Bradford Interchange when it was only a few weeks old.

Also 156476 was hit by 141104 at Huddersfield when relatively new. The 141 was also recently out of refurbishment and never turned a wheel in service again spending a few years at Neville Hill as a Xmas tree.
 

DelW

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BR 46202, scrapped following damage sustained in the Harrow collision in 1952, only 8 weeks and 11,443 miles out of the works. OK, it was officially a rebuild of the 20 year old Turbomotive, but with new frames, cylinders, motion, crank axle, smokebox, and boiler superheaters, and other components modified and overhauled, it wasn't far off being a new loco.
Its demise was the justification for building 71000 Duke of Gloucester.
 

thenorthern

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Didn't one of the Class 230 trains catch fire on test or something like that?
 

Horizon22

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Didn't one of the Class 230 trains catch fire on test or something like that?

Indeed it did; never made it into service for London Midland.

Wikipedia said:
On 30 December 2016, the prototype set caught fire at Kenilworth. Ten people were evacuated safely. It was announced in January 2017 that the planned trial on the Coventry to Nuneaton line had been cancelled. An incident report, produced by Vivarail, identified a fuel leak in one of the two new engine sets as the most likely cause of the fire
 

ac6000cw

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In the US, Siemens SC-44 'Charger' WDTX 1402 was written off in the 'Point Defiance Bypass' accident on 18th December 2017 when it was about 9 months old (and had only been in 'revenue' - rather than testing - service for about a month). All of the passenger rolling stock involved the accident was written off as well.
 

sprinterguy

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52212 (part of the disbanded 150212 set) - must have also not had much service life when it hit the engineering train near Scarborough.
Just seven and a half months old!
156491 hit the blocks at Bradford Interchange when it was only a few weeks old.
Yeah it hadn't even managed a month in service.

Slightly off topic, but the class 156s have been involved in a high number of quite serious collisions over the years, and yet not a single vehicle has been withdrawn as a result. Must surely be testament to the quality of their construction.
 

Llama

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195120 was pranged on Newton Heath depot this summer, it was one of the few that had been out in service at the time.

A week earlier another 195 collided at low speed with a 142 on Newton Heath, couplers made contact, damage very minor.

Pendolinos had a software issue with the WSP system IIRC which saw one or two low speed buffer stop collisions in 2004.

222103 spent a couple of years being repaired after falling off jacks at Crofton.
 

DarloRich

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Is this one of the fastest incidents of a train receiving structural damage so soon after introduction

do we know the train has structural damage or are we simply making an assumption based on a picture of damage to the sacrificial parts of the nose of the unit?
 

craigybagel

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In the US, Siemens SC-44 'Charger' WDTX 1402 was written off in the 'Point Defiance Bypass' accident on 18th December 2017 when it was about 9 months old (and had only been in 'revenue' - rather than testing - service for about a month). All of the passenger rolling stock involved the accident was written off as well.

Amtrak have a long tradition of crashing brand new rolling stock. As well as this incident you mention, and the brand new P40 destroyed in 1993 mentioned above, there is also the Philadelphia derailment in 2015 that wrote off the second of the AC64s when it was only a year old. The Superliners managed a whole day in service before being involved in a fatal accident in 1979 (though admittedly the coaches themselves stood up very well, the fatalities were in a freight train the Amtrak service collided with).

But then when your accident rate is as appalling as Amtrak's, I guess it's almost inevitable that new fleets will be involved in incidents relatively soon after their introduction to service.
 

Beebman

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In Luxembourg in 2000, CFL electric loco 3001 was written off when it was only about a year old after it was fried beyond repair when the driver selected 3000V DC line voltage under 25kV AC OHLE at Kautenbach station.
 

Neptune

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Just seven and a half months old!

Yeah it hadn't even managed a month in service.

Slightly off topic, but the class 156s have been involved in a high number of quite serious collisions over the years, and yet not a single vehicle has been withdrawn as a result. Must surely be testament to the quality of their construction.

Lots of Neville Hill units had serious collisions in the first few years.

156468/490 collided in the tragic Ais Gill crash in 1995. The worst affected 524xx vehicles took a couple of years to repair.

156473 hit by a stolen JCB at Pudsey foot crossing.

156498 collided with 91019 at Holbeck Junc.

156483 collided with a RES 47 at Leeds west end and apparently had a slightly twisted frame but was still repaired.

156489 collided with a 60 at Crosby Garrett.

All badly damaged and all repaired. The 156’s are strong old units.
 

ChiefPlanner

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I seem to recall a very new 319 , met the buffer stops at Strawberry Hill depot (where testing etc was done at the time)

Slightly off-topic , a brand new LUL 83 stock was badly tagged at Aylesbury en route Brum to Neasden. That was embarrassing and expensive.
 

43096

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In Luxembourg in 2000, CFL electric loco 3001 was written off when it was only about a year old after it was fried beyond repair when the driver selected 3000V DC line voltage under 25kV AC OHLE at Kautenbach station.
Oh, that was the reason - never seen that published before. Only 3000 I’ve never had.
 
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