Well one thing I've learned: It's now the Railway Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) that investigates railway accidents, rather than His (Her) Majesty's Railway Inspectorate (HMRI), who investigated them for a century and half. Anyway whoever investigates this one (and I reckon the Strathspey Railway must have an internal investigation) they really must have access to that video. It leaves little doubt that the primary cause is driver error. There doesn't seem to be any sign of the brake being applied. My own recommendation would be that there should have been someone on the ground giving handsignals. Preferably on the driver's side. This also raises the question who was driving. Somebody posted earlier that Flying Scotsman has its own full time driver. But he wouldn't be familiar with the Strathspey line. So, assuming the same ways of working still apply as they did when I was a railwayman, he should have "obtain[ed] the services of a competent conductor", i.e. a Strathspey Railway driver, who would have a good idea of where you have to slow down when coming on top of a train.
One unusual feature of class A3 locomotives used to be that they had no direct steam brake. You had to use the vacuum brake even when running light. Which of course means that the ejector must be working, even when running light. (I suppose you could get the fireman to use the tender hand brake.) I don't know how much of this still applies to Flying Scotsman; maybe 60103 is dual braked now! But it could be a cause of confusion for a driver not used to driving an A3.
I think some of you are being a bit harsh on those who raised the alarm. I think there's a good chance the 999 call was made by someone who was on the train, perhaps catering staff. Even a low speed collision can feel much worse when you're actually in the train. Imagine what you would think if you were in that catering vehicle when all that stuff fell down! The people injured must have been inside the train (or possibly on the engine footplate).
I once was in a low speed collision. I was the guard of a train bringing 40 empty coal wagons from Ravenscraig to Cardowan Colliery. The normal arrangement there was that I'd couple off the brake van on the main line. Then, when the ground signal came off, I'd signal to the driver to come back quite vigorously so as to kick my van into one road. The driver would then slow down, and a member of the Coal Board surface staff would pull the points so that the empty wagons would go into an empty road. Normally I'd run my van down on top of some loaded wagons of call ready to take a second train of coal to Ravenscraig. But on this occasion there was some sort of misunderstanding, and other Coal Board staff were running five or six loaded coal wagons into the exchange sidings. So, instead of running my van right down into the exchange sidings on top of the loaded wagons in the sidings, I had to try to stop it in a fairly short crossover, fast enough and far enough to clear my own train coming in on my left, but before I reached the wagons being run down on my right. The situation was complicated at Cardowan because, as soon as I passed the signal box and went into the colliery, I was out of sight of my driver, still on the main line. Both I and the colliery staff had to rely on the signalman to pass on our handsignals to my driver. Of course we wanted to get the train off the main line, because there was a DMU every half hour from Cumbernauld to Springburn. Well I nearly made it. I got it clear of the crossing on my left and frantically started to screw the brake on before I hit the wagons in front of me. When it hit them, the van was moving very slowly, but it wasn't quite stopped. I think I'll always remember the sound of splintering wood as my van hit them. Then, almost in slow motion, the front of the van lifted off the rails and dropped down into the four foot. I'm glad I was going very slowly because, if I'd hit them going faster, the wagons would have tipped over and crushed the men who were running them down. You don't survive a loaded coal wagon falling on top of you. The brake van was an old pre-nationalisation ex-L.M.S. one with an M73xxxx number. (We called them Caley vans.) Having felt the collision and heard the splintering wood, I was sure it would be condemned, and, being the kind of person that I am, I felt kind of bad about that. But, as I said, it feels worse when you're in the train. In fact it was rerailed, and repaired for £70, and went back into traffic. The C & W repairer fitted a new footstep -- that's all that was wrong with it. Sometimes derailments in sidings would be fixed by local staff without telling anyone. But in this case I felt I had to tell the Control what had happened, as, without my brake van, I couldn't continue working. And anyway I felt a bit shaken. But not as bad as the men who were running the wagons down -- they were shaking like leaves! When my van hit their wagons, they thought the wagons would tip over on top of them. As they were working the brakes on the far side of the wagons, they didn't know we were there at all until my van hit their wagons. So it was a very minor accident. But it could so easily have been a tragedy.
. . . All that is a very long digression, but you get the idea. The collision feels much worse when you're in the train.
AFAIK Belmond is the firm that owns (or at least runs) the Royal Scotsman train. As for press coverage, it always has struck me that press reports on railway accidents were always written by people who knew nothing at all about railway operating! Do railway enthusiasts (who usually have some grasp of railway operation) never become journalists? That's why I came here today. I wanted to find out what had really happened. When I heard on the BBC that Flying Scotsman had collided with another train, I envisaged a head-on collision on the single line!
