Railway Incidents

[adikarina]

Hi!

I was wondering where i could get information about railway incidents in the past 10 yrs. I have tried looking at various websites, but could get the milestone ones where the result was change in technology or processes.

Is there a paper, or place where i can get this from?
Thanks
Regards
Aditi

[Peter]

Have you had a look at the rail Accident Investigation Branch site: http://www.raib.gov.uk/home/index.cfm.

Their purpose is stated as "The Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) is the independent railway accident investigation organisation for the UK. It investigates railway accidents and incidents on the UK's railways to improve safety, not to establish blame."

There are quite a few reports on there although I don't know how far their remit was defined in The Railways (Accident Investigation and Reporting) Regulations in 2005.

You implied that you were looking for some of the less headline grabbing incidents and there is stuff like http://www.raib.gov.uk/cms_resources/070...hesion.pdf which looks at some SPADs as a result of poor rail adhesion.

Peter

[Jerry1237]

Hi!

I was wondering where i could get information about railway incidents in the past 10 yrs. I have tried looking at various websites, but could get the milestone ones where the result was change in technology or processes.

Is there a paper, or place where i can get this from?
Thanks
Regards
Aditi

I would actually suggest the accidents of note happened prior to ten years ago. If you are asking because of the time limit sometimes impossed on the exam questions, I'd use the RAIB as Peter suggests. However, most exam questions rarely asks for you to be able to recite anything verbatim but to explain the concequences, causes etc. Google often turns up the MoT/DoT/DfT reports as well.

If I can be of any further help, do ask. My shelves have a large number of tomes on accidents.

Jerry.

[PJW]

I'd recommend:
www.railwaysarchive.co.uk

Free for downloading almost any UK (don't know if also Eire but certainly had Irish prior to the split) railway accident from the early days of railway, nearly up to the current day - though obviously the RAIB site better for the "hot off the press".

Amazing resource.


I'd also agree that you should be looking at accidents from more than 10 years ago; 50years would be more like it. Also do read Tom Rolt's "Red for Danger": the original and still the best in my view. The basic causes of railway accidents - mainly human error / miscommunication - don't change much over the generations.

Don't worrry too much about the specific detail- more the themes and the lessons learned (or not learned and should have been....)

PJW

[bigcheese]

For an overview the annual statistical reports produced by Prof Evans at Imperial college on behalf of Lloyd's Register may be interesting. See http://www.cts.cv.ic.ac.uk/html/Research...ionID=1140

for the latest but previous years are there too.

[Motty]

The Stanley Hall Books are good reading too;

- Beyond Hidden Dangers
or
- Railway Disasters Cause & Effect

Try the local library or Ian Allen Bookshop.
Also Christian Wolmar has a good political handle on the UK railways though I think some people find him a bit pompous.

HTH