Close call on Wairarapa railway line
A wrong assumption by a fatigued staff member caused an empty passenger train to nearly plough into an excavator and work group on the Wairarapa rail line.
A Transport Accident Investigation Commission report said the incident, at 3.18am on August 11, 2014, was caused when a rail protection officer assumed a group of workers had cleared the track.
They had not, and disaster was narrowly avoided only when the train crew spotted the track crew’s lights and pulled to a stop just before the Tauherenikau River bridge the crew was working on.
The section of track between Featherston and Dalefield, just south of Carterton, had been closed for scheduled maintenance since the previous Friday.
The work area was protected by train control issuing a track warrant to the rail protection officer, the person responsible for the safety and protection of personnel at the work site.
The report said the officer was not on site at 3am on Monday, August 11, when the track warrant was cancelled and the track reopened, though he told train control he was in Featherston.
Instead, the officer called members of the two work crews at the two bridges just before it was due to open and left messages to phone him and report when they had completed their work and were clear of the track.
Though he received the all-clear from one of the groups, he did not hear from the other. When he was unable to make contact, he assumed the group was finished working on the track and rang train control to cancel the track warrant.
The report said procedures had not been followed, and the rail protection officer was also likely fatigued from poor sleep.
‘‘The planning process did not address how rail activities within and through the protected work area would be controlled during the 52.5-hour work period,’’ the report said.
‘‘The commission recommended that KiwiRail review the company’s Fitness for Work Policy to ensure that the workloads of personnel undertaking safetycritical work, including staff not on a roster, are managed effectively and that the risk of staff suffering from the effects of fatigue is mitigated.’’
In a statement, KiwiRail general manager of network services Todd Moyle said new safety measures had been introduced since the incident.
‘‘As a result of that review, we introduced new requirements including that rail protection officers ... must remain on site, or, if multiple worksites are involved, at an approved location,’’ he said.
‘‘The rules also spell out the steps that must be followed when responsibility for a worksite is being handed over to a different RPO, and when sites are cleared to open for trains.
‘‘As the TAIC report notes, had this new rule been in use at the time, ‘it is highly likely the incident would not have occurred’,’’ Moyle said.
He said new systems were also in place to effectively manage safety workers’ workloads.