Derailment compounds Waterloo platform closures
AN early morning commuter train derailed at Waterloo on August 15, coming into contact with a stationary freight train and causing widespread disruption for 48 hours.
The ten-car South West Trains 0540 service to Guildford was leaving Platform 11. Crossing points at the station throat, it veered left into a stationary engineering train that was being used as a barrier to protect track workers involved in the platform upgrade. It appeared the train had derailed on the points before striking the barrier train.
The derailment left 13 of the normal 19 Waterloo platforms out of action. Ten were already closed for the upgrade works.
Many SWT services started from or terminated at Farnborough or Woking for the rest of the day. Some Salisbury services were diverted via Basingstoke to Reading. Passengers were strongly advised to avoid Waterloo altogether.
Queuing systems to manage the number of people on platforms were put into place at Waterloo, Vauxhall, Clapham Junction and Wimbledon. And passengers were handed bottles of water to help cope with long delays.
London Ambulance Service said three of the 23 passengers and two crew on the derailed train were checked, but nobody was taken to hospital.
Only the leading carriage of the train was derailed, with the front bogies resting about half a metre from the track. The impact was said to have been at little more than walking pace. It took Network Rail more than 12 hours to bring in equipment to re-rail the train.
The train was an eight-car Class 455 coupled to a two-car Class 456. The Class 456 was at the front. Although passengers in the rear eight carriages could return easily to the platform, escorted by the guard, there was no through access to the front two carriages. Most Waterloo services have been running as ten-car formations during the blockade to maximise use of limited platform capacity.
There is no evidence that the train was incorrectly signalled or that the driver disobeyed a signal.
One driver commented: “It would pose questions as to why the signals had interlocked as the points weren’t set correctly. The pointwork where it derailed is very complex.”
For several hours after the crash, SWT and Network Rail continued to refer to it as “an operational incident”.
An investigation into the incident is under way. NR said it could not begin re-railing until the Rail Accident Investigation Branch had completed its work. RAIB will want to know how a set of points could be moved to allow a train to enter an occupied track: was this connected to the engineering work on adjacent lines, was the equipment faulty, or was there an error by the signaller, already under pressure because of the complex blockade?
Another driver commented: “Thankfully it was low speed and early in the morning, so it was lightly loaded. The driver and guard worked as a team, as professionally as one could hope for.
“It just proves the scale of the task Network Rail set themselves. Imagine trying to rebuild Heathrow while it was still open. That’s what they are attempting at Waterloo. Here is uncompromising proof of the risks of such
engineering works.”
Network Rail completed repairs overnight, but the problem was compounded by a separate signalling fault at 0520 the following morning. Only when the fault was corrected at 0730 could the derailed train be removed to Clapham Yard.
Network Rail reopened two of the three affected platforms soon afterwards, allowing most services to return to the revised schedule that is in operation during the blockade.