Driver escaped serious injury after crossing misuse led to derailment
Failures by Network Rail to identify and resolve level crossing misuse, along with poor road signage and lack of control by the crossing's authorised user (a farmer owning the surrounding land), resulted in a collision where a freight train driver came close to suffering serious injuries.
A Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) report into the crash, at the user-worked crossing at Kisby (near March on the Peterborough-Ely route) at 0900 on August 19 2021, described how a tractor driver, towing a trailer of straw bales, failed to stop at the farm crossing (or call the signaller for permission to cross). He pulled out in front of the 0410 Hams Hall-Felixstowe container train, travelling at 66mph, just six seconds before impact.
After pressing the emergency brake plunger, the driver moved to shelter in the access corridor. But he was still in the cab on impact, and suffered minor injuries and severe trauma.
Releasing pictures of the damaged cab of GB Railfreight 66754 Northampton Saints,
RAIB said that had the driver still been in his seat, it was “likely” that he would have suffered “serious injury”.
The force of the impact exceeded locomotive windscreen design standards “by a very large margin”. Both windscreens broke, showering debris from the trailer and its load into the cab.
The locomotive and a wagon partially derailed, and the line was closed for five days for recovery and extensive track repairs.
RAIB discovered that users of the crossing failed to comply with its signage and contact the signaller - not only on the day of the accident, but on multiple occasions previously.
The tractor driver admitted that he did not read the standard sign, which RAIB said is poorly worded and laid out.
Wording is included in proposals for revised signage, on which the Department for Transport is expected to decide in 2023.
NR had risk-assessed the crossing to be in the top 1% of risk nationwide. Its estimates of usage were for 500 to 1,000 vehicles per year using the crossing, but signal box records show that only nine requests to cross were made between August 2018 and July 2021.
RAIB said that NR was not aware of the “full extent of the problem” until two months before the crash, but that NR's manager had accepted assurances of the authorised user during a site visit on July 13 that the crossing would be used correctly in future. Between then and the accident 37 days later, only one call to the signaller was made.
Making two recommendations, RAIB said NR must “improve the effectiveness of its risk management of UWCs” and that farmers and workers “understand the importance of following instructions” at UWCs, and that the Health & Safety Executive should “revise its guidance for agriculture”.