Day death and mayhem came to rural glen, leaving 30-ton carriages scattered like toys
ON the winding rural roads of Kincardineshire you could be forgiven for thinking yesterday that nothing was amiss. There was no vantage point from them to the horror that unfolded on the rail tracks south of Stonehaven just before 9.40am.
The picture from the air told a different story. From above, the view over the railway line was one of almost unimaginable destruction.
At first sight, 30-ton carriages could be seen scattered like toys around the track. A closer look revealed the twisted metal, the crushed compartments and smashed windows.
Halfway down a ravine, one carriage had come to rest on its side. Another one was upside down on the track next to the one the locomotive pulling it had been travelling on.
It appeared to be lying on top of a third carriage strewn diagonally across both sets of tracks. That one was crushed to perhaps a third of its original height.
A fourth carriage was still attached to its locomotive, but teetered on the edge of the ravine, as if ready to plunge any minute, taking the locomotive with it. Horrifyingly, it also appeared to have mounted the carriage that bisected both lines.
How, investigators may ask, did anyone survive this? From the helicopter that took these pictures, rail and rescue workers could be seen walking around the disaster scene as if in a daze, trying to make sense of it all.
That the scene was bathed in afternoon sunshine, barely a cloud in the sky, was one of the cruel ironies of this most calamitous of scenes.
It was Biblical rains the night before which were thought to have caused the landslip that triggered the tragedy.
But there were kind ironies here too.
AWEEK before yesterday’s train crash, Aberdeen was placed under a renewed lockdown after a spike in coronavirus cases. Residents were ordered not to travel more than five miles from home. How busy might the 6.38am service from Aberdeen to Glasgow Queen Street have been in the early stages of its journey had Scotland’s third city been enjoying the same freedoms as other major centres of population?
Reports suggested there were only six passengers on the train as it left Stonehaven. That is fewer than two passengers per carriage.
How many more dozens might have been aboard if lockdown had not been reimposed on Aberdeen last week?
And how much more devastating the death toll than the three who lost their lives as their carriages thundered off the rails?
‘I would like to reassure the public that this was not a busy service,’ said British Transport Police Chief Superintendent Eddie Wylie.
That, of course, was due to good fortune rather than anything else. And there was little reassurance to be had from any of the scenes captured by the camera in the helicopter – or from the police’s refusal to take any questions.
Thus, at 5pm, seven hours after the tragedy, Chief Inspector Brian McAleese of British Transport Police appeared in the car park of Stonehaven police station to read a short statement on the crash before marching back inside.
Three people were dead. A scene reminiscent of a disaster movie lay not four miles away.
But no questions were to be fielded on the matter.
‘I know many people will have questions and an investigation will be directed by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service,’ said the chief inspector.
‘We will be working alongside them and the Rail Accident Investigation Branch and the offices of Network Rail to establish the full circumstances of how this train came to derail.’ For now, then, police will not confirm which direction they think the train was travelling in when it left the track.
What is clear is that it was already well behind schedule when it crashed. It is thought the train stopped just south of Stonehaven when it became clear there was a landslip ahead – and then went into reverse in order to access another line which was clear. At some point during this manoeuvre the derailment occurred, apparently at high speed.
Tony Miles, a correspondent at
Modern Railways magazine, said: ‘The power car clearly sustained severe damage and the carriages were piled on top of one another.
‘This could only have happened if the train was going at a significant speed. The top speed for the stretch of track where the derailment occurred is 65mph.’
MR MILES added: ‘The driver would have been assigned a speed to travel at and investigators from the Rail Accident Investigation Branch will inevitably be listening back to the conversations he had with the local signaller. They’ll also seek to recover the train’s “black box” data recorder which will allow them to piece together events.
‘The industry has been concerned for some time landslips appear to be happening more often. This will be a bit of a wake-up call and it may lead to an official advisory
for trains to travel at slower speeds when the risk of a landslip is high.
‘The driver and local signaller may have thought the way back was clear because they’d passed over it a couple of hours earlier. This may have explained why the train was going fast enough to cause catastrophic damage.’
One of the biggest challenges for the dozens of police officers, firefighters and ambulance crews in the rescue was the relative inaccessibility of the location.
Many of the roads around the crash site are single track and the lashing rain from the night before had left some flooded. Even then, the scene was well away from the roads in a gully hidden by trees.
By mid-afternoon dozens of emergency service vehicles had converged on the nearest point to the site of the stricken train they could find. But it was a Coastguard helicopter that ferried casualties to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, where they were treated for relatively minor injuries.
THE three who lost their lives, including the driver and conductor, are all said to have died at the scene. Mick Lynch, RMT assistant general secretary, said: ‘Safety on the railway has to be an absolute priority and this union will be working to establish the facts.’
A welcome centre had been set up in Aberdeen for families of crash victims – but, by late afternoon, none had arrived.
Volunteer police officers and members of Aberdeen’s Midstocket Church waited alongside NhS staff to offer any assistance. When it seemed none was needed, they quietly closed the centre.
But for lockdown, the church could have been the gathering point for hundreds affected. That it went unused was indicative of the very small numbers affected – and how horribly different the train disaster could have been.
Nevertheless, on an apparently clear and sunny day, a train has left the tracks and killed three of the small number on board. Countless thousands of travellers will be anxious to know why.