Wrongly built drainage system led to Stonehaven train crash, investigators find
A drainage system wrongly built by Carillion and unchecked by Network Rail led to the Stonehaven train crash, investigators have found, when a Scotrail train hit debris washed by rain on to the railway track.
Three people died on 12 August 2020 in the worst fatal event on the UK railways in 18 years, when the passenger train from Aberdeen to Glasgow derailed at Carmont, near Stonehaven, after heavy rainfall.
Inspectors said the drainage system and earthworks, installed in 2011-12 by the contractor Carillion to stabilise the slope above the track, “had not been constructed in accordance with the original design and so were not able to safely accommodate the water flows” when almost a month’s rainfall, 51.5mm, fell in three hours.
The changes made by Carillion, which went bust in 2018, were not noted by Network Rail, which did not inspect the upper parts of the drainage system after a handover in 2013.
The Rail Accident Investigation Branch’s final report on the disaster also found that route controllers had “not been given the information, procedures or training needed” to effectively manage the situation, and that Network Rail had not fully implemented risk measures developed after previous events involving extreme weather.
Despite a nearby landslip the same morning, and floods from the extreme rainfall, no speed restrictions were imposed and the train was travelling at 73mph when it hit the gravel washed from the drainage trench and came off the tracks, striking a bridge parapet. One of the four carriages overturned and another fell down a steep embankment and caught fire.
The RAIB said the outcome would probably have been less severe for a more modern train with better “crashworthiness” than the 1970s-built HST model
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