I’ve previously written about the west-coast main-line railway, with it’s fast trains and efficient and cost-effective service. I’m a big fan, and much prefer travelling by rail than by air.
The horrible news about the derailment last night has pretty much meant that my forthcoming trip to London will require me to fly: The east-coast route via Edinburgh is very slow and likely to be much busier as a result of this. I’ve not ruled it out, but I have to weigh up the option. All very frustrating from my perspective.
The pictures are very dramatic. That the trains front carriages appears to have jack-knifed is a real puzzle. But it’s a credit to the train strength and structure that the casualty rate is so low. A tragedy certainly, but that deaths and serious injuries are in single digits is still remarkable. Also another example of mobile phones changing journalism. All the pictures in the first few hours of this story were from mobile phones. Even horrific quality 3G video-phones from reporters on the scene were broadcast as, I imagine, they struggled to get remote broadcast units to the scene.
I’m puzzled by the low passenger numbers. Last time I travelled - which was off-peak - there were a lot of people on the train. For a train that departed London at 5.15pm to have only 100 (according to the BBC) passengers at the time is bizarre. Sure it’s not as busy once it’s passed Preston, but the number seems oddly low to me.
I once again found myself shouting at Bob Crow, the leader of the RMT earlier as he appeared on one of the news channels and seemed to be leaping to all manner of conclusions from insufficient details. Somehow it was already the fault of management (are his members somehow exempt from ever being responsible for work they do?), and that he seemed to take exception that his members even being questioned by the police. I expect it is standard practice after an accident like this: Given some of his members presumably actually did some work on the tracks/trains in question. All in all, it once again leaves me that RMT just appears me as a petulant, noisy, bully-boy of a union that does a great deal of harm to the wider union cause. Perhaps I’ve just been inconvenienced one too many times by their strikes over pay, conditions or their dubious safety strikes (Once too often scheduled around public holidays) to be at all sympathetic.
I’m sure this story will continue to develop, as more facts emerge. Hopefully the initial emphasis reporters seemed to place, during the earlier reports, on the words “high-speed” and “tilting” (as if to imply they were fundamentally dangerous or intrinsically suspect) will be replaced by a clear understanding of what happened. Rolling news has a horrible habit of rushing down false avenues in the early stages (reason enough to avoid ‘breaking news’ reports). I just hope it doesn’t mean the end to high speed railway tracks in this country: We could certainly use more, especially here in Scotland between Glasgow and Edinburgh.
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March 15th, 2007 at 9:13 am
Has there ever been a derailing of a train because of a ball?