'The Capital Christmas Express'. 23rd November

I Would imagine the 2240 from Basingstoke would get most people home, as far as Poole anyway… Weymouth passengers however..

It did well to keep out of the way of other traffic.. almost no other delays at all… so the juice must have remained on, the world kept turning so it was no Crewkerne.
Didn't another bulleid lose a coupling rod around this area back in the 60's ?

 

Glad my lovely old dad wasn't there. I know what he would have said.

 

...Just passing on a picture ..

 

Given that one early report I saw was that an "axle had fallen off" and was "lying on the ballast" I think the proverbial pinch of Sodium Chloride is required as seasoning to any such information at this point!

 

will there be a RAIB investigation?

 

No trains stopping at Fleet, Hook and winchfield for over three hours, unfortunately that will rack up the delay minutes. I hope Tangers is not to badly damaged and can be back in action soon.

When this sort of thing happens why does the locomotive not become "live", is it just the crews rubber soled boots that save them?

 

From their website

The scope of the RAIB’s work is set out in the Act and it is mandated to investigate any serious railway accident, as defined in the Regulations (Regulation 2(3)), which occurs on a railway, as defined by the Transport and Works Act 1992. This covers:

• the national railway networks in Great Britain and Northern Ireland;
• the Channel Tunnel (in co-operation with its equivalent operation in France);
• the London and Glasgow Underground systems and other metro systems;
• tramways;
• heritage railways (including narrow-gauge systems over 350mm gauge); and
• cable-hauled systems of 1km or longer.

In this context, a serious accident means an accident involving a derailment or collision of rolling stock which has an obvious impact on railway safety regulation or management of safety and includes such an accident that results in:

• the death of at least one person;
• serious injuries to five or more persons; or
• extensive damage to rolling stock, the infrastructure or the environment.

There is no requirement to investigate these accidents if they fall outside of the RAIB’s general aim to improve the safety of railways and to prevent railway accidents and incidents.
Importantly, the Act provides for the RAIB to investigate other accidents and incidents occurring on railway property that are or may be relevant to the operation of the railway, and where the Branch believes that there may be significant safety lessons to be learnt which could improve the safety of railways.
The RAIB does not investigate:

• worker accidents/incidents that are not associated with train movements and which are not relevant to the operation of the railway;
• accidents/incidents involving trespassers or suicides; or
• accidents/incidents that occur within an industrial curtilage, unless it involves a train carrying passengers.

 

Ha ha ha!

 

For the same reason that no-one in a plane gets electrocuted when its struck by lightening. On board is the safest electrical place to be, half on and half off most definitely isn't.

 

It has investigated some instances of OLE coming down, but only where it has posed a risk to the public (bit of the pantograph smashing through a train window for example)

 

Indeed it could have been much worse!

Silence on the forum? No I don't see why.
However, reporting second-hand information from sources without first considering the reliability of the source, making "presumptions" without clear evidence or first hand witness accounts or blaming persons or organisations without official reports should be avoided.......

.......Actually on second thoughts Al I think the thread will be relatively quiet after all.....!

 

Thank you

 

Pardon? I fail to see how some tangled knitting and broken pantographs equate to a massive connecting rod breaking loose? How about the 1960 incident with a Brit for instance .......

"On 21 January 1960, the Settle rail crash, which cost the lives of five passengers, was caused when the piston rod, cross-head and connecting rod of No. 70052 came loose and damaged the opposite line as a freight train was approaching. The locomotive of the freight train was derailed towards 70052's train and tore out the sides of three passenger coaches"

Depending on the failure mode I would expect some serious investigation taking place, with possible knock-on implications for other operators.

 

i was on train, we blocked slow line for 3 hours, and adjacent fast line had to be closed for several time periods to allow access to fireman's side of loco for removal of damaged parts to make loco safe to move...NR staff searched all tracks alongside us and then all across all up and down lines and behind the train for some distance checking for track damage...Plenty of SWT trains were disrupted and delayed, some cancellations...finally loco made safe to move and we got to Basing at about 2240 and RTC were lucky that SWT kindly arranged for an additionally stopped and further delayed the 2135 off Waterloo-Weymouth for us to rescue the pax. (this train was not stopping at Basing)
the Eastleigh pax got the stopping train 2252.
just maybe a critique was that had NR allowed closure of the adj down fast for a bit longer the damage could have been removed much quicker in one go and we would have got on the move quicker, but it would have caused longer delays to trains running down...that's all.
RTC did a good job in keeping us updated with true facts and we were at least warm and fed on the train in comfort.
Hats off to SWT for holding that train for us otherwise things for 100 odd Weymouth pax would have been different with buses from B'mouth onwards.

 

Reported elsewhere that SWT delayed the last down Weymouth at Basingstoke and passengers duly arrived at Weymouth just after midnight.

 

To illustrate extreme consequences of such an incident, a couple of weeks ago a friends live steam Gauge One 4472 running at speed lost the right hand connecting rod/piston rod pin. The connecting rod dropped, bent under and derailed the loco pitching it onto its side. The loco weighs about 8 kilo and the steel rod was bent double. Hope no additional damage to Tangmere.