- Network Rail Fined £6.7 Million for Train Derailment
- Guilty Plea and Reduced Fine for Health and Safety Violations
- Details of the Carmont Train Accident and Failures Revealed
In 2020, three people were murdered and six others were injured when a ScotRail train from Aberdeen to Glasgow Queen Street derailed after hitting a landslip caused by heavy rain.
After admitting health and safety violations in a train accident that killed three, Network Rail was fined £6.7 million.
The fine was initially going to be £10m but was reduced by a third in recognition of the guilty plea.
Brett McCullough, 45, Donald Dinnie, 58, and Christopher Stuchbury, 62, perished on August 12, 2020. When their train derailed at Carmont, near Stonehaven in northeast Scotland.
ScotRail’s morning train from Aberdeen to Glasgow Queen Street derailed after hitting a landslip caused by torrential rainfall.
Three of nine passengers on the 6:38 a.m. train died and six were injured when debris surged onto the track.
Network Rail admitted a charge from May 1, 2011 to August 12, 2020 in Aberdeen’s High Court on Thursday.
It admitted failing to ensure, so far as was reasonably practicable, that non-employee railway workers and members of the public traveling by train were not exposed to the “risk of serious injury and death from train derailment” due to failures in the construction, inspection, and maintenance of drainage assets and adverse and extreme weather planning.
The company also admitted that it failed to impose an emergency speed restriction “in the absence of current information about the integrity of the railway line and drainage assets between Montrose and Stonehaven” and that it failed to inform the driver that it was unsafe to operate the train at 75 mph or warn him to reduce his speed.
An assessment found that a properly built drainage tube that spilled on accident day could have managed gravel washout.
The Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) discovered that there was no inspection of the drain following its completion and that Network Rail failed to ensure that Carillion, which was subcontracted to perform the work more than a decade ago, constructed it to the correct specifications.
Carillion was forced into liquidation in January of 2018.
The prosecutor, advocate depute Alex Prentice KC, informed the court that on the day of the accident, severe weather in northeast Scotland had caused widespread rail network disruptions.
According to him, passengers whose trains were canceled due to torrential rain described it as “biblical.” And both Aberdeenshire Council and Aberdeen City Council declared a significant weather-related emergency.
Mr. Prentice informed the court that recordings of a conversation between Mr. McCullough and the Carmont area signaller before the collision revealed the train driver inquired about a reduced speed limit on the Stonehaven line.
The signalman informed Mr. McCullough, “No, everything is fine between me and Stonehaven.”
The court heard that Mr. McCullough’s emergency brake had “insufficient time” to slow the train.
The accident occurred shortly before 9:40 a.m. as the train was returning to Aberdeen.
When the train hit a bridge abutment, its locomotive and one of its four carriages fell down an embankment.
