Right Track 45: Corporate memory, SPAD risk and freight train derailments

Now, we rightly focus effort on the platform-train interface, climate change and asset integrity. Yet SMIS shows that SPAD numbers continue to climb and fall and climb. Those changes need to be looked into, and one of the things we’ve noticed in the last year is a rise in the numbers of post-SPAD incidents. The last fatal post-SPAD incident was the collision at Ladbroke Grove in 1999; 31 people were killed and more than 400 were injured. 

The SPADtalk column in Right Track 45 notes this point, but notes too that we cannot be complacent about the lower-risk post-SPAD incidents like depot derailments and runs-through. This theme is continued in our RAIB report brief, which considers the post-SPAD collision at Loversall Carr Junction on 5 July 2022, in which the driver of a freight train was injured. 

Elsewhere, we cover the perennial problem of safety critical comms, which we featured in RED 48, and whose requirements are encapsulated in Rail Industry Standard RIS-8046-TOM. Freightliner’s Bessie Matthews discusses the perils of taking short cuts and RSSB’s Barbara Smith discusses how the railway’s medical standards are set to change. We also raise awareness of harmful gambling and look at the work of the British Transport Police Workplace Violence Co-ordination Unit, which strives to tackle work-related violence in all its forms.

Thumbnail image credit: RAIB