Rail Accident Report Discussion: Embankment Washout Haddiscoe

A train stopped where part of the track has been washed out. I think pictures explain it best.

As per the picture, the train has already gone a bit over the washout/hole. The driver stopped the train and wanted to reverse it but the car/end that was over the hole, started to lean over. The driver and the six passengers then evacuated the train. The line was closed for around a week.

At first this seems purely an earthwork issue since the soil beneath the track was washed out by water, since the line is next to a waterway/canal. There are flood defenses but water overspilled these. There’s too much water. Reason given was due to a combination of tidal surge and tidal locking. Now I have no idea what they mean but I understand that these combinations causes the overspill, and water rushed and washed away the ballast. No signalling, right? And no harm too.

But this is a near miss and if we look at the possible damage, this presents a very high risk (risk = consequences x possibility). The driver in this situation saw water flooding the track and slowed down until he stopped, but it could possibly be that if it was at night or the visibility is very bad (raining, winter, dark), that the driver might just drive through the area. Train might also derail, since in this report, the train was already leaning over. And although I don’t know the volume of passengers along the line, but the incident above occurred in the morning, hence I assume there would be more passengers if it were at noon or peak hour. All this contributes to a very high risk.

Also the signalling systems did not manage to detect the washout. It might be under trackwork, but if a detection system is installed, it needs to be either automatically feeding into the signalling/interlocking, or informing the control centre. The report says currently there’s a flood warning detection system FWD, but it would still not prevent it since the area is deemed as category B. I do not follow the logics but I can see that it is a great challenge to incorporate a detection and warning systems into the railway, and also to balance the warnings between being too frequent with often full of false warning, and quick enough to be useful to prevent accident.

I have no answer or anything to contribute to that, other than now I realize that water washing away the ballast doesn’t sound so harmless as I used to think, anymore.

Thank you for reading.