Rail Report Discussion: Penkridge Track Workers Near Miss

Read the report here.

There were 6 people involved, but somehow two was ‘separated’ from the group. The group separated with different understanding:

1. Group 1 thinks group 2 is walking on cess (not on track)
2. Group 2 thinks that the line possession (trains not using the track) still applies since
   1. it was applied for one hour
   2. and line was not powered, so they didn’t expect diesel (non-electric) train would be coming
3. Group 1 then releases the line possession to the signaller, thinking line is safe

As in the report, there are a few practices that is I think easily common, but not safe:

1. PIC (person in charge) supervises too big of an area
2. PIC acts as site warden – to be honest I’m not quite clear the difference but it seems that PIC is part of the work force, while site warden is the one asking for line possession
3. Track worker walks on the track – there’s the saying boots of ballast, but I guess the workers were trying to find the problem of the power trip, so had ‘wandered’ on the track. They were also lulled by the fact that there was no train in the past hour
4. Track worker walks too far from PIC – Similar to above, they were trying to find the ‘fireball’ that was seen

During some of the track possessions I’ve seen, all of these happened. Fortunately no incident happened, due to the fact they are in metro where the track is not easily accessible or so big, and the track possession will certainly require power to be removed, which in turn will not allow any service to pass through. Regardless, lessons can be learn where the practice above is avoided.

Initially I thought this was due working in Red Zone, where trains passes through while workers are doing (maintenance) work, but this is not, since there was no lookout. A discussion on this is Rail Report Discussion: Whitehall West Junction 2009 where the lookout himself unfortunately was hit by the train and passed away.

This incident had no casualty but it could have been so, as the freight train just missed the workers by one second. There was no reason attributed to signalling. This incident seems like it is mainly due to lack of communication and incorrect (or no?) implementation of safety systems of work (SSoW)

The report also mentioned other accidents and incidents which are similarly related. insyaAllah I will review them in the future.

Thank you for reading.