It looks as if National Rail or whatever they are now calling the old Railtrack are up to their old tricks again. As those of you who reside in England all probrably know, we have had quite a bit of rain over Christmas. Now the section of the Brighton Main Line that runs through Redhill up to Purley (the Slow Brighton or Redhill lines) were completely shut down for Christmas Day and Boxing Day (26th December). Now in the old days, with such bad weather, the track would be inspected before any train could traverse the route. Not now. just let the train through and keep your fingers crossed that everything is ok. Unfortunately this backfired on "Railtrack" as the 02.00 Brighton to Victoria, the first train northwards on the morning of 27th, came out of Merstham Tunnel at about 70 mph and suddely found that the Up Slow line had been covered by a LANDSLIP!!! The train remained on the track, but the earth removed every one of his third rail collector shoes. And that was on an eight car train. So we find that all up slow trains are replaced by buses for a complete day of services. There should not be any need for incidents like this. I don't know what its going to take to get track inspected after such a closure, but this particular incident could have been a lot worse. Imagine what would have happed in the landslip was a couple of feet highter. It not only would have ripped off the collector shoes, but it would have stopped the bogies. The you would have carriage bodies flung in all directions. And we are supposed to have confidence in this lot. Makes you a little apprehensive when working on nights or the first early train. Oh by the way, A very merry Xmas and aHappy New Year to you all [ 28. December 2002, 16:46: Message edited by: Ron Carlisle ]
Shocking state of affairs Ron! Must be a bit hairy these days when you can trust no-one to keep the railways safe Just take care........and maybe keep your fingers crossed?
What a large percent of my workmates have said, and I must agree with them, is that we should not have to endure this sort of problem. A driver who has to work Driver Only all the time, and work through the CENTRE of London has enought stress as it is. Our route is the most intesive in the country. Whereas a main line driver may see one or two red signals throughout his days work, we see at least one red signal every 30 minutes, so the last thing we need is to come out of a tunnel and find the track has disappeared under a pile of earth!!! Tell you how intensive the route is. I actually managed to travel from Blackfriars to Brighton without seeing a red signal. The first time in five years working for Thameslink. Why. Because it was Boxing Day, and the only other company using the route was Gatwick Express. That will give you an idea how intesive it is. By the way Happy New Year to all our readers and contributors.
It woulldappear that our worst fears have been founded. There has been another landslide north of Redhill (Merstham Tunnel) which has unfortunately caused a train to derail (10.56 Brighton to Victoria outer suburban service.) According to various news outlets, there has not been any serious injuries, those who have been injured are apparently "walking wounded". As far as I can make out, the cause of the landslide is the torrential rain we have been having, and Railtrack having cleared all of the vegetations in the names cutting. No roots to hold the soil together and this is what happens. It make driving trains so much more stressfull that you dread coming out of tunnels and the like.
