Another derailment in Scotland at Dalwhinnie.

borderreiver

Active member
Last month a HST on a test run for Network Rail derailed at Dalwhinnie in Scotland. It appears that a facing crossover at the southern end of the station with a 15 mph speed limit permitted part of the train to divert from the up line to the down line while it had reached 30 mph. The signals were set for the train to depart on the up line and the leading vehicles did indeed proceed along the up line. RAIL magazine mentioned that an initial inspection showed no damage to the points so the train did not appear to have forced the points open. The crossover has now been replaced temporarily with plain track.

What I find interesting is that I took part in a zoom meeting early last month where a presentation was made relating to a February 1927 accident with 12 immediate fatalities and a 13th delayed fatality on the LNER at Hull. One of the conclusions for the 1927 accident was that track circuiting would have prevented the accident by prohibiting the signalman from setting the preceding signal to ON before the whole of the train length had passed the signal (as required by company signalling rules). Setting the signal ON in 1927 at Hull released the interlocking on a facing points crossover and threw the outbound train in to the path of an approaching inbound train, resulting in a head-on collision. In the present day Dalwhinnie had track circuiting, so the experts need to look at just what went wrong there. It is only by sheer luck that it was not a passenger carrying service which was derailed.,
 
Last edited:
Back
Top