Talk:Clapham Junction rail crash/Archive 1

Correction needed?
The following was inserted in the article; removed by me just now --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:54, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Again I read that the ecs (empty coaching stock) hit the wreckage of the initial crash. This is incorrect. As the Poole hit the rear of the Basingstoke train the ecs was just passing and the coaches of the Poole 'bounced' into the second car of the ecs. The front car with the driver in and the guard who was up front having a chat, was uncoupled from the second car by the crash. If the train had crashed into the wreck the driver and guard would have been seriously injured or even killed. This was not the case and in photographs the front car of the ecs can be seen standing alone clear of the wrecked trains. RW Hind,ex guard and colleague of those involved.


 * I assume the guard was disciplined because if he was 'up front' with the driver, then he was in breach of the regulations. 86.174.45.7 (talk) 18:32, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

ATP
There are some weasel paragraphs here suggesting that ATP wouldn't be worth it. *roll eyes* At the very least, such arguments for doing nothing should be sourced. *rolling eyes again* 195.24.29.51 13:55, 24 April 2007

Thank you for your efforts with this page. I think that if you are to use jargon such as "wrong side faiure" they should at least be linked if not explained e.g. http://railchat.co.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=17846&p=281326&hilit=WRONG+SIDE+FAILURE#p281326 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.143.57.44 (talk • contribs) 21:17, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Removed paragraph
I've removed this paragraph as unsourced opinion. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:47, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Any recommendation for enhanced safety systems must ensure that those systems are correctly installed and correctly maintained. Unlike a manually operated signalling system, where safety-critical decisions are made by the signaller every time a signal is changed or points switched, an automatic system has these decisions wired in at the design and construction stages. If the design and construction are flawless, the decisions will always be safe. If faults occur, whether as a result of equipment failure or (as here) of human error in the relay room, the decisions will be arbitrary. It is not apparent, therefore, that ATP on the lines out of Waterloo would have prevented this accident, since the ATP could have also been bypassed by the false feed wrong side failure.

Neutrality and sourcing
This article makes several claims that, without appropriate inline citations, make the article appear non-neutral. Inline sources should be added if available. If they are not available, then the text should be modified to provide neutral facts only. In its current form this article could easily be taken by someone as a "hidden agenda" intended to attack British Rail and its practices, rather than provide an encyclopedic account of this event. Truthanado (talk) 15:04, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Maybe you could do that yourself rather than putting the neutrality of the whole article into doubt just because you didn't read the Hidden Inquiry? It's all there. Faulty (talk) 21:00, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The neutrality tag has been restored. I have not only read the Hidden Inquiry, I have studied it in depth. I work in the rail industry and the Inquiry resulted in several lessons learned that have since been adopted by rail agencies around the world. Here is but one example of the non-neutrality of this article:
 * Article: "The direct cause of the disaster was sloppy work practices ..."
 * Hidden Inquiry: "The primary cause of the crash was incorrect wiring work ..."
 * There is no justification to use the word "sloppy". That only attempts to place blame. In addition, the article's use of the word "direct" implies that it was the only cause of the disaster, while the Inquiry's use of "primary" clearly indicates that there are other causes. Remembering that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, what is needed here is the addition of inline citations to justify the claims made; if those citations do not exist (as they do not in the above example), the wording should be changed. Over time, it is likely that I will make some changes to this article. In the meantime, it is useful to indicate to tag the article so that Wikipedia users that the information may not be fully correct and to encourage Wiki editors to participate in useful edits. If the Hidden Inquiry is intended as a major reference, it would help if it were listed in the Reference section and not in the less important External links section. Truthanado (talk) 00:57, 13 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Minor disagreements on wording do not constitute non-neutrality. The references are needed. The statements should be tightened up to better reflect the sources. But I don't see any NPOV violations. The nofootnotes template would appear to be sufficient to alert to reader to the problems, and the POV template superfluous. I'm going to go ahead and remove it. Modest Genius talk 07:55, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Number of deaths?
I know that the BBC story reports 35 people died in the crash but I was a commuter on that line around the time of the crash and I distinctly remember another passenger who died a substantial time later, even after the memorial service. Unfortunately, I can't access the Hidden Enquiry report at work so I can't verify this fact. I had the number of 36 deaths in my head when I was thinking about Clapham.Kateab (talk) 07:32, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Hidden lists 35 people who died in his Appendix A. Hidden was published in November 1989 and the accident was in December 1988, so it must be possible that someone died after publication in circumstances in which injury from the crash contributed to the death. But we'll need to find a citation somewhere before we amend the article. --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:32, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I think it's just my brain. I've read through the bits of the Hidden report tonight and it lists 35 people who died in the appendix. It mentions in the text that 2 of the victims didn't die for at least a month after the accident, and the list of people who died lists the person I was thinking of. The memorial service was only a month or so after the accident. The BBC report is obviously mocked up as there was presumably no BBC news website at the time so it lists it as "on this day" that 35 people died which according to the Hidden report is incorrect - 33 were probably confirmed dead on the day and 2 further deaths from their injuries later on. Kateab (talk) 23:33, 15 April 2009 (UTC)


 * The "On this Day" articles are written long after the event, as if they were contemporary news reports, which can be confusing. The BBC seems to have abandoned the concept in 2005 (the latest entries) or 2008 (the copyright date). -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 17:55, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Concern regarding inaccuracy and lack of referenced citations
I have just spent several hours reading the entire Hidden Report after reading this article. Having re-read this article subsequently, I am concerned by inaccuracy in the article.

1) Wiring The article states that the inquiry "found that a supervisor had noticed some loose wiring during an inspection but had not told anyone about it because he did not want to "rock the boat".

This is an entirely inaccurate statement concerning the direct cause of this accident. In fact, there had been absolutely no inspection of the faulty wiring work which had occured two weeks before the accident. The technician had remained unsupervised. The majority of the report deals with the institutionalised safety problems that resulted in no inspection being carried out, even though the regulations called for multiple levels of inspection. It is therefore deeply concerning that the article erroneously states that an inspection had been carried out.

The only reference I could find to the "rock the boat" quotation is is section 10.36 of the report:

"Mr Lippett noticed levels of poor workmanship but did not want to "rock the boat" by intervening at an early stage."

This section is not about the accident itself but about Mr Lippett's appointment as regional saftey inspection manager. He was a manager, not a hands on technical supervisor or inspector and the 'poor workmanship' referred to in the report is not directly related to the accident; the context was the much broader Waterloo area resignalling scheme.

2) Mark 1 Rolling Stock.

The article states: The enquiry recommended that the use of Mark 1 stock should end on the main line, and their use on low speed commuter lines should be gradually phased out.

No such recommendation was made. In fact, the inquiry recommended the rolling stock not be phased out but be strengthened to enable continued use until end of life. The recommendations regarding rolling stock occur in two sections of the report:


 * a) Recommendations
 * b) Appendix G: The Rolling Stock: A Technical Assessment

Relevent Paragraphs from the Recommendations section include:

54. BR shall carry out its stated programme of research into the structural integrity of its rolling stock within its planned timescale of completion by April 1991.

55. On completion of the programme BR shall discuss its conclusions with Railway Inspectorate and obtain their agreement to the structural changes necessary to strengthen all relevant rolling stock with a subsequent life span of eight years and over.

The Relevent section from the Technical Assessment appendix:

''35. The inventory of Mark I coaching stock is large, and much of it has not reached an end of economic life, nor will do so for another decade or more. Mark I vehicles have good riding qualities, and are not intrinsically lacking in collision resistance, since the latter has emerged by a process of natural selection over forty years. The limited diagonal strength demonstrated for the first time in this accident could be adequately supplemented in various ways through attention to structural details, which would be expected to be revealed I.E. dynamic model tests. Reinforcement of the corners between headstocks and solebars might be one such improvement. It is relevant in the best interests of BR customers to point out that a head-on collision between twelve-coach trains did not occur during the past half-century, and would be a rare probability in future. That being the case, it could be forcibly argued that there are more rewarding candidates for large capital investment in the railway than would be incurred by early replacement of these vehicles.''

I would like to see citations for all references in this article, in order for the acuracy to be ascertained.Savlonn (talk) 09:08, 19 April 2009 (UTC)


 * As no comments during past week, I have edited article to remove unsourced and/or incorrect statements regarding a) supervisors finding loose wiring b) recommendation that rolling stock be retired. --Savlonn (talk) 08:09, 26 April 2009 (UTC)


 * It's interesting to read this talk page, years after the content was updated. One man adds a neutrality tag with some pretty good reasoning, but the minnows - one man banned for using multiple accounts to smear Amanda Platell, the second a young astronomy student - shout him down; User:Savlonn does some actual research - the kind of stuff grown-ups have to do with real work - and is met with a week of utter deafening silence from the commentariat. It's as if the people writing the article were aware of their shortcomings and were hoping that they could just hunker down and let it waft away. As history shows, reality has a nasty habit of persisting. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 18:19, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Link to Hidden report.
The link to the hidden report no longer links to the report, but only to a brief summary. A link on that summary page also does not link to the report as claimed. It only links to a university search engine which fails to find the report. 86.173.174.159 (talk) 12:58, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * No. The huge "Investigation into the Clapham Junction Railway Accident" banner at the top of the page links to the PDF of the full Hidden report. Even if it did not, removing the reference would not be a correct thing to do, since the information came from the report, irrespective of the loss of the report from the site. --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:00, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * And the direct link fwiw is http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/DoT_Hidden001.pdf
 * No, the banner is just a text banner with no link functionality. Why not use the direct link as the reference? 86.173.174.159 (talk) 13:08, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The big PDF logo on the big banner is the link. Go on, click it. Yay! Why not use the direct link as the reference?. No good reason. If you'd like to make that change, go ahead. --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:10, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Double switching
Copied from my talk page. Edgepedia (talk) 10:12, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

At the Clapham Junction rail crash, a single false feed caused a false green.

If there had been two false feeds (one one the positive side, and one on the negative side), that would have overcome a double switched relay and also caused a false green.

There is no mention of two false feeds or a double cut/switched relay.

Therefore, one can safely assume that the signal relay in question was single switched.

It would not have taken too much effort to have double switched this signal when built in the 1930s, which would have prevented the 1990s collision.

See Double switching for a comprehensive of this and related issues.

Tabletop (talk) 09:22, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi Tabletop, with hindsight there are always many ways any accident could have been prevented, but to be significant we need reliable sources that link the different signal/operations/culture/management to the event. Edgepedia (talk) 10:12, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

In the UK 'Double Switching' is better known as 'Double Cut' and 'Single Switch' is 'Single Cut' — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.150.234.9 (talk) 08:45, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Contradiction in article
Th article says, "The Basingstoke train stopped at the next signal after the faulty signal, in accordance with the rule book. As of 1999, the rule book had not been changed. If the Basingstoke train had carried on to the next signal then the crash would not have happened ". If the Basingstoke train stopped at the next signal as the first sentence claims, then the last sentence claims that the accident could not have happened. That this article exists and that the accident did happen means that there is something wrong with two quoted mutually opposite sentences. 85.255.232.169 (talk) 23:36, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, the statement isn't contradictory, as such. The Basingstoke train stopped at signal WF47 (the first one after the failed signal, WF138) to report the signal failure, even though WF47 was showing a proceed aspect.  If the driver had continued to the next signal after that (WF45, the platform starting signal) to report the failure, the accident wouldn't have happened as it did.  However, the Poole train would then have been stopped at WF47 (showing a stop aspect), and the next train ("Driver Pike's train", in the report) would have gone past WF138 (showing a proceed aspect) and almost certainly run into the Poole train.  This accident might not have been quite as serious (as the down train would have gone past), but it would still have been a major incident.  I would support removal of the second sentence, even if it's not actually a logical contradiction; it's not supported by the evidence.  The sentence is cited to Adrian Vaughan's book, which I haven't read.  I agree that clarification would be an improvement, though. Tevildo (talk) 17:52, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Pinging who added the statement.  I think we either need a fuller exposition of Vaughan's thesis (what does he think the drivers should have done instead of their actual actions?  In particular, if McClymont shouldn't have stopped at WF47, what should Pike have done on seeing the erroneous G > R > Y sequence at WF138?), bearing in mind WP:UNDUE if we are going to keep it, or, my recommendation, we should delete the statement altogether. Tevildo (talk) 20:22, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
 * As I understand it, Vaughan is saying: if the faulty signal is X then the train should not stop at X+1 as happens currently, but at X+2. I think his reasoning is that stopping to report the problem will impact the trains behind. If you stop at X+1 the X may not be showing a Red light to stop the train behind. If you stop at X+2 the X+1 will protect you. Does that make sense? Op47 (talk) 23:00, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, it makes sense in terms of not being irrational - in my non-expert opinion, it doesn't make sense as a practical suggestion for railway safety (in this case, it would have led to a collision between the Poole train and Pike's train), but Vaughan has written several well-respected books on railway history, so his views are probably worthy of notice. I think it's OK to keep the statment as you've expanded it above, if we make it clear that it's just Vaughan's personal opinion. Tevildo (talk) 23:44, 10 May 2016 (UTC)