At least eight people are confirmed dead and 160 injured after two trains collided near Paddington Station in west London at the height of the morning rush hour.
Thirty-nine people are seriously injured, with three critically ill and 11 in intensive care.
There are thought to be some 200 with minor injuries.
Many more passengers could still be trapped in the wreckage, said Chief Inspector Brian Gosden of British Transport Police.
Hospitals across the capital are taking in casualties. St Mary’s Hospital has cancelled all out-patient appointments to treat most of the wounded.
The walking wounded are being treated at a local school and Sainsbury’s supermarket.
A Thames Trains 0806 BST from Paddington to Bedwyn in Wiltshire collided with the incoming 0603 BST Great Western 125 express train from Cheltenham at 0811 BST.
Carriages came off the track and one train burst into flames. A massive column of smoke could be seen across west London.
Up to 30 ambulances, 12 fire engines and 70 firefighters rushed to the scene.
Mark Rogers, a passenger on the 0806, said: “There was an almighty crash and the train rolled over and over, first onto its roof and then onto its side.
“One woman I saw thrown out of the window and she was trapped beneath the train. She was at least very severely injured.
“It is absolute pandemonium. ”
Mr Rogers said the carriage behind the driver had been “ripped apart like a sardine can” and was lying over the top of the 125 Great Western train.
“It is chaos. There are doors and broken glass lying everywhere.”
Prime Minister Tony Blair said: “I am absolutely appalled by what is a truly dreadful tragedy.”
Transport Secretary John Prescott has promised a public inquiry into the crash and praised the “swift efforts of all the emergency services”.
Conservative Transport spokesman John Redwood said: “We need a proper inquiry and we need some answers for the future.”
The trains collided on the same stretch of line as the Southall rail crash in 1997, in which seven people died and 150 were injured.
Health and Safety Executive inspectors are at the scene.
What’s Happened Since The Crash Occurred
Investigations revealed how 31 people died and dozens were injured because of a head-on collision when one of the trains passed a red signal.
Public inquiries were headed by Scottish judge Lord Cullen. He made dozens of safety recommendations and concluded Railtrack, the company then in charge of rail infrastructure and its investment, had failed to respond to earlier warnings about signalling problems.
He also criticised the Health and Safety Executive’s Rail Inspectorate and recommended an independent Rail Industry Safety Body.
Another inquiry comparing the Ladbroke Grove disaster with the 1997 Southall crash recommended implementing sophisticated safety technology.
Thames Trains was fined a record £2m in April 2004 for breaking health and safety laws. The court was told the train driver had not been warned about problems with the signal at Ladbroke Grove and had not received adequate training.
In December 2004 the Paddington Survivors’ Group complained that many of the safety recommendations made after the crash in 1999 had still not been implemented.
A year later, in December 2005, the Crown Prosecution Service said no individuals would face criminal charges over the crash as there was “insufficient evidence” to provide a realistic prospect of conviction”.
In October 2006, Network Rail admitted health and safety breaches concerning the siting of the signal. It received a record fine of £4 million for its part in the crash on 30 March 2007.
Labour MPs last night called for the Government to hand over control of plans to buy £1 billion worth of trains to another organisation.
Shadow Transport Secretary Maria Eagle made the demand while giving her speech to her party’s annual conference in Liverpool.
She argued that the Government had shown it could not be trusted to ensure British firms – like Derby trainmaker Bombardier – had a fair chance of winning state contracts.
Her comments came a day after Labour gave an award to campaigners from Derby, who are fighting to get the Government to change its decision to hand a £1.4 billion Thameslink contract to German firm Siemens, instead of Bombardier.
After the move was taken, the Litchurch Lane firm announced it would review its UK operations, raising the prospect of 1,400 job losses.
Now the Government is drawing up plans for its next big train order, Crossrail, valued at about £1 billion.
Ms Eagle told conference delegates: “I say to (Transport Secretary) Philip Hammond – there is no faith that your department will give British manufacturing a fair chance. So hand over responsibility for ordering the new Crossrail trains to Transport for London, which – thanks to Labour – has a track record of buying British.”
Ms Eagle pointed out that Prime Minister David Cameron had promised to support business when he took his Cabinet to Derby, shortly before naming Siemens as the preferred bidder for Thameslink.
Ministers have consistently said the way the tender for Thameslink was designed by the previous Labour administration meant they could only have given the contract to Siemens. They claim it would have been breaking EU law to do otherwise.
Ms Eagle called that “a lie” and said the Government could have scrapped the tender process and started again with one that gave the Derby firm a better chance of winning. She urged campaigners to keep fighting to get the Government to change its mind.
Last night ministers were defiant. Mr Hammond warned the consequences of further delaying Thameslink would be too severe for taxpayers to bear and said: “The project is already 16 years behind schedule – in its original iteration it was known as Thameslink 2000. It has already had very large amounts of capital investment sunk into it,” he said.
He argued that 3,000 construction jobs depending on the project moving forward could be put at risk if it was delayed.
On the Crossrail issue, a Government spokesman pointed out that it was Labour that had set up Crossrail Ltd – an arms-length body – to deliver the scheme, overseen by the Government and Transport for London. He said: “Is Labour seriously saying taxpayers in the rest of the country, outside London, should have no control over the billions of pounds they are putting into Crossrail?”
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It really beggars belief what Labour will do these days. Not only did they ‘make TfL buy British’, but they also award the people protesting about a loss of work in Derby, that the party’s own ineptitude in developing the procurement process caused in the first place.
Maria Eagle would of course have backed the Government if they had scrapped the procurement process to give Bombardier a chance. Thus costing millions more pounds of taxpayers money to be wasted.
The above article also once again fails to mention that Bombardier were already considering up to 1200 job losses regardless of the Thameslink deal. In the modern world, and including the findings of the McNulty report, rolling stock procurement MUST give serious value for money and not just be awarded on the basis of where the companies are based. Let us not forget that even Bombardier is not a British company, they are Canadian.
Train companies, police and passengers have called on parents to protect their children this summer and warn them off playing deadly games near railway lines.
Insp Mike Steer, of British Transport Police, said: “Trespass sounds like a pretty harmless crime, but it isn’t.”
“One of the worst jobs a police officer has to do is break it to a parent that their child has been seriously injured, disfigured for life or killed and it’s so unnecessary.”
“A little thought by parents and carers will save us having to make that painful visit.”
New figures show the problem of railway trespass is rife and there have been several reports of stones, bricks and other objects, including plastic sheeting and traffic cones being placed on railway lines or thrown at trains. These incidents have often resulted in delays or damage to rolling stock.
Another serious problem is children shining laser pens into trains drivers’ eyes which can endanger the safety of the trains and passengers involved.
Dyan Crowther, director of operational services for Network Rail, said: “Thankfully the number of people killed or hurt on the railways is coming down but every death or injury is preventable.
“Our community safety teams work tirelessly with young people across Britain to warn them of the dangers and encourage them to get involved in safer and more positive activities.
“However, we’re concerned that many parents seem to be in the dark about the dangers of trespassing or playing near the railway.”
As promised in the previous post, I have uploaded 2 videos of the Northern Belle charter service arriving and departing from Kensington Olympia.
The inbound leg is hauled by Direct Rail Services Class 47 Diesel Locomotive 47501 ‘Craftsman’ and the departing ECS is hauled by sister Class 47 Diesel 47832 ‘Solway Princess’. My apologies for the drop in sound quality of the second video, this was due to me filming in a torrential downpour.
For more videos from my Kensington Olympia trip, please visit my Youtube Channel.
Bombardier had virtually no chance of winning the controversial £1.5bn contract for Thameslink trains because of its relatively higher financing costs, senior Government sources have disclosed.
The Canadian train maker, which on Tuesday axed 1,400 jobs at its Derby plant, was at a competitive disadvantage worth hundreds of millions of pounds because of the way the previous Labour government structured the contract.
The tender called for bidders to build, maintain and, crucially, finance 1,200 new carriages over 30 years for the London commuter service.
Bombardier Class 377 EMU in service with Southern
The financing element gave Siemens of Germany a big advantage over the three other bidders because of its higher credit rating – one vastly superior to Bombardier’s, which is below investment grade.
Siemens’ debt is rated A+ by credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s – six notches above Bombardier’s BB+. The other two bidders, Alstom and Hitachi, are respectively rated BBB and BBB+.
Investment bankers familiar with deals similar to Thameslink trains said that each notch of difference equated to at least 0.25 of a percentage point on any debt-funded deal.
That would leave Bombardier having to pay extra interest of at least 1.5pc a year to finance the deal. Over a 30-year contract that could amount to £700m.
“The way the contract was structured, it wasn’t just about building the trains but financing them,” said the source. “On that basis it was very hard to compete with Siemens.”
A summary of the tender, dated April 2008, states: “The Department [for Transport] intends that the chosen bidder will be required to arrange the finance necessary for the acquisition and ownership of the rolling stock.”
That effectively turned the winning bidder into a rolling stock leasing company, where cost of finance is crucial.
Bombardier, which remains reserve bidder on the Thameslink contract, is yet to be told by the Government why it lost the bid. A company spokesman declined to comment.
So it seems that once again Labour have screwed up and the Conservatives are taking the blame. There is no denial that the Labour Government set up the contracting process and it has been left for the Conservatives to deal with the mess. How many more deals will go up in smoke due to this incompetence? Only time will tell.
James Farr combines his three year old son Vector’s favourite things, Thomas the Tank Engine & Transformers with truly excellent results. When you finish watching the original, click on to view the even better sequel.
My latest trip took me to the West of London to a little station called Acton Main Line. The station is located on the Great Western Mainline and is the first station out of London Paddington. Train services are provided by First Great Western who operate a 30 minute service between London Paddington & Greenford, this is the only service that stops at the station and does not run on Sundays.
Passenger services passing the station are operated by First Great Western, Heathrow Connect and Heathrow Express. Freight services are operated by EWS (DB Schenker), Freightliner, GB Railfreight & Hanson.
Acton Mainline is also host to a freight yard operated by EWS (DB Schenker) which is used by a large volume of stone trains serving the nearby terminal. There is also a freight avoiding line that passes between platform 4 and the yard which is used by freight trains accessing/exiting the North London Line.
Stock Seen at Acton Main Line
Locomotives: Class 43 HST, Class 59 Diesel, Class 66 Diesel Multiple Units: Class 165 DMU, Class 166 DMU, Class 180 DMU, Class 332 EMU, Class 360 EMU
Photographs
As usual, here is a little taster of the images I captured. The full gallery of images can be found on my Photobucket site here.
First Great Western Class 43 HST 43037 passing Acton Mainline Station
DB Schenker Liveried Class 66 Diesel Locomotive 66152 at Acton MainLine Yard
National Express East Anglia services to Ipswich & Southend are currently suffering delays and cancellation due to the current hot weather.
Due to the design of Overhead Line Equipment, the current hot weather is causing speed restrictions to be imposed along stretches of the line to prevent damage being caused to both trains and equipment.
The National Express East Anglia hourly service from London to Ipswich will be cancelled from 1202 BST while others will terminate at Colchester.
The Southend to Liverpool Street line is also hit with a total of 35 trains affected.
The company has stated that it is their intention to run a full service in the evening peak.
A Network Rail spokeswoman said speeds were being reduced on the London to Norwich Great Eastern line from 90mph to 80mph and could be further reduced to 60mph “in the hottest part of the day”.
First we had problems with the wrong kind of snow, then it was the wrong kind of wind, now it’s the wrong kind of sun. Is it ever going to be possible to run a published train service in this country with no issues? Yes the weather can sometimes cause issues but it seems that whatever the weather is in the UK, it adversely affects our train services.
I found this statement from Heather Wheeler, the Conservative MP for South Derbyshire and thought it raised some valid points.
LIKE you, I was shocked and disappointed to hear that Bombardier had lost out to Siemens in its bid to build the new trains for Thameslink, and will be asking questions of ministers and in the House as to why this has happened, writes MP Heather Wheeler.
It is important not to lose sight of the fact that the Government intends to retain Bombardier Transportation UK Ltd with VeloCity as the reserve bidder in the event that contracts cannot be satisfactorily finalised with Siemens.
I am asking particularly if part of the tender can be subcontracted to any of the businesses which form the Derbyshire Rail Forum, including Bombardier.
Other members may be able to tender for work from Siemens and we hope they will be successful. ESG, which is already expanding its facilities in Bretby, is one of these, so hopefully some of this contract will come back here.
It is not all gloom and doom, as Bombardier has a number of active orders at its Derby plant, the largest of which is 1,300 carriages for the Sub-Surface lines, due for completion by 2014.
The company has employed a number of contract workers on short-term contracts to cope with this peak activity.
Bombardier is also one of the bidders who have pre-qualified for the Crossrail rolling stock order (around 600 carriages), with the contract award expected in late 2013, and is a potential bidders for the new LUL tube trains, which could total up to 3,400 carriages.
There has been a lot of anger and disbelief in both the railway and National press regarding the fact that the Thameslink rolling stock contract has gone to German company Siemens. The fact of the matter is that, with the findings of the McNulty review, rolling stock procurement as well as other facets of railway life now have to offer value for money to the British taxpayer.
As unfortunate as the loss of this contract is, the future for Bombardier could still be secured if they can gain the contract for either the Crossrail rolling stock or to continue producing tube stock for London Underground. Work on the “S Stock” Underground trains for the Metropolitan, Circle, District & Hammersmith & City Lines should see work continue until 2014 which should give enough time to gain more work.
This blog has been designed to allow me to post news & stories from the Railways, both real and model. I also intend to share a few stories from my work as a Revenue Protection Officer along the way.
The opinions expressed on this blog are exclusively mine and in no way, shape or form reflect the opinions of my employer.
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