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News Release from: HSE Health and Safety Executive | Subject: Chancery Lane derailment report
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial
Team on 20 March 2006
No action to be taken on Chancery Lane
incident
The Health and Safety Executive's (HSE) HM Railway Inspectorate (HMRI) has published its web-based report into the Central Line train derailment at Chancery Lane tube station on 25 January 2003.
The Health and Safety Executive's (HSE) HM Railway Inspectorate (HMRI) has published its web-based report into the Central Line train derailment at Chancery Lane tube station on 25 January 2003 The report concludes that London Underground Limited (LUL) and Infraco BCV (iBCV) (now Metronet Rail BCV ) had done what was reasonably practicable with regard to both maintenance procedures and the operational response to the incident
This article was originally published on Engineeringtalk on 1 Jul 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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The immediate cause of the derailment was the detachment of the rearmost traction motor on the fifth car, itself caused by gearbox failure.
HSE has decided that formal enforcement action is not appropriate in this instance.
The companies' responses to the incident and issues leading up to it, although capable of improvement, fell within the range of being reasonable in the light of available knowledge and industry practice at the time.
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Staff from both companies co-operated with HSE on this investigation.
The HSE investigation into the derailment also reviewed two earlier incidents involving traction motors at Hainault and Loughton in 2001 and 2002 respectively.
HSE concluded that the investigations carried by LUL and iBCV into these incidents could have been completed more quickly, been more wide-ranging and less bound by engineering assumptions about their causes.
However, there is no suggestion that this directly led to the Chancery Lane derailment taking place.
In HSE's view, iBCV and LUL made reasonable efforts to find out the cause of these earlier failures.
Both companies applied engineering judgment based on industry knowledge of the risks at the time.
They identified what they thought was the cause of the failures, and devised and implemented what they believed were appropriate safety measures.
HSE also found that communications during the incident could have been more robust, as could information and technical advice given to the line controllers.
But despite this, the line controller erred on the side of caution and decided to take the train out of service at Holborn.
Unfortunately the train derailed some 600 metres short of this point.
LUL's own investigation report into the derailment made seven primary and seventeen secondary recommendations.
HMRI has monitored progress with implementation of these recommendations and is satisfied that LUL and Metronet Rail BCV have acted to learn the lessons from the derailment to help prevent another similar incident.
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