Train Crashes, is it the work of a nutter.?

Question

Potters Bar, points bolts loose, Cumbria points bits missing, day before Cumbria man who tried to derail train walks free from court, now those stretcher bolts come out with an ordinary tool kit and spanners available from Halfords for £ 30, Cumbria is right by the M6 o did the nutter remove the points bolts at Potters Bar, and a nutter possibly the same one unbolt the parts in Cumbria and clear off up the M6 and watch the devastation on TV am i right?

Answer 1

Not a nutter, I think they are called unbolters

Answer 2

We'll have to wait a while for the answer, although we are being told it was the points at fault.

What i can't understand though is that these points seem to be 'trailing' ie to get onto another line, you would have to reverse over them. So it shouldn't affect a train going in the direction the said train was travelling. Also, if, they were at fault ,it should have shown up in the signalbox!

Answer 3

It's also partly the industry's fault itself.

Why do we need ever faster trains ?  Whats with the need for these trains which do 125mph + ?

I'd rather have a train doing 70 or 80 mph if it increases survival chances on tracks which can have bad points or curves or whatever... or signals for that matter.  Lets be honest... the British can't do lasting rail work, just like we can't make lifts (elevators).

Answer 4

Timothy B, my sincere congratulations.

People are starting to wake up, at least it seems so in the UK.  This side of the pond most still have their head in the sand, hoping for the best.  

All railroad operations are at risk.  Creating a MAJOR problem is nearly as easy as has been said.  A pickup truck (small lorry) with three guys, some heavy tools and other conventional stuff available at your local hardware store and some motivation can scatter a train all over the place any time they want.

I've been chiming away on this matter at length with no interest by any listener.  I know what I am talking about.  One can agree with my words or disagree with my words, but you had better not ignore them.

People must get involved in this instance.  Our respective governments are doing nothing that I am aware of to further protection of our nations' railroads, but even if they wanted to, not every mile of railroad can be protected.

That is why, if you see something that doesn't look right, SPEAK.  It is a better thing to be incorrect and be thought foolish than it is to realize, post disaster, that you saw it happening, didn't recognize it and didn't report it.  This one won't be done for us.  We can only do it ourselves.

Answer 5

It's a possibility. In fact, I've always thought that the recent spate of car accidents in Northern Ireland is more than a coincidence...

Answer 6

I doubt you £30 tools from Halfords would be up to the job: All load-bearing railway hardware is quite substantial and would need substantial tools.

Answer 7

More likely bad maintenance ---but a very thought provoking theory.

Answer 8

It does seem to be "POINTing" that way, or maybe not.

Answer 9

i am not sure what is the  scarier thought that someone could have done this and caused a crash or that simple lack of maintenance caused this accident. Either way we need to wait (hard as it is) to find out why these points failed now that we Know that they did.

Answer 10

I doubt it very much. It would take some time and the chances are that such an individual would have been see by a passing train driver. Particularly, at Potter's Bar the line is very busy with trains passing every 5 minutes or so. Chances are that some one working illegally on the railway as suggested would have been splattered for, if working alone, they would not have been able to keep a proper look out. Don't believe in conspiracy theories, rather in totally poor maintenance and oversight of works being done, which is far more serious.

Answer 11

There might paradoxically be a crumb of comfort in being able to attribute such things to a "nutter", someone completely unhinged - but it could be more sobering than that: the inexorable dehumanisation caused by overexposure to the virtual realities of a million zaps on a computer game, coupled with the rapid erosion, for some, of any sense of personal responsibility - and the bad old lust for power.

Answer 12

No.

The consequences of this points fault would not have been predictable.  Some trains may have passed over these points without detrimental effect.

The sort of nutter who would do that sort of thing would require planning and forward thinking, and would probably have done something with more certain results, such as drive a wagon on to the tracks.

Answer 13

At the moment there is no evidence to say if there was tampering or not. As for that piece of line being near the M6 try a good 10 mile walk across rough country, that is why at this moment a temporary road is having to be built to be able to remove the damaged train. So no you are not right. Anyway we will have to wait and see what the final conclusions are from the investigators.

Answer 14

no sometimes it's just the work of a mistake