The Hatfield rail crash was a
railway
Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...
accident on 17 October 2000, at
Hatfield, Hertfordshire
Hatfield is a town and civil parish in Hertfordshire, England, in the borough of Welwyn Hatfield. It had a population of 29,616 in 2001, and 39,201 at the 2011 Census. The settlement is of Saxon origin. Hatfield House, home of the Marquess of ...
. It was caused by a
metal fatigue
In materials science, fatigue is the initiation and propagation of cracks in a material due to cyclic loading. Once a fatigue crack has initiated, it grows a small amount with each loading cycle, typically producing striations on some parts o ...
-induced
derailment
In rail transport, a derailment occurs when a rail vehicle such as a train comes off its rails. Although many derailments are minor, all result in temporary disruption of the proper operation of the railway system and they are a potentially ...
, killing four people and injuring more than 70.
The accident exposed major stewardship shortcomings of the privatised national railway infrastructure company
Railtrack
Railtrack was a group of companies that owned the track, signalling, tunnels, bridges, level crossings and all but a handful of the stations of the British railway system from 1994 until 2002. It was created as part of the privatisation of ...
. Reports found there was a lack of communication and some staff were not aware of maintenance procedures. Railtrack subsequently went into
administration
Administration may refer to:
Management of organizations
* Management, the act of directing people towards accomplishing a goal
** Administrative assistant, Administrative Assistant, traditionally known as a Secretary, or also known as an admini ...
and was replaced by
Network Rail
Network Rail Limited is the owner (via its subsidiary Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, which was known as Railtrack plc before 2002) and infrastructure manager of most of the railway network in Great Britain. Network Rail is an "arm's leng ...
. The aftermath of the accident saw widespread speed limit reductions throughout the rail network and a tightening of health and safety procedures, the repercussions of which were still felt years later. In 2005, both Railtrack and the contractor
Balfour Beatty
Balfour Beatty plc () is an international infrastructure group based in the United Kingdom with capabilities in construction services, support services and infrastructure investments. A constituent of the FTSE 250 Index, Balfour Beatty works ac ...
were found guilty of breaching health and safety laws.
Accident
A
Great North Eastern Railway
Great North Eastern Railway, often referred to as GNER, was a train operating company in the United Kingdom, owned by Sea Containers, that operated the InterCity East Coast franchise on the East Coast Main Line between London, Yorkshire, North ...
(GNER)
InterCity 225 train bound for
Leeds
Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by populati ...
had left
London King's Cross at 12:10, and was travelling along the
East Coast Main Line
The East Coast Main Line (ECML) is a electrified railway between London and Edinburgh via Peterborough, Doncaster, York, Darlington, Durham and Newcastle. The line is a key transport artery on the eastern side of Great Britain running broa ...
at approximately when it derailed south of
Hatfield station at 12:23.
[ The train was in the control of an experienced driver trainer accompanied by a trainee driver. It had been agreed at Kings Cross that the trainee would drive the 12:10 service to Leeds. The primary cause of the accident was later determined to be the left-hand rail fracturing as the train passed over it.]
The train travelled a further after derailment. The leading locomotive and the first two coaches remained upright and on the rails. All of the following coaches and the trailing Driving Van Trailer
A Driving Van Trailer (DVT) is a Great Britain, British purpose-built control car railway vehicle that allows the driver to operate with a locomotive in Push-pull train, push-pull formation from the opposite end of a train. A key benefit of ...
(DVT) were derailed, and the train set separated into three sections.[ The restaurant coach, the eighth vehicle in the set, overturned onto its side and struck an ]overhead line
An overhead line or overhead wire is an electrical cable that is used to transmit electrical energy to electric locomotives, trolleybuses or trams. It is known variously as:
* Overhead catenary
* Overhead contact system (OCS)
* Overhead equipmen ...
gantry after derailing, resulting in severe damage to the vehicle. The whole incident occurred in 17seconds.
Four passengers died in the accident and a further 33 were initially reported as injured, three seriously.[ The number of injured was later revised to over 70.] Those who died were all in the restaurant coach:
* Robert James Alcorn, 37, of Auckland
Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The List of New Zealand urban areas by population, most populous urban area in the country and the List of cities in Oceania by po ...
, New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
* Steve Arthur, 46, from Pease Pottage
Pease Pottage is a village in the Mid Sussex District of West Sussex, England. It lies on the southern edge of the Crawley built-up area, in the civil parish of Slaugham.
The village has a motorway service station, named after the village ...
, West Sussex
West Sussex is a county in South East England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the shire districts of Adur, Arun, Chichester, Horsham, and Mid Sussex, and the boroughs of Crawley and Worthing. Covering an ar ...
* Leslie Gray, 43, of Tuxford
Tuxford is a historic market town and a civil parish in the Bassetlaw district of Nottinghamshire, England. At the 2001 census, it had a population of 2,516, increasing to 2,649 at the 2011 census.
Geography
Nearby towns are Ollerton, Ret ...
, Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated Notts.) is a landlocked county in the East Midlands region of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. The traditi ...
[
* Peter Monkhouse, 50, of ]Headingley
Headingley is a suburb of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, approximately two miles out of the city centre, to the north west along the A660 road. Headingley is the location of the Beckett Park campus of Leeds Beckett University and Headingle ...
, Leeds
Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by populati ...
[
Two of those seriously injured were GNER staff working in the restaurant coach at the time of the accident. '']Emmerdale
''Emmerdale'' (known as ''Emmerdale Farm'' until 1989) is a British soap opera that is broadcast on ITV1. The show is set in Emmerdale (known as Beckindale until 1994), a fictional village in the Yorkshire Dales. Created by Kevin Laffan, '' ...
'' actress Anna Brecon
Anna Brecon (born 1971), or Anna Juliet Davis, is an English actress, best known for portraying Tara Reynolds ('Lady Tara') in the ITV soap opera ''Emmerdale''.
Early life
Born in Salisbury,“DAVIS Anna Juliet / PRITCHARD / Salisbury 7c 24 ...
was travelling on the train, and suffered minor cuts and bruises.[ Another passenger was the television reporter ]Justin Rowlatt
Justin Rowlatt (born June 1966) is a British journalist, news reporter and television presenter who is currently working as Climate Editor for BBC News. In February 2015 he became the BBC's South Asia Correspondent, based in Delhi. In June 2019 h ...
, who said he "watched the carriages skid and whip around on the gravel besides the track".
Crash investigators found the British Rail-designed Mark 4
Mark 4 is the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It tells the parable of the Sower, with its explanation, and the parable of the Mustard Seed. Both of these parables are paralleled in Matthew ...
coaches had good structural integrity and, aside from the restaurant coach, remained intact after the accident. Coincidentally, the locomotive in the crash was also involved in the Selby rail crash
The Selby rail crash (also known as the Great Heck Rail Crash) was a high-speed train crash that occurred at Great Heck near Selby, North Yorkshire, England, on the morning of 28February 2001. An InterCity 225 passenger train operated by Gre ...
(where the leading DVT hit a road vehicle on the track) four months later.
Cause
A preliminary investigation found a rail had fragmented as trains passed and that the likely cause was "rolling contact fatigue" (defined as multiple surface-breaking cracks). Such cracks are caused by high loads where the wheels contact the rail. Repeated high loading causes fatigue cracks to grow. When they reach a critical size, the rail fails. Portions of the failed track at Hatfield were reassembled and numerous fatigue cracks were identified. They contributed to the spalling of the running surface to around deep and long.
The problem was known about before the accident; a letter from the infrastructure company Railtrack
Railtrack was a group of companies that owned the track, signalling, tunnels, bridges, level crossings and all but a handful of the stations of the British railway system from 1994 until 2002. It was created as part of the privatisation of ...
in December 1999 warned that the existing Railtrack Line Specification was insufficient to guard against this type of fatigue. Replacement rails were made available but never delivered to the correct location for installation.
Since privatisation, Railtrack had divested the engineering knowledge of British Rail to contractors. While it had comprehensive maintenance procedures that might have prevented the accident if followed appropriately, later investigation showed there was a serious problem with the experience and working knowledge of staff. In a subsequent interview, the Zone Quality Standards Manager said, "I do not have knowledge of railway engineering nor railway safety", which was completely contrary to the written requirements for the role. In May 1999, the Head of Track had said that insufficiently-skilled work was causing more rails to break. Railtrack did not know how many other cases of rail fatigue around the network could lead to a similar accident. It consequently imposed over 1,800 emergency speed restrictions and instigated a costly nationwide track replacement programme. The company was subject to "enforcement" by the Rail Regulator
The Rail Regulator was a statutory office, created with effect from 1 December 1993 by section 1 of the Railways Act 1993, for the independent economic regulation of the British railway industry.
The office was abolished from 4 July 2004, using ...
, Tom Winsor
Sir Thomas Philip Winsor (born 7 December 1957) is a British arbitrator and mediator, lawyer, consultant and economic regulatory professional.
Between 1 October 2012 and 31 March 2022, he served as Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabular ...
.
Aftermath
In 2004, Steve Arthur's widow was awarded £1million damages in the High Court. The families of the other three fatal casualties received damages out of court.[ A memorial service was held for the victims on the tenth anniversary of the crash in 2010 at St Etheldreda's Church, Hatfield. A second service was held near the crash site afterwards. Both were conducted by the Rector of Hatfield, who had attended to casualties and the bereaved in the immediate aftermath of the accident in 2000.][
The speed restrictions and track replacement works caused significant disruption on a majority of the national network for more than a year. The disruption and Railtrack's spiralling costs eventually caused the company to enter ]administration
Administration may refer to:
Management of organizations
* Management, the act of directing people towards accomplishing a goal
** Administrative assistant, Administrative Assistant, traditionally known as a Secretary, or also known as an admini ...
at the insistence of Transport Secretary Stephen Byers
Stephen John Byers (born 13 April 1953) is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Wallsend between 1992 and 1997, and North Tyneside from 1997 to 2010. He served in the Cabinet from 1998 to 2002, and was ...
, and its replacement by the not-for-dividend company Network Rail
Network Rail Limited is the owner (via its subsidiary Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, which was known as Railtrack plc before 2002) and infrastructure manager of most of the railway network in Great Britain. Network Rail is an "arm's leng ...
under Byers's successor Alistair Darling
Alistair Maclean Darling, Baron Darling of Roulanish, (born 28 November 1953) is a British politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Prime Minister Gordon Brown from 2007 to 2010. A member of the Labour Party, he was a Member ...
.
Train operating companies were adversely affected by the disruption, losing an estimated 19% of revenue in the year following the crash. Freight operator EWS was cancelling up to 400 trains per week as a result, whilst estimates put Freightliner's resultant losses at £1million per month. The cost to the entire UK economy of the disruption was estimated at £6million per day.
The Institute of Rail Welding (IoRW) was set up in 2002 by The Welding Institute
The Welding Institute (TWI Ltd) is a research and technology organisation, with a specialty in welding. It has had headquarters near Cambridge, England, since 1946, and has other facilities across the UK and around the world. TWI works across ...
(TWI) and Network Rail as a consequence of the recommendations in the investigation report. It provides a focus for individuals and organisations involved in rail welding and facilitates the adoption of best practice.
The aftermath of the crash had long-reaching repercussions in the rail industry. In 2015, at the fifteenth anniversary of the accident, the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) said a new system for handling maintenance introduced by Network Rail was confusing, and there was the potential for a similar accident. The union's general secretary said that Network Rail needed to act on its concerns, otherwise there would be industrial action.
The Class 91 powering the train involved in the Hatfield rail crash would later be involved in the Selby rail crash
The Selby rail crash (also known as the Great Heck Rail Crash) was a high-speed train crash that occurred at Great Heck near Selby, North Yorkshire, England, on the morning of 28February 2001. An InterCity 225 passenger train operated by Gre ...
four months later, sustaining minor damage. It was repaired again following the accident, and remained in service for a further 20 years, finally being scrapped at Sims Metals Scrapyard in Nottingham in 2021. As a result of its involvement in both accidents, it had gained the unofficial nickname 'Lucky'.
Court case
In 2003, five managers and two companies – Network Rail (as successors of Railtrack) and the division of Balfour Beatty
Balfour Beatty plc () is an international infrastructure group based in the United Kingdom with capabilities in construction services, support services and infrastructure investments. A constituent of the FTSE 250 Index, Balfour Beatty works ac ...
that maintained the track – were charged with manslaughter
Manslaughter is a common law legal term for homicide considered by law as less culpable than murder. The distinction between murder and manslaughter is sometimes said to have first been made by the ancient Athenian lawmaker Draco in the 7th cen ...
and breach of health and safety charges in connection with the accident. The managers, Anthony Walker (Balfour Beatty's rail maintenance director), Nicholas Jeffries (its civil engineer
A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing ...
), Railtrack's Alistair Cook and Sean Fugill (asset managers for the London North-East zone), and track engineer Keith Lee, all denied the charges. The corporate manslaughter charges against Railtrack/Network Rail and some of its executives were dropped in September 2004, but the other charges stood.
The trial began in January 2005; the judge, Mr Justice Mackay, warned that it could go on for a year. On 14 July, the judge instructed the jury to acquit
In common law jurisdictions, an acquittal certifies that the accused is free from the charge of an offense, as far as criminal law is concerned. The finality of an acquittal is dependent on the jurisdiction. In some countries, such as the ...
all defendants on charges of manslaughter. A few days later, Balfour Beatty changed its plea to guilty on the health and safety charges, and on 6 September, Network Rail was found guilty of breaching health and safety law. Network Rail were fined £3.5 million while Balfour Beatty were fined £10 million.[ All of the manslaughter charges against the executives were dismissed by the judge.]
See also
* Ladbroke Grove rail crash
The Ladbroke Grove rail crash (also known as the Paddington rail crash) was a rail accident which occurred on 5 October 1999 at Ladbroke Grove in London, England, when two passenger trains collided almost head-on after one of them had passed a ...
, an earlier accident that also led to reforms in British railway management and safety
* List of rail accidents in the United Kingdom
This lists significant accidents involving railway rolling stock, including crashes, fires and incidents of crew being overcome by locomotive emissions. Other railway-related incidents such as the King's Cross fire of 1987 or the 7 July 2005 Lond ...
References
Notes
Citations
Sources
*
External links
ORR summary: Hatfield train derailment (archive copy)
ORR Final Report by the Independent Investigation Board (archive copy)
Health & Safety Executive page on the Hatfield crash
Why Rails Crack
''Ingenia'', June 2005
Hatfield Rail Disaster – OpenLearn from The Open University
*BBC News coverage:
BBC News In Depth – Hatfield crash
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hatfield Rail Crash
Railway accidents and incidents in Hertfordshire
History of Hertfordshire
Railway accidents in 2000
2000 disasters in the United Kingdom
Hatfield, Hertfordshire
2000s in Hertfordshire
October 2000 events in the United Kingdom