Clapham Junction rail crash

Details
Date and time:	08:10, December 12, 1988 (UTC) (1988-12-12T08:10Z)
Location:	near Clapham Junction
Rail line:	South Western Main Line (Network SouthEast)
Cause	Signal error arising out of poor electrical engineering work practices
Statistics
Trains:	3
Deaths:	35
Injuries:	500
List of UK rail accidents by year

The Clapham Junction rail crash was a serious railway accident involving two collisions between three commuter trains at 08:10 on the morning of 12 December 1988. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (667x941, 121 KB)Front cover of the Hidden Report on the Clapham Junction Railway Accident. ... is the 346th day of the year (347th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1988 (MCMLXXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Friday (link displays 1988 Gregorian calendar). ... London Waterloo Vauxhall London Victoria Grosvenor Bridge Chatham Main Line Queenstown Road (Battersea) Chatham Main Line Battersea Park West London Line Clapham Junction To Wandsworth Town South Western Main Line and Brighton Main Line Clapham Junction railway station is in Battersea in the London Borough of Wandsworth. ... The South Western Main Line is the railway line from London Waterloo to Weymouth on the Dorset coast. ... A train in NSE livery Network SouthEast (NSE) was a sector of British Rail that principally operated commuter trains in the London area, and was formed in 1986 when BR was sectorised. ... This lists railway accidents in Britain sorted by death toll. ... // This list is of railway accidents in Britain sorted chronologically. ... A Connex commuter train stands by the platform in Melbourne, Australia Regional rail systems, or commuter rail systems, usually provide a rail service through a central business district area into suburbs or other locations that draw large numbers of people on a daily basis. ... is the 346th day of the year (347th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1988 (MCMLXXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Friday (link displays 1988 Gregorian calendar). ...

The collisions occurred 800 m (half a mile) south west of Clapham Junction railway station in south west London. Thirty-five people died and five hundred were injured,^[1] making the crash one of the worst in the UK in recent times. London Waterloo Vauxhall London Victoria Grosvenor Bridge Chatham Main Line Queenstown Road (Battersea) Chatham Main Line Battersea Park West London Line Clapham Junction To Wandsworth Town South Western Main Line and Brighton Main Line Clapham Junction railway station is in Battersea in the London Borough of Wandsworth. ... This article is about the capital of England and the United Kingdom. ...

Incident

The first collision occurred after the driver of the 07:18 from Basingstoke to Waterloo saw a signal in front of him abruptly change from green to red without going through an intermediate yellow aspect. As required, the driver stopped his train at the next signal post telephone to report to the signalman at Clapham Junction 'A' signal box that his train had passed a red signal. He was advised there was no fault and that he was free to proceed. The driver told the signalman that he intended to make a formal report when he reached Waterloo. As the driver hung up the phone his train was hit from behind at a speed of about 40 mph (65 km/h) by the late-running 06:14 from Poole, running under false 'proceed' signals. Basingstoke railway station is a railway station in the town of Basingstoke in the county of Hampshire in England. ... For other uses, see Waterloo station (disambiguation). ... Poole railway station is a railway station on the South Western Main Line serving the town of Poole in Dorset, England. ...

A second side-on collision a short time afterwards involved the second, third and fourth cars of an empty train leaving Clapham Junction being hit by the wreckage of the Poole train. A fourth train approaching also under false clear signals at the time managed to stop about 70 yd (60 m) clear of the rear of the Poole train.

Pupils from the adjacent Emanuel School were first on the scene of the disaster and helped save the lives of many. They were commended for their service by the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Emanuel School is a co-educational public school in Battersea, South-West London, England. ... Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS (née Roberts; born 13 October 1925) served as British Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990 and leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 until 1990, being the first and only woman to hold either post. ...

Investigation

The direct cause of the disaster was sloppy work practices in which an old wire, incorrectly left in place after rewiring work and still connected at the supply end, created a false feed to a signal relay, thereby causing its signal to show green when it should have shown red. A contributing technical factor was the lack of double switching in the signal relay circuits, which would have prevented a single false feed causing an accident. The larger cause of the accident was the failure by British Rail senior management to recognise that the resignalling of the Clapham Junction area – and indeed the resignalling of all the lines out of Waterloo, of which this was a part – should have been treated as a major, safety-critical project, controlled throughout by a single, senior, named project manager. Instead the job was left to middle-level technical staff, stressed, poorly supervised by their seniors and poorly supported by their juniors. Staffing levels were inadequate and the staff, dulled by months of voluntary seven-days-a-week work, were carrying out the complete resignalling of the largest and, on some measures, busiest junction on the whole British rail system. Double switching is the practice in railway signalling in particular of cutting the power to a relay in both the positive and negative sides, so that a single false feed of current to that relay is unlikely to cause a wrong side failure. ... This article is about the defunct entity British Railways, which later traded as British Rail. The History of rail transport in Great Britain is covered in its own article. ...

The Hidden Inquiry into the Clapham rail crash found that a supervisor - Mr. Lippett - had noticed some loose wiring during an inspection but had not told anyone about it because he did not want to "rock the boat". The supervisor's reluctance to raise the issue was characteristic of a form of self-censorship which organisations such as Public Concern at Work (PCaW), founded in 1993, have sought to overcome. In latter years, the balance between confidentiality and safety (or in other milieu, societal accountability) has been addressed in part by so-called "whistleblowing" legislation such as the UK Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, and similar provisions in other countries. Poster in support of whistleblower legislation A whistleblower is an employee, former employee, or member of an organization, especially a business or government agency, who reports misconduct to people or entities that have the power and presumed willingness to take corrective action. ... The UKs Public Interest Disclosure Act provides a framework of legal protection for individuals who disclose information so as to expose malpractice and matters of similar concern. ...

The inquiry also recommended the introduction of the Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system; however the inquiry's recommendation was not acted on. Subsequent crashes such as at Southall in 1997 and Ladbroke Grove in 1999 led to further recommendations for the introduction of ATP, and although it has been installed on some lines, it has not to date been specified for the entire network. In the statement on the Ladbroke Grove crash, the Department for Transport sought to make the point that "no workable system was available in Britain" at the time. Automatic train protection is speed and distance supervision, usually intervening (usually deploying emergency brake, as a last measure) when the driver of a train omits to react on optical signals given from the wayside system. ... The Southall rail crash occurred on September 19, 1997, on the Great Western Railway line at Southall, west London. ... Cover of the Cullen report The Ladbroke Grove rail crash (also known as the Paddington train crash) was an English rail accident on October 5, 1999 in which thirty-one people died. ... In the United Kingdom, the Department for Transport is the government department responsible for the transport network. ...

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 correct. 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.

The accident also highlighted the relatively poor crashworthiness of the rolling stock, which was all of BR's 1950s vintage Mark 1 design. Being of separate chassis design, the carriage superstructures detached from their underframes on impact and disintegrated in the collision. 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. However, Mark 1 based multiple units similar to those involved in the Clapham accident were still operating on South London commuter lines as late as 2005, some 17 years later. Year 1950 (MCML) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Corridor Third (TK) M24018 at Derby, 1951 Brake Second open (BSO) E9201 Sleeper Second E2555. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...

A memorial marking the location of the crash site is atop the embankment above the railway on Windmill Road by Spencer Park, Battersea. Battersea is a place in the London Borough of Wandsworth. ...

References

• Glendon, A. Ian; Clarke, Sharon; McKenna, Eugene F. (2006). Human Safety And Risk Management. CRC Press. ISBN 0849330904. 
• Hartley, Hazel J (2001). Exploring Sport and Leisure Disasters: a socio-legal perspective. Cavendish. ISBN 9781859416501. 
• Reason, James; Hobbs, Alan (2003). Managing Maintenance Error: A Practical Guide. Ashgate. ISBN 075461591X. 
• Whittingham, R. B. (2004). The Blame Machine: Why Human Error Causes Accidents. Butterworth-Heinemann. ISBN 0750655100. 

External links

• Hidden Inquiry - PDF of the inquiry report, from The Railways Archive.
• BBC News story on the crash

Coordinates: 51.4571° N 0.1744° W Map of Earth showing lines of latitude (horizontally) and longitude (vertically), Eckert VI projection; large version (pdf, 1. ...