The Hatfield Rail Crash aftermath

[Skimpot flyer]

As per the title, I was talking to my other half about the tragic events of October 2000, after she was told by a University student of the tragedy.
Am I right in thinking that the southern end of the ECML was shut for some weeks afterwards, for major track replacement? I’m sure I had to get rail replacement buses for trips to Finsbury Park to watch Arsenal, but can find no references to this in the Wikipedia article on the subject.
I was also stunned to learn that the same driving unit was involved in a collision with a road vehicle that had come to rest on the tracks after veering off a motorway, only 4 months later.
Can anyone recall the track closure?

 

[Twingo37175]

Not sure on full impact, but yes, 91023 was involved in both this and Heck. Hence why on upgrades and renumbering it became 91132 as against 91123.

 

[QueensCurve]

There was chaos nationwilde after the Hatfield deralment. Railtrack had egnored multiple reports about the condition of the track at Hatfield over a period of five months and taken no action. As they didn't have any reliable knowledge about which track was safe and which was not, they imposed a 50mph temporary speed restriction nationwide pending inspections and testing.

 

[azt]

This is not too bad a video on youtube that explains stuff quite well:

Long story short, a crack or cracks grew to their critical crack length causing catastrophic failure and the rail collapsed!

 

[Magdalia]

I was commuting at the time, and travelled over the track that disintegrated at Hatfield less than 24 hours before the derailment. That would have been at 100 mph, and I was probably asleep.

The derailment was on 17 October 2000. My next commuting journey via Hatfield was on 13 November, though there was a restricted service running via Hertford in the intervening period. The restricted timetable continued for a while after the route via Hatfield reopened, because of the widespread speed restrictions imposed in the aftermath. If I remember correctly these were 40 mph. Also late evening trains continued to be diverted via Hertford to facilitate longer night-time engineering possessions on the line via Hatfield.

Something approaching the normal timetable resumed on 11 December 2000.

 

[edwin_m]

There was chaos nationwilde after the Hatfield deralment. Railtrack had egnored multiple reports about the condition of the track at Hatfield over a period of five months and taken no action. As they didn't have any reliable knowledge about which track was safe and which was not, they imposed a 50mph temporary speed restriction nationwide pending inspections and testing.

And in the end, I don't believe any rail anywhere else was found to be in a dangerous condition like that at Hatfieild.

There was also serious flooding in late 2000 which compounded the problems for the rail network.

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

I travelled from KX to Peterborough (by 'White Rose' Eurostar set no less) a week before the derailment. Someone coined the expression that the rail industry had a 'collective nervous breakdown' in response to the accident - the board of Railtrack, many who had little railway experience, panicked and imposed the blanket speed restriction. The WCML had a much reduced timetable with steam era schedules, taking something like 3hrs from Crewe to Euston. It took until the following January for things to fully get back to normal as I recall.

 

[The exile]

Someone coined the expression that the rail industry had a 'collective nervous breakdown' in response to the accident - the board of Railtrack, many who had little railway experience..

And therein lies the problem. If they had had and had done their jobs properly the situation (as opposed to the accident) would never have arisen.

 

[Ploughman]

For months afterwards there was an emergency replacement of CWR throughout the country in an attempt to remove the ESR's imposed on the suspect rail sites.
Normal renewal work was cancelled or deferred.
I personally worked on rerail and stress sites from Welwyn in the South to Gateshead in the North.

 

[55002]

I commuted on east coast daily from Newark into London during that time and the journey time went up to something like 3 1/2 hours each way. It was horrendous, I spent more time on trains than I did at work. Was so so slow. it would have been quicker to drive to a tube station and get in. The effect on people’s state of mind wasn’t great, we were having weekly correspondence with Chris Garnett, head of GNER at the time, but there was nothing he could do. In the end after the Heck crash, which involved the train I was actually waiting for at Newark, made the sensible decision and moved closer to London. After that there was Potters Bar in 2002, all separate causes, but bad couple of years on ECML. I have to be honest I can’t remember how I got home on the actual day of the Hatfield crash, presumably via Hertford North

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Seem to recall that midweek journeys between London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly (or vice-versa), operated by Virgin Trains, now took well over four hours, end to end, similar to timings on Sunday workings at the time.

 

[Bald Rick]

Certainly on the WCML, there were new timetables every week or so (it seemed) whilst rerailing was done to enable the restrictions to be lifted. I well remember doing 20mph all the way from Euston to Watford one evening on the down slow, with various other 20 TSRs in place en route to Birmingham, and it being a 4 hour trip. I was still doing post Hatfield rerailing into 2002.

 

[Falcon1200]

The crash itself was dreadful of course, but the aftermath too was an appalling time for the railway, its staff and customers. The knee-jerk reaction resulted, when I was night shift in Control, in our boss in Scotland decreeing that the West Coast Main Line north of the Border would close at 0800 the next morning for inspection. I quickly discovered that trains which had no chance of beating the blockage (which was absolute and non-negotiable) were already en route, leaving me the task of advising the operators and Carlisle Signalling Centre that we would not accept these trains. Much unhappiness resulted.

Another issue was the number of Emergency Speed Restrictions being imposed; Normally on a night shift we might get two or three, one night after Hatfield we got 20! All of which had to be logged, recorded and disseminated.

 

[DarloRich]

I recall taking something like 3 hours to get from Newcastle to Darlington. On a Pacer! There were very few services running and none running very quickly.

 

[SteveM70]

Imagine if Delay Repay had been a thing back then.....

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Imagine if Delay Repay had been a thing back then.....

First introduced 2007? So, what happened before then?

 

[D6130]

There was chaos nationwilde after the Hatfield deralment. Railtrack had egnored multiple reports about the condition of the track at Hatfield over a period of five months and taken no action. As they didn't have any reliable knowledge about which track was safe and which was not, they imposed a 50mph temporary speed restriction nationwide pending inspections and testing.

I seem to remember that quite a few of the emergency speed restrictions were to 20 mph. A few days after the accident, I had an interview for a driver's job with Eurostar. Following a long early shift, it took me four and a half hours to get from Leeds to Kings Cross via Hertford. I was exhausted and arrived at the hotel just in time to be allocated the last remaining room....in the attic, with the pipes from the water tank cascading down behind the wall, resulting in virtually no sleep. No wonder that I failed the assessment....but only just!

 

[Bikeman78]

There was chaos nationwilde after the Hatfield deralment. Railtrack had egnored multiple reports about the condition of the track at Hatfield over a period of five months and taken no action. As they didn't have any reliable knowledge about which track was safe and which was not, they imposed a 50mph temporary speed restriction nationwide pending inspections and testing.

The restriction was 20 mph in a lot of places. Almost the whole of Bridgend to Cardiff was 20 mph. The 1525 Swansea to Newcastle was frequently 47 vice HST around that time. It was typically 45 minutes late by Cardiff. Cardiff to Paddington was relatively normal.

 

[D6130]

The rail damage which caused the Hatfield derailment was described as 'Rolling Contact Fatigue' or 'Gauge Corner Cracking' to which curved sections of track were particularly vulnerable. As a result, the steel rail manufacturing plants in Scunthorpe and Workington had a mini-boom for a few months....and large quantities of rail were also imported from the continent, particularly from Hayange in France, Donawitz in Austria and Piombino in Italy.

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

The aftermath of Hatfield finished off most of the postal business through unreliability, despite the recent investment in terminals etc. It was also arguably one of the major factors in finishing off Railtrack.

 

[MarkWi72]

In August 2001 (Bank Holiday Sunday) I recall going to Euston from New Street, via Nuneaton. 86 dragged by a 47.

 

[Bald Rick]

In August 2001 (Bank Holiday Sunday) I recall going to Euston from New Street, via Nuneaton. 86 dragged by a 47.

I doubt that was a post Hatfield works thing. It was a regular diversion.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Imagine if Delay Repay had been a thing back then.....

There were new temporary timetables coming out every couple of weeks. Doubling of journey times was quite common. So although ‘delays’ per week typically still added up to more than 100 minutes on my commute the real effect seemed a lot worse.
Numbers of trains greatly reduced as well, obviously, because resource utilisation had to be abysmal, many junctions out of use, two-track railway vice four and so on.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

There was considerable expenditure also on routine maintenance , especially on the replacement of disc brakes , which unsurprisingly wore out a lot quicker than normal.

 

[Crossover]

I was commuting at the time, and travelled over the track that disintegrated at Hatfield less than 24 hours before the derailment. That would have been at 100 mph, and I was probably asleep.

The derailment was on 17 October 2000. My next commuting journey via Hatfield was on 13 November, though there was a restricted service running via Hertford in the intervening period. The restricted timetable continued for a while after the route via Hatfield reopened, because of the widespread speed restrictions imposed in the aftermath. If I remember correctly these were 40 mph. Also late evening trains continued to be diverted via Hertford to facilitate longer night-time engineering possessions on the line via Hatfield.

Something approaching the normal timetable resumed on 11 December 2000.

My Grandma, I believe, also travelled over the affected track the day before the derailment and I vaguely recall her telling me after that the ride had been rough around that area (but of course, it is easier to say after the fact than to know at the time it is unusual if you don't use the line very much)

 

[Bald Rick]

My Grandma, I believe, also travelled over the affected track the day before the derailment and I vaguely recall her telling me after that the ride had been rough around that area (but of course, it is easier to say after the fact than to know at the time it is unusual if you don't use the line very much)

The ride was (and is) always lively there, being at maximum cant deficiency. A qualified track engineer - let alone your grandma - would not have been able to detect the latent defect in the rail from the seat of a passenger train.

 

[edwin_m]

The rude was (and us) always lively there, being at maximum cant deficiency. A qualified track engineer - let alone your grandma - would not have been able to detect the latent defect in the rail from the seat of a passenger train.

There were numerous cracks extending part way into the rail, but it was still in the correct place and would have looked OK at a superficial glance. Various people knew this but for whatever reason the rail was not replaced before the stresses around one of those cracks got big enough for the rail to fracture right through, probably as the accident train passed over it. This increased the stresses on the remaining cracks, causing them to fail in turn so the rail literally shattered into many pieces.

 

[renegademaster]

Was there a surge in car use therefore car crashes during the post Hatfield chaos?

 

[Route115?]

Was there a surge in car use therefore car crashes during the post Hatfield chaos?

At the time rail only accounted for 6% of passenger miles (it was 11% just prior to covid) so its unlikely that there would have been a large increase, but you are quite right, total casualties may have been higher using the rule of thumb that driving is ten times as dangerous as travelling by train and walkiong 100 times as much. Getting to and from the station is by far the most dangerous part of any rail journey.

 

[Jamesrob637]

Imagine had there been more technology 24 years ago. WFH would've increased no end.