Potters Bar firm strikes again

13 April 2012

JARVIS, the engineer under fire over the Potters Bar rail crash, has admitted it was responsible for poor work that led to a train derailing outside one of Britain's busiest stations.

The company said it had been working in the area outside London's King's Cross station just before this morning's incident. No one was hurt in the derailment, but it caused major disruption to rush hour services. Jarvis said the work had not been properly completed.

Industry sources said the engineers had left a gap after working on a set of points. The first train to pass over was the 7am GNER service to Glasgow.

The driver spotted the gap and tried to stop. But the front two carriages of the train derailed as it left Platform 4 at 10mph. The carriages stayed upright.

Initially Jarvis refused to comment on whether the engineering work was to blame. But the company later issued a revised statement which said: 'Investigations are still under way. However, it would appear that, after having undertaken lengthy overnight maintenance work, the Jarvis Rail maintenance team omitted to make the final disconnection on one of the points in question.

'Jarvis has informed Network Rail of its preliminary findings and is currently working with Network Rail to ensure swift restoration of normal services.'

Network Rail, the rail network operator, is already investigating a separate incident in Milton Keynes in which, it is alleged, Jarvis personnel left an engineering site littered with debris.

Rail unions reacted with anger in June when Jarvis was named as the preferred bidder to replace track in the London North East Region.

The area included Potters Bar in Hertfordshire where seven people died last year when a West Anglia Great Northern train derailed at a set of points just outside the station as it headed to King's Lynn, Norfolk. Jarvis engineers had been working on the track.

In the aftermath of the Potters Bar crash Jarvis suggested that sabotage may have been involved.

But the Health and Safety Executive's third progress report released earlier this year found no evidence that sabotage or vandalism was behind the derailment.

Instead, the HSE report said the points which failed at Potters Bar and led to the derailment were poorly maintained and not properly adjusted.

It added that inspections of the points had not spotted faults, and there was a failure to understand the points' design and safety requirements.

Commenting on today's incident, Peter Rayner, an expert in rail operations and safety, called for 'a full investigation into other Jarvis-related incidents of which we had one recently at Milton Keynes and another one at Newark and now this.

'My view is that the time has come now for the Rail Safety Authority to do a specialised investigation into Jarvis,' he added.

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