Rail workers 'checked wrong line'

A fatal mistake by Railtrack resulted in a missed opportunity to prevent the Potters Bar disaster in which seven people died, it was claimed today.

The error meant the wrong section of track was inspected in the area just hours before faulty points caused the crash.

An off-duty rail worker travelling home from London the evening before the May tragedy contacted Railtrack control at King's Cross to report that he had suffered a "rough ride" as he passed through Potters Bar.

There appears to be confusion, however, over the exact location of the poor track. Railtrack, it is reported, contacted the control centre of maintenance contractor Jarvis at York.

But workers were told to inspect the line going towards London.

Instead, the workers should have been told to examine the other line used by trains travelling from London - the track on which the crash occurred.

Workers did inspect the Londonbound tracks but found nothing wrong.

Jarvis said today that tape recordings of the instructions show that its staff were told to inspect the London-bound line.

A spokesman for Railtrack said that all voice recordings relating to the report of poor track were now in the possession of the British Transport Police and crash investigators.

"The reports of what took place are speculation at this stage," the spokesman added.

Although the railworker contacted the signal control box at King's Cross to report his concerns, the train's driver did not report anything amiss.

The crash occurred as a set of points broke when the four-carriage King's Cross to King's Lynn train passed over them at 100mph. This caused the rear coach to come off the tracks and slam at a right angle into the Potters Bar station platforms.

In the wake of allegations from passengers that the track was in poor condition in the Potters Bar and other areas, Railtrack carried out a different test once services were restored after the crash. This involved a special GNER train carrying sophisticated electronic monitoring systems - but nothing amiss was found.

However, investigators have established that the points were at fault. Four nuts were found to have come off two "stretcher" bars which hold the track sections in place. Because these bars were loose a third bar then broke as the train travelled over, causing the points to change.

At issue is why the nuts were missing. Jarvis has said that sabotage could be the cause. Official investigators, while still officially keeping an "open mind" have ruled this out.

Instead the inquiry continues into poor maintenance of the tracks. An interim report published last week by the Health and Safety Executive, the national watchdog, found a catalogue of failure had led to the derailment.

A series of track points in the area were found to be sub-standard. One in five bolts securing the points need tightening and the design of the adjustable "stretcher" bars may have to be changed for something safer, the report concluded.

It was found that maintenance workers may even have been equipped with the wrong sort of spanners to enable them to carry out proper adjustments of the tracks and points. The report said that checks made in the area after the crash showed "around 20 per cent of the locknuts tested were considered to be not fully tight, though the root cause of this has not been determined".

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