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Originally Posted by towny
Actually, there are fewer railway deaths per year since privatisation than there were under British Rail (e.g Clapham Junction, 1988, killed 35 people). And despite private contractors like Jarvis getting the blame for accidents like the Potters Bar crash, let's not forget that the engineers who work for the private contractors, especially the older and more senior ones, all worked for British Rail as well. A fact unions like the RMT and ASLEF are happy for you not to notice.
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Had Hatfield, Southall, Ladbrooke Grove, Greak Heck & Potters Bar happened with MK1 stock like Clapham, then there would have been many more deaths.
The only reason there were not so many deaths with these accidents is that the trains involved were more modern. The Oldest train involved with these accidents was the HSTs in Southall and Ladbrooke Grove which are of 70's Vintage.
The IC225 sets and Networkers are all of 80/90s vintage. All are ex BR.
The Mk1 sets at Clapham were of 1950s vintage, a lot had been learned since then and these sets would have been phased out by now under BR, (and are sill in use by SWT, SouthCentral and Connex SE)
Yes the managers used to work for BR but now commercial considerations come into practice. This inevitably means corners are cut.
When was the last time a Railway accident was caused by a broken rail before Hatfield........ Hither Green in the 1960's.
When was the last time the Severn Tunnel was closed by HMRI for essential maintenance before the closure a couple of years ago.....
It had never happened because BR repaired any track before it became a serious enough problem for HMRI to get involved!
WHY???! Because there was a culture of safety under BR.
BR introduced the ATP system that was fully working on the HST that caused the accident at Southall. It was switched off because the privatised companies couldn't be ar$ed to train their drivers to use it. So they relied on the older AWS which was faulty in that train. This meant that the driver didn't even realy have time to blink. Under BR a second driver would have been in the cab to assist with sighting signals, or (more likely) they would have used the ATP.
IMHO although the railways are safer than any other form of transport, they are more dangerous now than they were under BR.