Feature Safety
On the 20th anniversary of the fatal trolley runaway down Shap in 2004, GREG MORSE considers the remaining risk of ‘objects on the line’
Imagine being in the middle of nowhere. It’s cold, dark and frosty, and you probably wish you were at home. It’s the early hours of February 15 2004, and you’re at Scout Green in Cumbria.
You’re not Ivo Peters or Eric Treacy, out to catch the dying embers of steam on camera. You’re a track maintenance worker, and this is your life - up all hours, out in all weathers, lifting and toiling to keep the traffic moving. There had been reports of gauge corner cracking on the Down cess rail. The Hatfield derailment in October 2000 (see panel, opposite) was still a recent, raw memory, and such reports were not taken lightly.
Originally scheduled for re-railing in March 2003, the replacement of five 600-foot lengths was deferred due to higher priority work taking precedence at Wreay, to the north.
After another deferral, three of the five lengths were eventually laid in July, with the remaining two installed over the weekend of October 25-26. After this, the whole length of the cess rail was re-stressed and some of the scrap rail was removed. Now all that remained was a similar operation on the six-foot side…
Forward again to February 15 2004. At about 0545, a trailer was about to be divested of its load of scrap rail lengths by a road-rail vehicle (RRV), standing in the Up cess at Scout Green.
The RRV had a hydraulic log grab, but attempts to drag the first length off the trailer caused the latter to move slightly. Then, at 0548, the worst happened, almost in slow motion, as the trailer started to roll down the 1-in-76 gradient from Shap Summit.
Shap, that gradient of legend, had been battled with by engine crews since the line was opened by the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway in 1846.
Now, the trolley was gathering speed as it freewheeled down the gradient into blackness. The speed rose to 40mph as the trolley silently approached a gang working just south of the A485 overbridge next to the M6.
It struck and killed four of them, injuring five more, before colliding with two permanent way trolleys, which helped slow the trailer to a stand as the gradient began to ease.
Ambulances soon arrived, their crews soon taking the injured to the Lancaster Infirmary. Police declared the area a crime scene - standard practice when dealing with fatalities. They told Construction News that the team at Tebay would have had their safety gear on and would have been “oblivious to the oncoming danger”, adding that there had been no lookout as “the line had been completely closed while work took place”, and that no incurs
