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Rail Accident Report: Network Rail's Management of Existing Earthworks

Document Summary

RAIB's investigation into Network Rail's management of earthworks to ensure the safety of trains, arising from three accidents involving earthworks slips.

This document was published in December 2008 by Rail Accident Investigation Branch.

It was written by Rail Accident Investigation Branch.

This item is linked to the Accident at Oubeck North on 4th November 2005

The original document format was PDF File, and comprised 40 pages.The original document can be found here.

This document was kindly sourced from Rail Accident Investigation Branch and is in our Safety reports collection..

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"The RAIB has previously investigated incidents at Oubeck in November 2005 (RAIB report 19/2006) and Moy in November 2005 (RAIB report 22/2006). The investigation into the derailment at Kemble on 15 January 2007 (RAIB report 07/2008) found features in common with these earlier incidents, relating to earthworks.

All three incidents were initiated by earth slope failures and resulted in passenger train derailments. Each was an unexpected cutting failure and involved:

- a recent period of localised extreme weather;

- deficiencies in the performance of the local drainage systems at the site; and

- surface water standing on, or lowing from, adjacent non-railway land.

As a result the RAIB decided to investigate the overall Network Rail process for the management of its earthworks.

The scope of this investigation addresses the following questions:

a) Does the available evidence indicate an increasing number of safety related incidents occurring as a result of earthworks failures?

b) Are the earthworks management systems used by Network Rail appropriately identifying the safety risk?

c) Do the technical procedures used by Network Rail adequately categorise the safety risk from earthworks to allow appropriate mitigation?

d) How do the processes and systems used by Network Rail compare with those used by the owners of other, similar infrastructure?

e) Is there any evidence of climate change affecting the behaviour of earthworks and if so how is Network Rail addressing this?

f) Does the Safety of the Line management system recognise and adequately deal with issues from earthworks?

g) Are processes within the earthworks management and Safety of the Line taking appropriate cogniscence of issues outside the Network Rail boundary?

h) How is the risk from earthworks failure managed in the event of extreme weather? Is the earthworks management input to extreme weather management plans appropriate?"