You are in RA » Document Archive » Accident at Potters Bar on 10th May 2002 » Train Derailment at Potters Bar 10 May 2002: A Progress Report by the HSE Investigation Board

view document PDF (2.5Mb download)Train Derailment at Potters Bar 10 May 2002: A Progress Report by the HSE Investigation Board

Document Summary

This document was published on 29th May 2003 by Health and Safety Executive.

It was written by Health and Safety Executive.

This item is linked to the Accident at Potters Bar on 10th May 2002

The original document format was PDF File, and comprised 87 pages.The original document can be found here.

This document was kindly sourced from Health and Safety Executive and is in our Accident reports collection. It was added to the Archive on 17th September 2005.

Copyright Information

This document is Crown Copyright, and is subject to the terms governing the reproduction of crown copyright material. Depending on the status and age of the original document, you may need an OPSI click-use license if you wish to reproduce this material, and other restrictions may apply. Please see this explanation for further details.

"The technical investigation, which the Board regards as thorough and searching, is ongoing. So far, it has indicated that:

The derailment at Potters Bar was due to the failure of points 2182A.

Four main factors contributed to the failure: the poor condition of the backdrive and other components; the loss of nuts from the right-hand end of the rear stretcher bar; the loss of nuts from the left-hand end of the front stretcher bar; and the fracture and disengagement of the lock stretcher bar.

It is probable that the lock-nut on the outer right-hand end of the rear stretcher bar had not been tightened against the outer main nut before the incident.

It is probable that the outer insulating bush had been missing from the left-hand end of the front stretcher bar for some time before the failure occurred; it would not have been possible to accommodate both outer nuts on this end of the stretcher bar.

The lock stretcher bar fracture was due to fatigue cracking which occurred progressively over a period of weeks or months.

This set of points had been poorly maintained and was out of adjustment in some respects; this is likely to have increased the possibility of vibration-induced damage

Other points in the area were found to have similar maintenance deficiencies, although none were in such a poor condition as 2182A. This indicates that a wider problem existed."

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