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New News... from CTV News:

LONDON -- A passenger train hit a landslide before derailing in Scotland earlier this week, killing three people, U.K. rail investigators confirmed Friday.

A train track obstruction had been suspected of playing a role in Wednesday's derailment near the coastal town of Stonehaven, about 100 miles (160 kilometres) northeast of Edinburgh, because it happened after heavy rain and flooding in the area.

"Thankfully, fatal derailments are a rare occurrence on the U.K.'s national network," Simon French, chief inspector of rail accidents, said. "However, landslips and other earthworks failures remain a risk to trains that needs to be constantly managed -- and this is becoming even more challenging for the rail industry due to the increasing incidence of extreme weather events."

Dik

from a mate who lives in the area, the track had been blocked going south by one landslide and they decided to take it back north to Aberdeen

While it was going back it hit another land slide which was on a bend.

These trains have 2 power cars and when they swap directions the driver goes to the new front end.

To add he is a geo engineer type and is saying the A9 route north has also got issues as well. Which to be honest it has had for years north of Aviemore. He does stuff like capped land fills and water catchment faces in Gibraltar.

Quote (Alistair Heaton)

the track had been blocked going south by one landslide and they decided to take it back north to Aberdeen

That matches what's being reported in BBC News - which also suggests that to achieve the change of direction, they had to wait a while a track worker drove to a manually-operated crossover to switch them onto the down line. I guess that delay increased the chance of a further landslip having occurred in the time between them passing the eventual accident site on the up line and having to cross it again on the way back.

Decent summary at https://www.gov.uk/government/news/passenger-train...

A.

Apparently the whole of that area was unstable for landslips both around and away from the railway with the amount of water that was coming down.

I think my mate is going to be extremely busy doing survey's over the next few weeks. There hasn't been a lot of work done on that side of things since lockdown started. .

They have released a few more details.

I can vouch for the amount of survey work that's been done by the look of my mates facebook page.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-north-east-or...

There has also been some rather nasty comments made about the driver which have caused great distress to his family. By those in the know he did everything by the book and the comments are false.

Perusing the articles, I'm not able to find how fast the train would be expected to be going there. It's classified a high-speed train, but had only traveled 1.4 miles from being stopped so I'd assume it probably wasn't going more than maybe 40 MPH or so.

Brad Waybright

The more you know, the more you know you don't know.

I think it was just under 75 mph I read somewhere.

Just under, per this latest report Link

I think it was doing 73mph on a track authorised for 75mph.

It strikes me as a little odd the train went back up to line speed considering it had been turned around (and therefore presumably the service had been cancelled and there was no timetable to meet). All I can guess is the driver assumed the track was clear considering he'd just been along it before being turned back so saw no need to go slower.

I also don't really know how much leeway the drivers have over the speed they go - if control clears them to do linespeed I presume they basically have to do so in order to prevent screwing up / causing delays on the network elsewhere?

Quote (RandomTaskkk)

...the driver assumed the track was clear considering he'd just been along it...

The report says the train was stopped for 2-1/2 hours before heading back. I would have thought that they would have reduced the speed too, regardless of the delay. It would seem prudent until the track condition was ascertained.

Brad Waybright

The more you know, the more you know you don't know.

I have zero clue guys what the rules are with UK railways when it comes to line speeds. The train drivers actually get more training than pilots do before flying aircraft with punters in the back.

Personally I always see the speed limits as a limit of stupidity so personally wouldn't have been running it so close to the limit. But then again I am not an railway man. But i suspect with 100 tons it wouldn't mater if you were 30 mph or 74 mph when you hit a load of rocks round a blind corner.