Action taken to improve resilience of railway following Stonehaven tragedy

Government publishes Network Rail’s interim report on 12 August’s tragic derailment of a passenger train at Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps visiting the site of the Stonehaven derailment where he met and thanked first-on-scene officer PC Mercer and the emergency services

Network Rail’s interim report on the Stonehaven tragedy, commissioned by the Transport Secretary Grant Shapps immediately after the event, has been published today (10 September 2020), setting out immediate and long-term action to improve the railway’s resilience to extreme weather events, following the derailment of a passenger train in Aberdeenshire.

While the report in no way pre-empts the outcome of formal independent investigations being carried out by the Rail Accident Investigation Branch, or those by the Office of Rail and Road, British Transport Police and Police Scotland into the tragedy on Wednesday 12 August, the initial findings suggest that, after a period of heavy rainfall, the train struck a pile of washed-out rock and gravel before derailing.

The interim report assesses the current controls and management of thousands of miles of earthworks – the sloped ground beside railway tracks – and sets out how the industry plans to reduce the risk of landslips on the network in the future.