Ealing Broadway train derailment caused by series of mistakes including 'lack of understanding'

A District line trained derailed outside Ealing Broadway station after a series of mistakes, an investigation has found.

The London Underground train derailed in the early hours of Wednesday March 2 at low speed while carrying 19 passengers and two members of staff.

An investigation by the Rail Accident Investigation Branch, published on Monday (December 5), found that “inadequate information”, “a poor relationship between control rooms”, and “lack of understanding” contributed to the crash.

'Staff were not completely clear'

The report said: “The service control staff were not completely clear from the information available to them within the control rooms which points they needed to set in which position and so they asked the maintenance team for assistance.

“The two teams did not communicate effectively and did not reach a complete understanding of the requirement of the route.”

At 1.29am the trained derailed while travelling at five miles per hour.

No one injured

It had been held at a red signal since 12.35am because of a track circuit failure, and staff had been trying to establish which points needed to be secured in order for the train to safely pass the signal.

The points are mechanisms which allow a train to be guided from one track to another at a railway junction.

Fortunately no one was injured in the crash.

'Inadequate level of information'

RAIB's investigation added: “Due to the inadequate level of information available to the service control staff, the poor relationship between the two control rooms involved, and a lack of understanding of the way in which the type of points involved were shown on the various available diagrams, the operational control staff did not identify the correct positions of all the sets of points that needed to be secured in the route.”

The report outlined three recommendations to London Underground - to improve presentation of information to service control staff, review training for safety critical communications and to improve team working.

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