Level Crossing Collision 15/1/2005

WAT3212 · Post by **WAT3212** » Sat Jan 15, 2005 7:32 pm

First level crossing collision of 2005.

Its the Oaks Level Crossing between Manchester Victoria and Clitheroe.

charlierc · Post by **charlierc** » Sun Jan 16, 2005 11:07 am

Two words: Not again.

Charles

joeholmes · Post by **joeholmes** » Sun Jan 16, 2005 2:44 pm

What happened??? Any pictures

Very Interested In this

Joe

duncharris · Post by **duncharris** » Sun Jan 16, 2005 2:55 pm

It hasn't made any Google news stories

http://news.google.co.uk/news?q=level%2 ... a=N&tab=wn

davidaward · Post by **davidaward** » Mon Jan 17, 2005 4:08 pm

From the Manchester evening news website

http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/news/ ... ssing.html

looks to me like another lets not look and listen, when will people learn!

Post by **martinhodgson** » Mon Jan 17, 2005 5:17 pm

'Raising fresh questions over their safety'

Rubbish!
They are perfectly safe, it is users who cannot follow instructions properly making them so dangerous!

davidaward · Post by **davidaward** » Mon Jan 17, 2005 5:47 pm

martinhodgson wrote:Rubbish!
They are perfectly safe, it is users who cannot follow instructions properly making them so dangerous!

Emphasise IT IS ROAD USERS that are making them so dangerous, the railways have done all they can, what part of the instructions at a manual level crossing are hard to understand? People have to accept some personal responsibilty.

stephenwiseman · Post by **stephenwiseman** » Tue Jan 18, 2005 9:45 pm

Maybe making the barriers go down slightly earlier would help so that the signal man or whoever could maybe warn the train driver. At my local station (Billingshurst), the barriers go down about 5 minutes before a train comes. This may come as annoying, but if a car decided to plant itself on the track when the barriers went down, it would give the signalman/woman a good deal of time to check its clear.

However, at Billingshurst it is right by the station and a signal box, so for this to really take affect they would have to build new control boxes at every level crossing that doesn't have one near by.

-Stephen

Post by **martinhodgson** » Tue Jan 18, 2005 10:14 pm

The other thing is, if the crossing is automatic with just half barriers the car can drive on when the train is too close to stop.

Tomnick · Post by **Tomnick** » Tue Jan 18, 2005 10:31 pm

stephenwiseman wrote:Maybe making the barriers go down slightly earlier would help so that the signal man or whoever could maybe warn the train driver. At my local station (Billingshurst), the barriers go down about 5 minutes before a train comes. This may come as annoying, but if a car decided to plant itself on the track when the barriers went down, it would give the signalman/woman a good deal of time to check its clear.

However, at Billingshurst it is right by the station and a signal box, so for this to really take affect they would have to build new control boxes at every level crossing that doesn't have one near by.

-Stephen

Not really - for any controlled crossing, the signalman must be able to 'see' the crossing, either directly or using CCTV, and cannot clear the signals for a train until the interlocking has been freed by pressing a 'crossing clear' button, after the barriers have been lowered.

As Martin says, automatic crossings cannot be protected in this way - since a car can drive onto/over the crossing at any time. In any case, increasing the 'delay' just makes motorists impatient, and more likely to 'zig-zag' the barriers.

In this case, though, the crossing was user-operated - sadly, accidents like these occur when motorists fail to follow instructions...

laverack2 · Post by **laverack2** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 9:05 pm

Manchester Evening News wrote:Railtrack have now launched a full investigation

Shouldn't this be Network Rail?

spartacus · Post by **spartacus** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 9:10 am

Yes, but some papers have only just got used to it not being BR!