Post by drainrat on Aug 28, 2016 20:06:50 GMT
like I said, the impression was more of not really knowing root cause, but creating a wide net of mitigations that might fix something they assumed, hence the 'extended' period between derailment and full train service as testing and phasing in took place. As you quite rightly point out, the mitigations fixed the root cause, but the certainty of whether it would or not at the time post incident really wasn't there, and again, things we were told were really just wild guesses at the time, maybe, like overtightening.
My recollections of the time was attending a meeting at Broadway, called by the incumbent service director, which was some time after the incident, where it was akin to watching headless chickens. This followed by being called to the engineers directorate office at Victoria by the RSE where an exercise I could only describe as 'damage limitation' took place, he was under fire from all corners as a scapegoat was being hunted down. We knew what had caused the derailment as we had demanded an FIR for the previous derailment at Loughton about a year before.
In my experience of being a part of the investigations for both the major derailments on the central line, the one thing that sticks out is that the amount of time and effort put into the politics far outweighs that of finding root causes. For instance, the white city derailment investigation was headed up by the same RSE who came under fire for the Chancery Lane derailment, we spent the majority of most meetings watching a locked battle between the 2 rhinos of the engineering directorate, in one corner the RSE and in the other, the TE. 6 or so weeks in and we'd still got no closer to why the train run up and over the switchblade, we knew there was an issue with the design as it was the same as Camden Town and Hammersmith, but we didn't know why the recommendations of those FIRs weren't adhered to re: hand over procedures post track work concerning those points, and also why this particular train. Each meeting was a game of tennis and then the HMRI got involved and demanded moving the details of the incident to BR tech who was based in Derby. We all went to Derby for a presentation of the VAMPIRE simulation, which incidentally showed no derailment, and then, one of the train drivers piped up and said words along the lines of 'with all respect, that isn't how the train moves over the points.....' And explained how the train accelerates between the 2 DTS recorded speeds of 16 & 24 kph without going below or over, but the panel just thought that as there was no data on the download to show this that it must be the train speed was constant. With this addition of info, the VAMPIRE then derailed the train on the sim. Of course, it wasn't and never will be acknowledged who and what grade actually changed the FIR dynamics, but it's how it happened nonetheless.
Have to remember that what people say and do in the course of taking part as a panel member can make or break their careers, and that is a powerful motivator 😉
My recollections of the time was attending a meeting at Broadway, called by the incumbent service director, which was some time after the incident, where it was akin to watching headless chickens. This followed by being called to the engineers directorate office at Victoria by the RSE where an exercise I could only describe as 'damage limitation' took place, he was under fire from all corners as a scapegoat was being hunted down. We knew what had caused the derailment as we had demanded an FIR for the previous derailment at Loughton about a year before.
In my experience of being a part of the investigations for both the major derailments on the central line, the one thing that sticks out is that the amount of time and effort put into the politics far outweighs that of finding root causes. For instance, the white city derailment investigation was headed up by the same RSE who came under fire for the Chancery Lane derailment, we spent the majority of most meetings watching a locked battle between the 2 rhinos of the engineering directorate, in one corner the RSE and in the other, the TE. 6 or so weeks in and we'd still got no closer to why the train run up and over the switchblade, we knew there was an issue with the design as it was the same as Camden Town and Hammersmith, but we didn't know why the recommendations of those FIRs weren't adhered to re: hand over procedures post track work concerning those points, and also why this particular train. Each meeting was a game of tennis and then the HMRI got involved and demanded moving the details of the incident to BR tech who was based in Derby. We all went to Derby for a presentation of the VAMPIRE simulation, which incidentally showed no derailment, and then, one of the train drivers piped up and said words along the lines of 'with all respect, that isn't how the train moves over the points.....' And explained how the train accelerates between the 2 DTS recorded speeds of 16 & 24 kph without going below or over, but the panel just thought that as there was no data on the download to show this that it must be the train speed was constant. With this addition of info, the VAMPIRE then derailed the train on the sim. Of course, it wasn't and never will be acknowledged who and what grade actually changed the FIR dynamics, but it's how it happened nonetheless.
Have to remember that what people say and do in the course of taking part as a panel member can make or break their careers, and that is a powerful motivator 😉