1938 District Crash

Did enjoy, thanks Phil. There is a great description of the trains. What an interesting District Line train it was. C stock motor which was scrapped - H(exB) stock trailer - L stock trailer - E stock motor car + B stock original trailer - K stock motor soon to become Q27!

The 1921 stock Met car was also scrapped after and replaced by a 1913 car from the Uxbridge fleet.

An interesting read at this late hour. there are similarities between this and the Clapham Junction crash of 1988, of faulty signal wiring.

A couple of other comments, interesting to know how a motorman could look out and see trains going the other way without dropping the deadman and going to the other side of the cab; and that until the withdrawal of Q stock in 1971 nothing had been done to improve the tail lights on that stock. then there's also the matter that in those days staff were expected to cross the running lines during traffic hours in tunnel sections. no elfensafetea in those days!

Admittedly, the Q stock did have an electric tail light, but that was fed by line volts in series with the cab light or gauge glass lights, so, no juice, no tail light! It was still a requirement for R and CO/CP stock to carry an illuminated oil tail light in case the battery supply failed too. Very few guards bothered to light them though in latter years.

Again, the accident was partly caused by staff failing to acknowledge the meaning of what each other were trying to convey.

What the report doesn't say is what happened to the staff held partly responsible. I wonder, were they disciplined? Reprimaned? Dismissed? Who knows after all these years.

Whilst on the subject of accidents on the DR, I remember walking through filham cemetary many years ago. In there is a grave of a DR worker who was killed in an accident at Parsons Green some time around 1886. Does anyone have any info on that one??

It isn't the dome thing any more after persons who drove trains when fatal accidents occurred started to receive death threats and hate mail...

I believe that following this accident AWCs were introduced. (Authority to Work Certificates)

Yes but they weren't called AWCs back then, that title is relatively recent dating from circa early 1980s. What was introduced would, I believe, have been the Signalling Safety Check Certificate which was still in use when I began my LT career.
There are two types of AWC, Safety and Non-Safety, issued to appropriately trained and licensed personnel the former as permission to work on Safety signalling circuitry and Tunnel Telephones and the latter for Non-Safety signalling circuitry, vital communications systems etc which these days includes telephones regarded as 'strategic'.
The AWC is not only the authority to 'interfere' but is also a record of the scope of permitted interference to the detailed equipment at the specified site(s) and location(s). It pins responsibility to the individual to whom it is issued, and to the person who issues it, in the event of subsequent failure or related events and is part of the paper trail of records held for every system and/or piece (asset) of signals or communications equipment in use on the railway.

Thinking about it I have just remembered that the Non-Safety AWC was preceeded by the Control Systems Certificate for Comms work at the beginning of the 1980s but I don't know if there was a Safety CSC introduced between the Safety Check Certificate and the Safety AWC.

Was? I would venture to suggest that despite all the improvements in education, increased mandatory training etc you'll still find a percentage of staff who lack knowledge. I doubt that things have changed much since I retired but I could recite accounts of events at the beginning of the decade where some supervisory station staff were distinctly lacking in the skills required of the postholder or lacked confidence in their own ability and judgement to utilise those skills.

Of course some of what is lacking is no doubt due at times to shuffling staff around to cover for sickness, annual leave and training absences and sometimes having to place people in unfamiliar surroundings with little more than basic knowledge of the local environment. However, it is invariably odds on that if an incident is going to occur the likelihood is that it will occur when the best team is not on duty.

As I understand it Check Certificates were issued for Safety Signalling Works up to the early 1990s. The exact date was specified in an old Departmental Quality Notice (remember them? ;D)

There wasn't a Safety equivalent to the CSC other than the Check Certificate.

Can I just ask, having read the report now (thanks, Phil), I'd like to know why the EB view of the signal would have been blocked by the WB? The curve doesn't seem that great, and seems to be in favour of an EB driver.

Oh, and also, has the signal been re-sited now/repeater added, to make it easier to see?

(Can I also confess? It took me a wee while to realise that Charing Cross is now called Embankment... ;D )

Easy bit first - there is no repeater.

I presume the signal you are talking about is A823 in the report? Looking at the diagram, I would suggest A823 is in the same place as the current equivalent A815. The curve is actually quite sharp; I would suggest it is sharper than the diagram in the report makes it look, though of course it might just be me. Whilst a repeater would be a sensible addition for A815, we've had this arrangement for so long now that of course if was going to happen, it would have certainly been done by now. It is of course easier to see A815 on approach with no train travelling westbound, but when a train is passing westbound it does mean you see it a lot later. You can see this effect quite well at Temple eastbound when looking east towards the home signals for Blackfriars - and there's hardly any curve there in comparison!! What you may have perhaps not considered is that this is a tunnel section and the tunnel walls on curves do tend to get in the way!! ;D ;D.

Given there's a crossover to the east of Embankment, and any train standing at A815 would need to be beyond it, that train would be well out of sight of a train berthed in the platform at Embankment. Given the scenario of EH9 signal false clearing I can well imagine being in the cab of train 59, winding up in the same way as that driver did, and not seeing train 21 till it was too late.

Would a repeater have made any difference in the grand scheme of things? No, it wouldn't!! A repeater would most likely be beyond the crossover to prevent any chance of misinterpretation should a train be reversing west to east, so if a train is standing at A815, the repeater would be alongside the train and not viewable from behind.

The issue was a false clear signal, a signalling irregularity (something that happens when in theory it should be impossible), and you can't really guard against that; especially in a location such as this. Open section & straight track would probably be a different non newsworthy nothing happened outcome...

However I think a repeater for A815 would still be useful, though for a different reason. EH9, Embankment's eastbound station starter is a semi automatic signal controlled by a signaller (or more usually a programme machine!!) - point is it can, and often is, used to hold a train and regulate the train service. Now as a driver I don't necessarily know that I'm being regulated (unless I'm specifically told). I may well be aware that I've been closely following a train in front of me......now that I've been held, is that train still just in front (and hence why EH9 was Red), or has he got some ground on me and already left Temple?

If that train is still in the platform at Temple, A815 will be Red. If that train has departed and passed over the overlap for the Temple station starter signal, A815 will be Green.

See why a repeater for A815 would be helpful?!!