[Article] Safety on the railways

[Colm Moore]

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...254857836.html

Safety on the railways

CIÉ CHAIRMAN John Lynch has admitted that the semi-State transport company was “shaken” by the partial collapse last month of the railway viaduct spanning Broadmeadow Estuary, just north of Malahide, Co Dublin. It should be.

After all, five days before the potentially catastrophic incident Iarnród Éireann had been alerted by one of the leaders of Malahide Sea Scouts that there was a risk to the structure. An inspection carried out the following day by an engineer and a subsequent report by the crew of a track-monitoring vehicle found no detectable problems. Yet within 24 hours of this vehicle passing over the viaduct, one of its 11 piers had collapsed into the sea.

Quite how, and why, this happened was probed on Wednesday by members of the Oireachtas Committee on Transport. Labour Party transport spokesman Tommy Broughan TD characterised the collapse as potentially “one of the most horrendous events in the history of our country”. That hundreds of lives were not lost was due entirely to the alertness of train driver Keith Farrelly who raised the alarm. Members of the committee rightly paid tribute to him for the exemplary way in which he had acted and also to sea scout leader Ivan Barrett for his civic-minded warning call to Iarnród Éireann five days earlier.

The incident is now the subject of a major inquiry by the Railway Safety Commission’s rail accident investigation unit, whose report is unlikely to be completed and published for several months. It is investigating not only the circumstances of the incident itself, but also the adequacy of Iarnród Éireann’s inspection regime for bridges over water throughout the rail network, all of which have been inspected in recent weeks and are to be examined more closely by experienced divers for any “scouring” of their foundations by tidal movements. This, as we now know, was what caused the Broadmeadow viaduct collapse. Encouragingly, Mr Lynch told the Oireachtas committee that there were bound to be changes in the inspection regime on foot of the investigation’s findings.

In the meantime, rail commuters as well as users of the Dublin-Belfast mainline service have been hugely inconvenienced by the severance of the railway line, which carried 90 trains a day until August 21st. Work is well under way to repair the damage and Iarnród Éireann has forecast that the line will reopen before the end of November. It is vital that public confidence in the railways is restored.

The public has been shocked also by the operation of the Luas, in the wake of the shocking collision with a double-decker bus on O’Connell Street on Wednesday. Although Mr Lynch was able to point out that it is now 26 years since the last fatal accident on Irish railways (which contrasts very favourably with the annual carnage on our roads), it is essential that public confidence in their operation is underpinned in future by a thoroughgoing inspection and maintenance programme for what are potentially their weakest links – the bridges and viaducts that carry trains over water.