Stonehaven
Resilience of rail infrastructure
It has been over a year since a passenger train derailed at Carmont, near Stonehaven, and three people tragically lost their lives. Our thoughts remain with the families and friends of Brett McCullough, Donald Dinnie and Christopher Stuchbury, and everyone affected by the awful events of 12 August last year. We owe it to them all to learn lessons.
Following the tragic incident, we commissioned an assessment of the impact of extreme weather on the resilience and safe performance of the railway, and an initial report was provided in September 2020. In March 2021, we provided an update which included the reports and recommendations from independent taskforces we set up – one on earthworks and one on weather – led respectively by renowned experts Lord Robert Mair and Dame Julia Slingo.
Lord Mair and Dame Julia offered more than 50 recommendations on how we can improve safety and performance and achieve a more effective approach to managing weather risk across the rail network. This involves every region of our business, capitalising on cutting-edge weather resilience and transforming our drainage and asset management. Over the last six months our Weather Risk Task Force has been working hard to turn these recommendations into realistic and achievable action plans.
This update is designed to show how work is progressing across all our regions and what more we are going to do. Our focus now is to keep delivering at pace against these plans to make real, tangible changes. We continue to work with Lord Mair and Dame Julia, as well as partners across the industry, to tackle the demands of climate change and ultimately improve the way we’re able to operate the railway safely and reliably during adverse weather.