East Midlands Trains were back to normal this evening, right down to the unexplained last minute platform change.From Saturday afternoon until this morning there were no trains through Market Harborough. Trains were diverted through Corby (giving that town an unexpected through service to Derby and Sheffield) and we had to use a replacement bus service to get to Leicester or Kettering.
And what caused all this trouble? The Leicester Mercury explains:
More than 1,200 railway sleepers were damaged when two wheels on an East Midlands Train travelling near East Langton buckled, puncturing the fuel tank.
Drivers on the nearby B6047 reported stones and rocks being thrown from the track on to the road as the damaged train passed on Saturday afternoon.
It is thought the axle underneath a central passenger carriage broke.
A railway list (uk.railway) confirms a broken axle, 2.5 miles of track damaged, and fuel tank damaged. Never seen anything like it in my life seems to be the industry verdict, so what risk that all HST sets will now have to have every axle xrayed?
ReplyDeleteCorrection: I'm told that they are Meridians (which accounts for the fuel leak when an axle broke in the middle of the train - these sets have lots of engines under the floors). So not that many sets to check (but many of them operated by EM Trains), and similar sets perhaps to be checked - the Adelantes or 180s, which were called Dilettantes in the early days because they spent a long time hanging around before they did any real work.
ReplyDelete