The latest news on East Midlands Rail's unsatisfactory new trains is that the largest railway trade union has called three one-day strikes over its concern that they are unsafe. As BBC News puts it:
A union that represents railway staff has announced plans for its members at East Midlands Railway (EMR) to take strike action over "growing safety concerns the company has failed to address".
The RMT union said it had been in dispute with EMR since April following the rollout of the 810 fleet (Aurora), which it said had been operating with a "significant number" of faults.
It said its members planned to take strike action on Saturday 1 August and the following two Saturdays.
I find these paragraphs in this report particularly worrying:
According to the RMT, EMR has been sending trains into service that are "likely to fail and require a full reset which leaves the train with no active safety systems".
The BBC has seen an operational briefing, which informs control, signalling and operations staff about undertaking an Aux Off / Aux On reset on EMR class 810 units - which may be required to recover certain faults.
"The process takes approximately 20 minutes and results in the temporary loss of several safety-critical systems, creating an increased risk of an uncontrolled evacuation and removing the driver's normal means of communication with the signaller," it states.
This does tend to cast doubt on EMR's assurances to BBC News that the Aurora trains' shortcomings have no safety implications.
And I can't be the only person who is thinking again about the rail collision near Bedford last month.
There, according to a later Guardian report, an Aurora service from Nottingham to London halted unexpectedly because a fault caused an automatic application of its brakes. This train was then struck in the rear by a Corby to London service that had ignored a red signal:
Investigations continue but it appears that another train protection and warning system (TPWS), widely used on the railway system and designed to automatically stop trains if they pass a red signal, was not installed on this stretch of the Midland mainline.
No wonder RMT is up in arms.
It's not as if EMT has been candid over its problems with the Auroras. It's less than a week since BBC News published a story with the headline:
East Midlands Railway cancellations – is it really just the hot weather?
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