Concluding The Paddington Derailment Story
Closing out a case study from last year the Rail Accident Investigations Branch have released their final report. At around 05:20 hrs on Sunday 25 May 2014, the third vehicle of an empty five car class 360/2 passenger train derailed while it was running along platform 3 at London Paddington station. All four wheels on the leading bogie of the third vehicle became derailed. The derailment occurred because the bogies of the third vehicle were incorrectly set up, which resulted in the left-hand wheels of the leading bogie being partially unloaded even when stationary. A track defect along platform 3 exacerbated this unloading and contributed to the derailment.
After a number of years optimising the setup of vehicles to minimise derailment risk, delivering balancing algorithms to the shop floor and monitoring fleet records in a cloud database we know a thing or two about this subject. Contact us to discuss.