LONDON — Britain’s rail chief was worried about casual, unqualified laborers being hired to repair tracks and railway points less than 48 hours before Friday’s fatal Potter’s Bar crash, a wire service reported.
Initial inquiries into the disaster, which killed seven people and injured around 90 others, suggested missing parts of a railway switching point were the probable reason for the high speed train derailing and plowing into platform buildings.
John Armitt, chief executive of rail network firm Railtrack, said on Sunday he could not say why the vital nuts were missing from the bolts in the system, but insisted they had been checked just the day before the accident.
However, the Times said Armitt had been “deeply concerned” about the working practices of Railtrack’s maintenance sub-contractors well before the crash. Armitt told the paper on Wednesday contracts with rail maintenance companies such as Jarvis were too short to encourage investment in sufficient numbers of qualified staff and modern equipment.
“There’s always a tendency, particularly in construction-related industries, to take a short cut and try and do a job more quickly,” he was quoted as saying.
“By encouraging contractors to employ direct labor rather than relying on an agency to send them along at the last minute, the likelihood of [accidents] is reduced,” he said.
Armitt said he planned to offer contracts that were 50 percent longer than the current four years to provide companies with more incentive to train staff properly and reduce their dependence of staff hired from recruitment agencies.
The Mirror also quoted rail union bosses as saying workers had raised repeated concerns about track problems in the area only a few miles away from Hatfield, scene of another fatal derailment in October 2000, caused by a broken rail.
RMT Union chief Bob Crow said workers have complained of metal fatigue, and “wet-bedding,” where flooding washes away the tracks ballast foundations, making it more likely for bolts to vibrate and come loose, the paper said.
Nobody from Jarvis could immediately be reached for comment.