Judge hits out at Network Rail over crossing tragedy

Olivia Bazlinton, 14, and Charlotte Thompson, 13, were hit by a train in 2005 as they crossed the tracks at Elsenham station footpath crossing in Essex.

Judge David Turner QC, sentencing at Chelmsford Crown Court yesterday, ordered Network Rail to pay the large fine and £60,000 costs.

“There was a clear history of inadequate risk assessment and a failure to heed and act upon relevant information,” he said. “There was a consistent failure to take timely remedial action.

“Warnings went unheeded, data insufficiently appraised and critical questions went unasked and unanswered. Remedial action was unsatisfactorily delayed.”

He added: “Narrow thinking, culpable corporate blindness and a complacency going beyond merely inefficient incompetency to entering the realm of criminal failure.”

Chelmsford Crown Court heard Olivia and Charlotte were killed on December 3 2005 as they crossed a footpath leading to Elsenham station platform.

The crossing was fitted with warning lights and alarms and a London-to-Cambridge train passed over it with the red lights and yodel sounding – a warning for foot passengers not to cross.

After it passed, the lights remained on and the alarms continued to sound as another train, travelling from Birmingham to Stansted Airport, approached.

The girls, however, believing it was safe following the passing of the first, opened the unlocked wicket gates and walked on to the crossing where they were struck by the Stansted train.

The court heard a safety official had raised concerns about the possibility of tragedy in a memorandum in 2001 but the document was not disclosed by Network Rail until last year.

Written by John Hudd, East Anglia level crossings manager for Railtrack, Network Rail’s predecessor, it called the wicket-gate pedestrian crossing “undesirably risky” when the crossing had such large numbers of users, including many schoolchildren, and visibility in either direction was poor.

And the court was told an elderly woman died on the track in 1989 “in circumstances very similar” to the deaths of Olivia and Charlotte.

After the death, the Rail Inspectorate recommended that a “second train coming” warning should be put in place; however, the initiative was never implemented.

Mitigating, Parshant Popat QC said there had since been a £2m footbridge put over the Elsenham track, there were ticket machines on both sides of the platform – to prevent any unnecessary crossings – and the pedestrian wicker gates locked at the same time as the ones preventing vehicles from crossing.