Hatfield: Safety checks on railway points in the Hatfield area, ordered after the fatal Potters Bar crash, have revealed that one in five is loose.

The interim report of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) into the derailment that killed seven on May 10 was published last week and confirmed that the points collapsed because crucial nuts were missing.

Checks on a sample of similar points in the Hatfield and Potters Bar area found many were not tight.

Mr Malcolm Cowan of the Welwyn Garden City Rail Users' Association said: "Rail travellers will be horrified to learn that far from being a one-off, quite a significant proportion of points have this problem.

"People will be very worried.

"It is only a matter of time before it happens again.

"The trains on this stretch of line do 125 miles an hour, and they have very heavy locomotives.

"This puts a big strain on the equipment, but it seems the maintenance doesn't reflect that.

"We were told after the Hatfield crash that lessons had been learned, but clearly they haven't."

The report, published last week, said it was not clear why the nuts on the adjustable stretcher bars that control the movement of the rails were loose, and that some of the nuts could not be tested with the spanners supplied by the contractor.

A Railtrack spokesman said that the proportion of nuts found by the HSE inspectors to be loose included many that could only be tightened slightly, and the company did not accept this had implications for safety.

Ms Gillian Simpson of the Hatfield Rail Users Group said: "It is disgraceful. It can't be right to have loose nuts.

"The maintenance work should not be sub-contracted out it is not supervised properly, and the workmanship is very shoddy."

The Potters Bar points, designed to allow trains to pass from the fast track to the slow track, collapsed under a train travelling at 96 miles per hour from Kings Cross to Kings Lynn.

No evidence has been found that the points had been vandalised or deliberately interfered with, that the driver was to blame, or that the signals or the train itself were faulty.

Denying press reports that police were considering charging maintenance engineers over worksheets alleged to have been completed fraudulently, contracting company Jarvis said: "As far as we are concerned, all records and documents are in order."

The company argues that the HSE report has not ruled out vandalism as the cause of the poor condition of the points.

The HSE is recommending Railtrack should liaise with its maintenance contractors to ensure all points are in good condition, and that new, safer designs for points should be sought.

July 10, 2002 16:00