From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Paul Kolk

Network Rail has been fined £6.7m after admitting a series of failings which led to the deaths of three people in a train crash near Stonehaven.

The Aberdeen to Glasgow service derailed at Carmont after hitting a landslide following heavy rain.

Network Rail pleaded guilty to a number of maintenance and inspection failures before the crash in August 2020.

It also admitted failing to warn the driver that part of the track was unsafe or tell him to reduce his speed.

Driver Brett McCullough, 45, conductor Donald Dinnie, 58, and passenger Christopher Stuchbury, 62, died in the crash.

The judge, Lord Matthews, said no penalty could compensate for the loss suffered by the families of those who died and of the six people on board the train who were injured.

Speaking outside court, Ray McCullough, the father of the train’s driver, said the fine was “not enough”.

“At the end of the day, the train should not have gone out,” he said.

Kevin Lindsay, Scottish organiser for train drivers’ union Aslef, added that the sentence offered “no comfort”.

The train hit a landslide near Stonehaven in August 2020 after heavy rain in an area where a drainage system had been incorrectly installed.

The 06:38 service to Glasgow had been unable to complete its journey due to the conditions and was returning to Aberdeen when the accident happened.

A recording of the driver showed he queried with a signaller if any reduced speed was needed to return north. He was told everything was fine for normal speed.

The train struck debris from a landslide on the track, derail and collided with a bridge parapet.

Passing sentence at the High Court in Aberdeen, Lord Matthews said that very few people who saw the images of the crash would ever forget them.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-66749546

And yet despite all of these damning facts, the contemptible BBC still want to link the accident to climate change:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-66750650