After Moorgate

Yesterday I wrote about the Moorgate tube crash. Today I want to look at what has been done in the years after Moorgate to try to ensure that a crash like it will never happen again.

Since the beginning of railways, railway safety has always been reactive. From every crash emerges new technology or new regulations to attempt to ensure that no incident of the same type can ever happen again. Moorgate was no different, and it quickly gave its name to a system of protecting trains entering terminal stations known as “Moorgate Control”.

Rolled out to terminus stations across the network after the Moorgate crash, Moorgate Control originally consisted of two or three measures, depending on the location. The two common measures were to install a speed-controlled signal at the entrance to the platform area, and then to place two or three speed-controlled trainstops without signals (known as “sleeping policemen”) down the length of the platform area. This ensured that a train travelling over 20mph would be “tripped” on a trainstop and brought to a halt before reaching the end of the platform, while trains travelling below 20mph could continue, but that it would have to continue to slow on a steady braking curve for the length of the platform. [For a detailed explanation of how trainstops and “tripping” works on LU, click here].

The third part of Moorgate Control was not installed at all terminus stations. It consisted of running the feed to the traction current in the platform area through resistors, ensuring that a driver would not be able to speed up again having passed the speed-controlled elements of the protection, because there would not be enough power available to do this. The system also often trips out, cutting all traction current in the area, if trains attempt to “wind up” (accelerate) when coming in to the platform. However, this method is not compatible with modern stock, being finicky as they are with low voltages, and so it is now only in place at Cockfosters on the Piccadilly line.

Moorgate Control was put in place by London Underground because the recommendation of the official report – that all lines be turned over to failsafe, automatic operation such as that on the Victoria line – was prohibitively expensive. It succeeded LU’s immediate response to the tragedy – forcing all trains to stop at platform entrance signals – which wrecked the timetable and caused late running and delays to many lines in the weeks and months that followed.

Unfortunately, London Underground already had safety systems in place for dead end sidings both in tunnel sections and in the above ground sections. These systems, consisting of speed-controlled trainstops, were put in place after drivers died in collisions with the end wall or bufferstops at Tooting Broadway and Rayners Lane. It was never thought necessary to protect terminus stations in the same way, as it was thought the drivers in those two cases had failed to stop after mistaking the siding for the mainline. The official report in to the Moorgate crash apportioned no corporate blame to LU whatsoever, despite explicitly mentioning the protection put in place after Tooting Broadway and Rayners Lane.

While London Underground learnt from Moorgate, British Rail did not. Unprotected trains continued to collide with bufferstops, most notably at Canon Street in 1991 which resulted in the death of two passengers. It also resulted in the Transport and Works Act 1992, which made it illegal for railway workers to work while under the influence of intoxicating substances, because the driver was found to be a habitual user of cannabis. Protection in the form of AWS and TPWS only became the norm on British Rail in the wake of the Ladbroke Grove and Southall crashes in the 1990s.

So there you have it. On London Underground, protection for terminus stations was put in place in the wake of the Moorgate crash and on the manually driven lines, it still takes the same format. Three lines are now fully automatic, with the Northern line in the middle of a conversion process which should be complete by next year. By the time the Bakerloo and Piccadilly lines are finally converted to automatic running, probably in the 2030s, it will be over sixty years since Moorgate and the recommendation to protect the travelling public through automation.

The Moorgate Disaster

38 years ago today and in the middle of the morning rush hour, a Northern line train moving at between 35 and 40 miles an hour drove in to a wall.

What we know about the results of the Moorgate crash is truly, and without hyperbole, horrifying. On failing to stop on the stopping mark, the train continued in to an overrun tunnel and hit the end wall. The overrun tunnel is approximately 20 metres long, each car of the 1938 Tube Stock train was 16 metres long. The first three cars of the train "telescoped" in to one another, as well as riding over each other, until all three of those cars - normally taking up over 42 metres - fitted within the 20 metre overrun.

This already disturbing fact is made worse when you realise that, due to the exit at Moorgate being at the front of the train, most of the passengers on board were travelling in the first two cars.

In fact, the Moorgate death toll of 43 killed (including the driver) out of around 300 people on the train was exacerbated by another coincidence. The stretch of track on which it occurred was the Northern City Line and was known at the time as the Northern Line (Highbury Branch); today it is part of the FCC franchise. The Northern City Line was always an oddity in the London Passenger Transport Board network and had been built by the Great Northern & City Railway in 1904 to allow mainline trains in to the heart of London from a proposed junction at Finsbury Park.

All of this is a long way of bringing me to the point that the tunnels at Moorgate are bigger than a normal tube tunnel. Built to accommodate mainline trains, the tunnel diameter is over five metres when a normal tube tunnel is around four. This allowed the cars space in the tunnel to ride over each other, something which could not have happened to a tube train in a tube tunnel and something which undoubtedly increased the number of lives lost.

What we know about the cause of the Moorgate crash is almost nothing. Motorman/Guard Leslie Newson was an experienced driver who was well acquainted with the Northern City Line route. He was known as a conscientious man and had a wad of cash in his pocket with which he intended to buy a car for his daughter after his shift. He was seen by staff as he entered the station to be upright at the controls and looking straight ahead. I am unfortunate enough to have seen the pictures from the wreckage and can tell you that he died in this same position.

There are several hypotheses seeking to explain why Newson did not stop the train. The coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death for all victims, including Newson. Despite this, some people (most prominently some of the families of the victims) believe that this was suicide by Newson. The coroner ruled out suicide and I too am unconvinced. The people who knew Motorman Newson did not believe that he was depressed or suicidal. He had spoken to several colleagues that day and was, as explained above, intending to buy a car for his daughter later in the day. A second hypothesis is drunkeness. The post-mortem recorded 80mg of alcohol in 100ml of Newson's blood, and London Underground at the time had an ingrained drinking culture which did not draw a distinction between drinking off duty and drinking at work. However, Newson was not known as a drinker, and the alcohol in his blood was put down to the effects of the decomposition of his body while underground. Gruesomely, Newson's body was not the only one to go in to advanced stages of decomposition after the disaster - the recovery took several days to reach all the bodies, while the ambient temperature was above 38C (100F).

Look at the Wikipedia entry for the crash and you will also find hypotheses of neurological disorders that Newson could have had. It seems to me that the truth was a lot more prosaic. Gary Fitzgerald, a friend and colleague of mine, has done a great deal of research in to Moorgate and also used to drive 1938TS trains. He believes that Newson simply missed his visual cues to stop, and so he didn't. Driving a train is a job which becomes automatic after a while, as any driver reading this will probably attest to. Many if not all drivers seem to me to drive in an almost trance-like state, reacting to cues which are normally visual although sometimes also aural, to remind them that a station, signal or other known slowing/stopping point is approaching. Miss those cues because your mind wanders for a second or two, and you could pass a signal at danger. Or, you could overrun a platform and hit the end wall.

Tomorrow I want to talk about what has been done in the years since Moorgate to try to prevent anything like it from happening again. Today, I will think about those who lost their lives for no reason 38 years ago.

Vignettes #1

Embankment, northbound Northern line platform, a cold winter evening. Two boys, around 19 years old, sit on a bench playing a very popular song through their phone while talking to each other quietly. Ten metres further up the platform, two girls of around the same age sit next to each other in silence.

Me: Boys, as much as I love Carly Rae, playing music out loud on public transport is not allowed. Can you turn it off please?

Boy: It isn't us, it's those girls

Points

Boy: And who the fuck likes Carly Rae anyway?

Reboot

It's time for a reboot.

I started this blog some time ago. Some posts were read twice, some were read hundreds of times. Some were read by humans in the UK, some by spambots in Romania. None were read by my friends, because of my obsession at the time with my anonymity.

Of course I thought my obsession was justified back then: primarily I thought that being free to slate my employer if I wanted to would give rise to some interesting posts. It turned out though that the need to anonymise everything was stifling: the most interesting part of my job involves going to incidents, but I couldn't write about them if I didn't want anyone to know who was writing! I also realised very quickly that only very rarely do I feel the need to slate my employer, and on those few occasions when I do, it's better over a beer than in public.

So it's time for a reboot. Like me, the blog will be London-centric but not London-only, eclectic, heavily influenced by cartographic and historical geekery, and unreliable - though I'll try to write a more regularly than my last attempt at this malarky.

Wartime London on Google Earth

I spend far too much time in Google Earth. I look at where I've been and where I'd like to go. I look at where I grew up and where I live now. I follow roads, rivers, canals and railway lines. I even collate libraries of placemarks of great places I visited abroad, and send them to friends who ask me for recommendations of where to stay/eat/drink/party/relax in those far flung places.

Hello, my name is Chris, and I'm a Googleearthaholic.

Something Google introduced in one of the last updates was the ability to go back in time, imagery wise you'll understand. This was moderately cool, for example I could go back from 2008 to 2003 for the imagery of where I grew up, and see how much of the local wood has been chopped down, how many acres of hop gardens we've lost recently. Yes, it was quite depressing, but interesting nonetheless.

Now though, there is a far better option available to us for historical viewing. In London, you can rewind the clock to 1945. Not satellite imagery of course but pictures from an end-of-the-war aerial photographic survey. This is fascinating. It is brilliant, and it's already cost me several hours. All those hideous buildings you always suspected were put up in the place of a bomb site, now you can see the actual bomb crater.

Less morbidly, you can see the dying days of our city's industrial past - the docklands that were such a German bomb-magnet are, in these pictures, actual docklands, not a glass-and-steel agglomeration of shagpads and highrise office blocks called "Docklands". And what's that in White City, where the BBC is now? It's the Olympic Stadium! The actual Olympic Stadium, from the 1908 Summer Games. We see parks still "under the plough" as giant Dig For Victory allotments along with now-vanished infrastructure such as Holborn Viaduct station and myriad gasometers.

The pictures take a little getting used to, but perseverance here really pays off. Generally, white space is a bomb site, though there also clouds across some of the areas. Have a go!

This was originally posted in February 2011, before the excellent Bombsight project went live online, of which more anon.