Thirty-two candles were lit at 8.08am on Saturday in St Helens church, just south of the rail tracks at Ladbroke Grove, west London. Only two years earlier, seven people had died two miles west on the same stretch of line in a train crash at Southall. Looking back now, under Britain’s redoubled rail safety regime established by the Cullen inquiry, it seems unthinkable. Only one passenger has died in a train crash in the last 14 years, in 2007 when a Virgin Pendolino derailed at Grayrigg. After Southall and Ladbroke Grove, its ignominy compounded when track failures caused the Hatfield and Potters Bar crashes in 2000 and 2002.

Source: The Guardian October 05, 2019 07:01 UTC