London - The public inquiry into the Southall rail crash in London last Friday, in which six people were killed, must concentrate on the viability of the Automatic Train Protection system (ATP) and, crucially, if the system was switched on when the accident occurred, the owners of the rail link said yesterday, Rachel Donnelly reports.
It emerged last night that the driver of the train wrote a note in the driver's log saying the Advanced Warning System (AWS) was "isolated", meaning it was not working before the train left Swansea where there is a maintenance depot.
As accident investigators removed the damaged carriages from the site of the crash last night for inspection, Railtrack said "fundamental" questions remained over the use of the ATP system by Great Western Railways. However, under its rules, Railtrack stipulates that unless a train starts its journey from a station with a maintenance depot, it is not required to terminate its journey if a fault of this kind is discovered.
Railtrack said the reliability of AWS and the more sophisticated ATP system were "fundamental" to the inquiry.