Southall Rail Crash
The 1997 Southall rail crash, in which seven people died and 139 were injured, occurred when a Great Western train driver became distracted and failed to stop for two consecutive red signals. The train collided with a freight train entering Southall goods yard, first hitting the 8th wagon of that train, operated by EWS. It was found that the train's automatic warning system, which would have provided additional visual and audible warnings to the driver, was not working and the company was fined £1.5 million. It also emerged that the newer, more sophisticated Automatic Train Protection system fitted to the train had been disabled due to problems with its introduction and inadequate training of drivers.
Read more about this topic: Great Western Trains
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