Potters Bar rail crash inquest: Passengers complained of 'rough rides'

Concerns were raised over "rough rides" at defective points the night before the Potters Bar rail crash eight years ago, an inquest jury heard today. Judge Michael Findlay Baker QC, who is conducting the inquest, said two people had made three separate reports regarding the approach to Potters Bar station, but one was "forgotten", another misinterpreted and the third resulted in checks being made on the wrong line. Baker said passenger Terrence Moore, a rail worker, was concerned about "movement" as a train crossed points at around 9pm on 9 May, 2002, about 16 hours before the crash which resulted in the deaths of six passengers and a pedestrian. Moore, a station announcer travelling north from King's Cross to Stevenage, told a member of staff at the ticket office at his destination but, the judge said, the member of staff had been "busy" and did not log the report. "He forgot ... in short, he did nothing." Moore had then reported his concerns to a manager in the King's Cross signal box. But the manager had thought he was talking about the southbound line, not the northbound. Safety checks had then been carried out on the southbound line and nothing untoward was noticed, jurors were told. Baker said that Peter Prime – a passenger travelling north through Potters Bar at about 8.30pm on 9 May – had been "sufficiently alarmed" about a "rough ride" to speak to a buffet car steward. The steward promised to pass the report to a train manager but Prime had no response. The judge said other passengers had come forward after the crash to report rough rides on the approach to Potters Bar prior to the derailment. Baker said before proceedings started today that the delay of eight years between accident and inquest had been "extreme" and would have "protracted to an exceptional degree the distress of those who have been bereaved". He added: "In their interest and in the more general public interest, there must be no more delay." The seven people who died were: Austen Kark, husband of author Nina Bawden (who was seriously injured); Emma Knights; Jonael Schickler; Alexander Ogunwusi; Chia Hsin Lin; Chia Chin Wu; and Agnes Quinlivan. Seventy-six people were also injured in the crash , when the rear of a West Anglia Great Northern train from London to King's Lynn derailed as it travelled at nearly 100mph over faulty points, slammed into a bridge and came to a halt across platforms at Potters Bar station. The front of the four-carriage train continued for hundreds of metres up the track. The Health and Safety Executive's report into the crash a year later blamed flawed maintenance and ineffective safety checks. A three-year investigation by the Rail Safety and Standards Board later said shoddy maintenance was the likely cause. But relatives' calls for a public inquiry into the accident – and that at Hatfield in October 2000 – have proved unsuccessful. James Clappison, the Conservative MP whose Hertsmere constituency includes Potters Bar, said: "I think it is scandalous that people have had to wait so long. "The department of transport has used every excuse to delay an inquiry. I think there should have been a public inquiry. "It is not satisfactory that relatives have had to wait eight years to hear the facts aired in public. I hope lessons are learned and there is never such a long wait again." The inquest at Letchworth in Hertfordshire is expected to last three months.