On Sep 10, 1:10*pm, "Richard J." wrote:
Recliner wrote on 10 September 2010
12:50:33 ...





"Alan Ben *wrote in message

On Sep 10, 11:38 am, *wrote:
*wrote in message



On Fri, 10 Sep 2010 08:53:12 +0100
Roland *wrote:
In message5ZudnY273pDFGRTRnZ2dnUVZ7qSdn...@giganews. com, at
20:05:28 on Thu, 9 Sep 2010,
remarked:

You would have thought the signal allowing trains out of the bay
platform would be interlocked to the points being set correctly
for the route over the crossover, wouldn't you?

Even in the presence of a fault condition (which they've apparently
admitted)?

So much for signals being failsafe. Failsafe unless the failsafe
fails. Which it obviously did.

Surely it was still failsafe? No trains were signalled to collide
with each other.

Yes they were. One train was on the line working in the wrong
direction. Would you drive the wrong way on a motorway?

But would the signals have stayed green if the trains approached each
other closely enough to collide?

But after passing the wrongly-set points, the train departing from
Plaistow was travelling west on the eastbound track, and would not have
any signals to see. I'm not sure if it would have been back-tripped, but
the train that ran backwards downhill on the Northern some years ago
because the driver was asleep wasn't tripped for several stations IIRC.
--
Richard J.
(to email me, swap 'uk' and 'yon' in address)

Which is exactly why trains now have run back protection, which
applies the emergency brakes if the train runs more than six feet in
the reverse direction.