Work begins on reopening railway at Stonehaven

Network Rail’s work to reopen the railway at Stonehaven will begin this week as it works to carefully recover the carriages involved in the tragic accident.

Author: Lewis MichiePublished 7th Sep 2020

Work is beginning this week to recover carriages and start repairing track in Aberdeenshire, near Stonehaven, after last months fatal train derailment.

The ScotRail service derailed on August 12 after striking a landslip with the devastating loss of three lives - driver Brett McCullough, conductor Donald Dinnie and passenger Christopher Stuchbury.

A 600-tonne crawler crane is being drafted in to carefully lift carriages from the railway in the coming days.

The work ahead of the teams at Network Rail is described as "massive".

A new 900 metre road and temporary bridges over surrounding farmland have been constructed to get equipment to the site.

Plans – developed alongside the police, accident investigators and other partner agencies – are now in place to remove the vehicles in a delicate process, which is expected to last for several days.

Alex Hynes, managing director of Scotland’s Railway, said: “August 12 was a devastating day with the loss of Brett, Donald and Christopher in this tragic accident.

“While we will now begin the process of recovering the carriages and repairing the railway, we do so with a heavy heart.

“We will continue to work closely with the Rail Accident Investigation Branch throughout this recovery process so we can learn from this terrible event and help prevent similar accidents.”

Michael Matheson, Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Infrastructure and Connectivity, visited the site on Monday (September 7). He said: “My thoughts continue to remain with the family and friends of those affected by this tragic incident.

“I’m here today to understand the scale of the work being undertaken and to show my, and the Scottish Government’s, continued support for those involved in the investigation, recovery and service restoration.

“The RAIB investigation will ensure that any safety lessons are learned quickly and I will be interested to hear what comes of this and how Network Rail can take these forward in the future. An investigation of this type is so comprehensive and it will now take time to restore the site of the incident so rail services can be reintroduced as soon as possible.

“As we move towards the recovery phase and given the scale of this enormous challenge I would like to thank all those involved for their efforts undertaken at the site.”

Once carriages have been removed engineers can then begin to asses the extent of repairs required to the tracks and bridge.

Until such a time, no exact timeline for a reopening is available.