Overseas Network, March 4th, 2019. In 9 years of 2019, a passenger train on MTR Hung Hom Station suffered a serious derailment accident, causing 8 injuries. The MTR investigation has gone through five months of incidents, and the accident investigation is now complete. The result is judged to be human error.
According to a full media report from the Hong Kong Grand Duke Wenhui, on March 3, the MTR released an investigation report showing that the replacement of new sleepers one and a half months before the incident caused excessive stress, which caused the fixing screws to break and the train to eventually derail. MTR acknowledged that there were many emergency trains involved in turnouts, but the frontline staff lacked awareness and did not strictly implement maintenance guidelines and reports.
In response, Lin Weiqiang, chairman of the Federation of Railway Trade Unions, responded in a radio program on March 4 that the lack of awareness is not only the responsibility of the front line, but management has the biggest responsibility to deal with cognitive issues. Lin Weiqiang believes that front-line employees have records of problems found during daily inspections, and many of them need to be followed up by management. The focus of this incident is how to introduce or improve the use of resources, which must be arranged by the company's management.
On September 17, 2019, a passenger train on the East Rail Line derailed at Hung Hom Station. Two people were disconnected and 8 people were injured. At that time, the train passed the involved P5116 turnout at a speed of about 39 kilometers per hour and turned to the original platform, but the distance between the rails widened beyond a critical level, causing the train wheels to hit the guard rails, causing a derailment accident.
As a result, the MTR tracked down one and a half months before the accident, and five "timber sleepers" were lost at the turnout involved. Maintenance personnel replaced two of them with "synthetic sleepers" on August 4. Because the position is in a sharp bend and the usage is high, and the new "synthetic sleeper" has a different hardness from the nearby sleeper, new components are constantly pressed and accelerated to lose, and finally the three "fixed sleeper" screws are broken. One side of the rail was distorted, at least 4.6 centimeters more than the standard distance, exceeding the critical level.
At 8:18 am on the day of the incident, four trains passed by and crashed into the damaged location. After 11 minutes, the fifth train hit the damaged location again, and a derailment accident occurred immediately, resulting in three broken rails.
The investigation found that as early as July 2018, the dynamic gauges of the involved sections have shown that they exceeded the action indicators for the first time, but the maintenance staff did not follow up and amend them strictly in accordance with the established procedures and did not report them. According to the report, the maintenance personnel did not know enough about the special situation of the road section involved, and they focused on experience and did not correct the problem in time.
When questioned whether the relevant employees or their superiors will be punished, Li Jiarun, director of the MTR Vehicle Service, responded that MTR has sent senior engineers to supervise the maintenance work, and the company will follow up on the issue of liability according to the mechanism. MTR will provide assistance and cooperate with the judicial process.
In addition, based on safety considerations, the Hong Kong Transport and Housing Bureau issued a written notice to the MTR, asking the MTR to take measures, including installing on-board real-time monitoring equipment on trains, strengthening track monitoring, and submitting management measures to improve the maintenance of the track. Report to avoid recurrence of similar accidents. A fine of 25 million Hong Kong dollars (approximately 22.3 million yuan) was paid for MTR's liability. (Overseas Network Zhu Huiyue)