The Anonymous Widower

The Elsenham Level Crossing

NetworkRail has pleaded guilty to causing the death of two girls at the Elsenham level crossing in Essex.

There is now an immense footbridge there, so you don’t have to walk over the level crossing. It would be a difficult climb for someone like me at 64 with a dodgy heart valve. So does everybody use it? Sometimes level crossings with proper warning systems are much better for most  people, except the stupid and impulsive. At a similar level crossing at Foxton, pedestrian access across the tracks is controlled by locks on the gates controlled by the signalling system. That system has been at Foxton for years, so why wasn’t it installed Elsenham?

Further north, just south of Newmarket there is a level crossing on the Ipswich to Cambridge line at Six Mile Bottom.  It is on a long straight road with a thirty miles per hour limit and the crossing has barriers and flashing lights.  But it still manages to have had a couple of cars hit trains in the last twenty years.

My view has always been that all level crossings should be eliminated on railways, as they have always been a major place for tragic accidents.  And also for suicides, as at Ufton Nervet, where several people died. But to eliminate some level crossings, like say the one at Six Mile Bottom would cost several million pounds.

January 31, 2012 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | Death, Level Crossing, Suicide, Trains