How many disasters can our railways take?

Now, yesterday's tragedy has raised new questions over the East Coast mainline operator's attempts to woo more customers onto the trains.

And it has also raised questions over the safety of the railways when the line passes under a motorway.

"If the safety measures aren't enough to keep a Land Rover on the motorway, what with happen with a 44-tonne lorry," says Phil Haigh, a writer for Rail magazine.

"The Highways Agency has to have a long, hard look at its safety barriers on elevated sections of motorways, where they cross railways, roads and rivers.

"It is just not acceptable that you can fall off bridges in this way. The railways are an innocent victim of all this. The Highways Agency has a lot to look at."

The view that the railways seem to be clear of blame for the tragedy is shared by Ernie Preston, secretary of the North-East Rail Passengers Committee.

And he says the inevitable questions of how it happened and how a repeat can be avoided, are ones, not so much for the rail industry, as for those who look after our roads.

"The questions it does raise are about the safety of the motorway, not the safety of the rail," he says.

'If you have a road crossing over a railway, the question is, has sufficient been spent to prevent an out-of-control vehicle endangering the lives of rail passengers?

"Every time there has been an accident on the railways, there has been demands for more money to be spent on improving safety and prevent it recurring.

"If this accident is down to a fault on a road vehicle, surely the road industry and those responsible for the roads should spend whatever it takes."

The Highways Agency says it will await the result of an investigation before deciding whether further action needs to be taken, but insists safety measures were in place.

"The safety barrier and the bridge parapet were not damaged at all," says a spokeswoman. "Leading up to a bridge parapet or a bridge pillar there should be a 30m barrier, that is the standard."

One issue the investigation could examine is whether this standard is adequate, given the appalling consequences when a vehicle does miss the barrier.

But the tragedy is also likely to see serious results for GNER.

Before the Hatfield crash last October, when a cracked rail caused a GNER train to come off the tracks, killing four people, about 40,000 people a day were using the East Coast mainline. Speed restrictions introduced in the wake of the crash, as investigators painstakingly checked other suspect sections of the line for similar cracks, saw a 50 per cent reduction in the number of trains on the route, with a similar drop in the number of passengers.

GNER was one of the worst affected by the nationwide restrictions, with less than a quarter of its trains running on time in the month following the disaster.

The operator is now running about 85 per cent of its services and was hoping to hit 100 per cent towards the end of this month, but passenger numbers are still about 20-30 per cent lower than normal.

"In recent days and weeks we had seen a marked upsurge," says a spokesman. "It was almost up to pre-Hatfield levels on certain days. We were hoping to get the passengers back by the end of the year."

This may now prove beyond them, according to Phil Haigh.

"This is a kick in the teeth for the railways," he says. "GNER has had a long, hard struggle from Hatfield and the floods and they were getting things back to some sort of normality.

"This is just a vicious blow that has knocked them back and it is the last thing they needed now, no matter whose fault it was."

And what makes the blow to passenger confidence even harder to bear is the fact that the run of disasters came when more and more people were using the line.

"Before the Hatfield accident, passenger traffic was rising by about seven per cent a year," says Murray Hughes, editor of Railway Gazette International.

"That was extremely encouraging for all the railway businesses but the result of the speed restrictions was that reliability became very poor and people stopped travelling by train.

"They were nearly back to normal and were starting to build up the traffic again with various special offers on fares and, had this not happened, I think they would have succeeded."

But the saving grace for GNER, as far as passenger numbers are concerned, is that at least, this time, any loss of confidence is expected to be short-lived.

"This was unfortunate for GNER but I don't think it will be perceived in the long-term as being caused by a failure on the part of railway safety," says Mr Hughes.

"In the immediate future, it will be a question of restoring the line, and there will be the consequences of that, but I don't think it should hit confidence long-term."

Ernie Preston points to the comparative safety of rail over road, with about 3,400 people killed on the roads every year.

But, he says, any failure to restore passenger numbers could delay the proposed upgrade of the East Coast mainline.

"The upgrade is based on funding and predictions of passenger numbers," he says.

"The train operators will be investing in the upgrade, along with Railtrack, but that money can only be spent if passenger growth continues as predicted.

"If it temporarily falls off there will be a hiatus while the numbers pick up again.

"That would be a pity because the upgrade is all about enabling more trains to run, reducing overcrowding and producing a better passenger environment and making the railways more attractive."

But, although yesterday's crash is a setback for GNER, a freak accident is likely to do less damage to the industry than the deep-seated problems revealed by the Hatfield disaster.

"It is a tragedy for the people who have been killed and injured and it is a tragedy for the industry," says Mr Preston.

"But we have got to look calmly at what happened and take whatever steps we need to prevent it from happening again."