Southeastern has been fined £65,000 after health and safety breaches caused a train to overrun its station by more than three miles.
The train operator has also been ordered to pay costs of £22,589.50, following a prosecution brought by the Office for Rail Regulation (ORR).
In 2010, a braking failure caused the 06.45 London Charing Cross to Hastings to run out of control as it approached Stonegate station, East Sussex.
The train passed the station at approximately 50 mph, with its emergency brake applied, and travelled through a level crossing before stopping 3.22 miles down the line.
An investigation by ORR found that Southeastern had failed to provide an effective system of work to reliably ensure the availability of sand on its class 375 trains to help braking in poor weather conditions.
The investigation also revealed that four more Southeastern trains showed evidence of not having sand supplies refilled.
On May 14, the company admitted two charges under two sections of the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act.
In a statement released following the hearing at Maidstone Crown Court on July 6, Ian Prosser, director of railway safety at ORR, said: “Train operators have an important duty to ensure that their workers and members of the public are not exposed to unnecessary safety risks.
“In this case, Southeastern, through poor planning and management, failed to ensure their trains were safe for use on the rail network. This is clearly unacceptable, and led to the potentially catastrophic incident in East Sussex where a train ran out of control for over three miles.
“We welcome steps taken by Southeastern to improve its safety management since this incident. ORR is pressing Southeastern, and the whole rail sector, to develop and maintain systems which identify potential dangers so that they can be addressed before catastrophic risks become reality.”
Reaction from Schenck Process:
“Schenck Process are very aware of the issues concerning the re-filling of sand boxes on trains and trams as we have installed many pneumatic pumping systems to ensure that the sand filling operation is as easy and quick as possible so that the vehicles can be placed back into service in a safe condition. Systems can be either mobile or static depending upon the number of vehicles to be serviced or the size of the depot. Our UK-based design and manufacturing personnel are very familiar with the regulations and customer’s requirements to ensure that the best solution is found for the budget that is available.”