A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK Q UESTIONS on train safety in the House
of Commons on Monday produced none of the reassurance that was needed. One answer was that no system of automatic train control, such as was adopted by the Great Western Railway forty years ago, is in use on the London Midland Region main line between Euston and Rugby (the section on which the Wealdstone acci- dent occurred). It was also added that during the last four years, 1948-1951, there was not a single passenger casualty on the Western Region—the old Great Western. It is true that in terms of percentage fatal accidents on British Railways as a whole are extremely rare—only one for every eighteen million passengers carried on the London Midland Region in the four years 1948-1951—but that is hardly relevant in face of the fact that an appalling accident such as that at Wealdstone can still happen, and that at the place where it happened the automatic train control which in all probability would have made the accident impossible was not in use.
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