Inquiry finds faulty Carillion drain led to 2020 Stonehaven derailment

What the inquiry concluded

Sheriff Lesley Johnson issued her determination on Wednesday, 4 November 2026, closing a fatal accident inquiry held earlier this year into the 2020 derailment near Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire. She concluded that the crash was avoidable had construction firm Carillion built the drain to the design it had been given. The drain was constructed across 2011 and 2012, in two stages, and departed from the design in several respects, including its piping, the materials used, and a bund, or ridge, that stopped it working as planned. Network Rail, for which Carillion built the drain, also failed to make sure the structure was built properly and matched the drawings, and Carillion never produced as-built drawings for Network Rail to hold.

“The drain was not constructed/installed in accordance with the design.”

The derailment

Train 1T08 came off the rails on 12 August 2020 after striking debris that heavy rain had washed from the drain onto the line. Three people were killed: the train driver, aged 45, a conductor aged 58 and a passenger aged 62, all from blunt force injuries. Six passengers were hurt. The service had left Aberdeen that morning bound for Glasgow and had already passed the scene when a landslip further down the route stopped it for more than two hours. Once cleared to head back toward Stonehaven, it hit the washout while travelling at around 73mph, just under the normal line speed set by the signaller and the railway rulebook. The impact derailed the train, which swung left, struck the parapet of bridge 325 over Carron Water and scattered its vehicles.

Union response

Gordon Martin, an RMT Scotland organiser, welcomed the findings and the 20 recommendations in the earlier Rail Accident Investigation Branch report, which the sheriff described as comprehensive and wide-ranging. He told the Press Association that the crash, although more than six years old, still weighs heavily on the families involved.

“Although it was over six years ago now, it will feel like yesterday to those families, and it's a traumatic event.”

Martin also said the wider railway lost two staff members that day in an accident that could have been avoided. He argued that the only dependable safeguard is for Network Rail to end outsourcing of infrastructure work and bring it in-house, staffed by trained and certified employees working to its own standards. He noted that this step is not among the 20 recommendations, yet said it needs no recommendation to be carried out. He warned that outsourced crews may work with fatigue levels that the railway cannot verify.

Earlier prosecution

A criminal prosecution arising from the crash ended with Network Rail fined £6.7 million in 2023 after it admitted health and safety failings. Carillion later went into compulsory liquidation, leaving the drain's construction history to be reconstructed through the inquiry's findings.