Bob Edlin: KiwiRail directors have a track record with infrastructure....

KiwiRail directors have a track record with infrastructure – but what about safety?

Just over a year ago, announcing new appointments to the KiwiRail board, Rail Minister Winston Peters said they brought commercial, freight and rail experience and a ‘can do’ attitude.

But when it comes to safety issues, can they do it as urgently as recent incidents demand?

Sue Tindal was appointed Chair of KiwiRail and the New Zealand Railways Corporation, and Jeff Kendrew was appointed Deputy Chair of KiwiRail. Their terms began on 1 July last year.

According to the press statement from the Beehive:

“We want railways to be successful for New Zealand and have every expectation that a focus on lower cost, higher reliability, increased volumes, improved safety and better performance will be delivered on,” Mr Peters says.

The press statement said of Sue Tindal:

”She understands construction, freight and infrastructure, and how to get an efficient outcome from an asset-intensive company.”

For his part, Kendrew ”brings real world experience of rail infrastructure, engineering and freight”.

Infrastructure, PoO imagines, includes the tracks, bridges and red-light warning signals.

Bearing in mind Peter’s remarks about improved safety, we were drawn to the headline which read:

KiwiRail contractor returns from retraining after ‘faulty’ track welding

KiwiRail is using a rail maintenance contractor it temporarily stood down in Auckland earlier this year over “faulty” track welding, saying it’s confident crews have been sufficiently retrained.

It was revealed that the contractor – which carried out improper welding on train tracks in a Parnell tunnel over the Waitangi long weekend — also carried out “serious” defective work in a City Rail Link (CRL) tunnel around the same time.

These details emerged through correspondence released to RNZ under the Official Information Act.

The severity of the CRL welding faults were initially deemed to be “major”, and had the potential to cause “serious/life changing injury or long-term impact to environment”, according to an incident report.

According to the report which told us of this, four of the 10 welds completed by this contractor in the CRL tunnels from February 6 to 8 were found to be faulty.

In Parnell tunnel over the same period, eight out of 28 welds were defective.

These were much higher than ordinary failure rates, according to KiwiRail.

The discoveries prompted KiwiRail to test all of this contractor’s welding work in Auckland since Christmas last year — 470 welds over 14 sites.

It has tested 70 — about 15% of the total — as of mid-May, with no further faults detected.

KiwiRail said it had made further progress since then.

Details of the costs of remediation, or any other penalties, were deemed commercially sensitive and not released.

A wider engineering review is ongoing into welding standards, all contractors’ practice and the speed of fault detection.

Asked about KiwiRail’s decision to continue the use of this contractor, Winston Peters said he was satisfied with KiwiRail’s response “as it confirmed to us that they took the faulty welds as seriously as we did”.

That’s encouraging, eh?

But a few days earlier, we had read:

Preventable Rangitata Rail Bridge collapse could’ve had ‘catastrophic’ consequences – TAIC

A 610m-long rail bridge over the Rangitata River, South Canterbury, sags after flood water washed away one of 34 piers. Photo: Supplied / Allied Press / Connor Haley

KiwiRail could have prevented the partial collapse of a key South Island rail bridge that could have caused a catastrophic derailment, the Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) has found.

The report into the collapse of a section of the Rangitata Rail Bridge in 2024 identified three core safety issues:

• KiwiRail’s inspections were not in line with its own standards
• There was no plan to mitigate the risk of the river scouring the bridge’s base
• KiwiRail’s response to weather events failed to take into account specific risks, leaving the bridge open even after the weather met red-alert levels.

TAIC said if the bridge had not been closed after a member of the public alerted KiwiRail, it was “virtually certain” a derailment would have happened with “catastrophic” consequences, including serious injuries and significant damage to the train and the environment.

Chief investigator Louise Cook said it was only down to “sheer timing luck” the outcome was not far worse.

“If a train had traversed that bridge it’s virtually certain the middle support of the bridge would have been lost completely, the train would have derailed entering the river and of course the consequences of that are catastrophic.

“It’s very likely there’d have been injury to the train crew, the loco[motive] and wagons damaged, possibly environmental damage to the river and of course further structural damage to the bridge itself.”

TAIC found KiwiRail was aware of the risk of scouring at the bridge and of the heavy rain, river flow and flood surge expected to reach the rail bridge on the morning of 12 April.

Several conference calls were held with members of KiwiRail’s infrastructure and train control groups, and the company was aware the river flow exceeded KiwiRail’s own severe weather red-alert over night.

The peak flood flow was expected to hit the bridge at about 8am on the morning of 12 April.

A northbound freight train crossed the bridge just after 6am, and another freight train went across at 8.30am.

A inspection was carried out at 8.53am, which included crossing the bridge in a hi-rail vehicle (which can drive on both rail and road) and taking photos of the river level, but did not inspect the bridge’s piers or the debris mounting at some of the piers.

The inspection was completed by 9.41am, and the inspector reported the line was safe to remain open.

The commission estimated the collapse happened around 10.30am.

At 11.28am, a member of the public contacted KiwiRail to alert them to the partial collapse of the bridge.

The next train was scheduled around 2.30pm.

Hmm.

Anything else?

Well, yes.

There was the matter of the train that ran into the concrete buffer in Johnsonville a week or so back.

That was a reminder of a perturbing increase in Signal Passed at Danger (SPAD) incidents.

The Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) reported a rate of 3.2 SPADs per million kilometres—nearly triple the 2020 rate and well above KiwiRail’s benchmark of 1 per million. [1]

• Auckland (Feb 2025): A distracted freight train driver missed a stop signal and slid 50 metres, stopping 250 metres behind an Auckland commuter train. [1]
• Morrinsville (Aug 2024): A distracted driver using a mobile phone missed two stop signals. A collision was only avoided because the track vehicle they were approaching managed to pull into a loop. [1]
• Penrose (Jun 2024): A signal mix-up led to an incident involving the Te Huia commuter train. [1]

The TAIC has formally called on KiwiRail, the New Zealand Transport Agency and the Ministry of Transport to take stronger action.

It has recommended:

• Rolling out more automated engineering fail-safes (such as automatic train stops);
• Ensuring NZTA actively monitors and controls KiwiRail’s high SPAD rates.

But here at PoO, we would like to know what happens to a driver who runs a red light.

How serious must a breach of safety rules be to incur a dismissal?

Bob Edlin is a veteran journalist and editor for the Point of Order blog HERE. - where this article was sourced.