UK rail crash could have been avoided, investigation finds
Investigators said the Talerddig crash was avoidable if the driver had used a manual sander after the automatic system failed. One passenger died and four others were seriously injured.
The head-on collision near Talerddig, Powys, was not an unavoidable disaster, investigators found, but a crash that could have been prevented if one safeguard had been used when another failed. The Rail Accident Investigation Branch said the westbound Transport for Wales train should have stopped inside a passing loop on the Cambrian line, but instead rolled onto the single-line section and struck an oncoming passenger train.
Passenger David Tudor Evans, 66, died as a consequence of the collision on 21 October 2024, and four other people were seriously injured. One person later described being knocked unconscious before hearing shouting and seeing people on the floor, a reminder of how violently the two trains collided on a route that runs mostly on single track with passing loops between places such as Aberystwyth, Llanbrynmair and Shrewsbury.
The final report, published on 18 June 2026, said the westbound train’s automatic sanding system had failed before the crash and the wheels were sliding in very low-adhesion conditions, likely made worse by autumn leaf contamination. Investigators calculated the train would have stopped within the loop if the driver had activated the manual emergency sander when the emergency brake was applied. The driver reportedly said it had “not occurred to them” to use the manual sander, and the report said the driver did not recall any training on the system.
The collision was Britain’s first fatal crash involving multiple trains in more than a quarter of a century, adding weight to the case for tighter operating safeguards on rural main lines that depend on precise stopping points. The final report followed an interim update in April 2025 that had already identified four faults in the automatic sanding system, including blocked hoses, electrical faults and incorrectly installed flow plates.
RAIB said the final report set out nine safety recommendations, including measures to improve passenger carriage safety. Network Rail and Transport for Wales said they welcomed the findings and continued to support the family of David Tudor Evans, the injured passengers and affected staff. The crash has now been defined by a chain of missed defences, from defective equipment to failed training and missed intervention, and the changes recommended in the report are aimed at stopping the same sequence from repeating elsewhere.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
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