Weather ‘had an impact’ on fatal Scottish train crash
Bad weather contributed to a train crash in Aberdeenshire yesterday which killed three people, the Scottish transport secretary said.
Three people were killed and six others injured when the Aberdeen to Glasgow service came off the rails near Stonehaven yesterday.
Driver Brett McCullough and conductor Donald Dinnie were killed alongside a passenger.
The train reportedly hit a landslip following a rain storm.
The train involved was the 6.38am Aberdeen to Stonehaven, which had four carriages and one engine.
The BBC reported that Michael Matheson, who visited the crash site this morning, said: “What we don’t want to do at this particular point is to start to speculate about what actually caused it.
“What I think we can assess, though, is that weather has had an impact.
“We are seeing increasingly a higher level of what are localised intense weather events that are having an impact on the transport network, including the rail network.
“What we need to do as part of the investigation is identify to what extent it had an impact and also to see what lessons can be learned.”
Matheson said some parts of Scotland has experienced a month’s rainfall overnight on Tuesday.