How can Underground Train Roll Away Without Driver?

This story is a few days old now and was obvioulsy caused by either a failure of safety system / procedure, or both. The RAIB will investigate fully and will come out with a full report, complete with reccommendations that will stop this event happening again. All reports the RAIB produce can be seen on their website in full. I have been involved in many RAIB investigations and they are VERY good and VERY thourough!! As they dont work for the company involved in the incident, they have nothing to cover up!

The train was an engineer's train. The line along which it was traveling was immediately cleared of passenger trains (diverted onto another line). Accidents happen - unless you can truthfully say that you have never in your life had an accident. Engineer's trains don't have drivers when being towed. If you have anything useful to contribute about London Underground rather than just pontificating, go here http://districtdave.proboards.com/index.cgi

Rules and procedures not correctly followed, most likely cause. If the brakes were isolated then a competent person should have been riding on the dead unit to operate the parking brake in an emergency and the train shouldn't have been moving at more than 5mph without break continuity. Them rules may have been followed, who knows until the report has been carried out. Its possible that the parking break was applied but being that they are usually so weak and on the end bogeys it may not have been sufficient to stop the unit. I have tried to stop a train using the parking brake and it took a long long time even at less than 5mph.

Hi there, Apparently the run away train carriage came away from another out of service northern line train and started to roll by itself. Chances are the safety latch hadn't been properly coupled between the trains; either someone new or someone who wasn't concentrating. Human error is almost always the cause of these kinds of stupid things to happen. It's a miracle no one was killed either in a station or on another train. This is the first time that this has happened remember (well that we know of) so I doubt it's something that was caused by mechanical failure although that is likely. The human element seems more so because of the Undergrounds long standing safety record. Well, the investigation is underway. It'll be months before we know for sure.

some engineer of the train had a deadman pedal depressed with the brakes released and no emergency brake applied