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In the letter James Pickard, Community Relations Advisor for L & SE states:
"The mines are recorded as being adjacent to the tunnel and not beneath it."
WRONG. The original article states (quoted verbatim):
"the workmen are now busily employed in shoring up a part of the roof of one of the chambers, the railway passing over its entire breath."He states:
"Network Rail undertook a programme of trial drillings in the tunnels in 1985. No voids were found as a result of this drilling."
DISINGENUOUS. Our information suggests that those drillings were minor and conducted over a single weekend without closing the railway. This is completely insufficient. In any event I have one thing to say to that: show us the plans, or it didn't happen (and remember it may be a criminal offence to create fake plans in such safety-critical circumstances).
He states:
"Given that the mines were explored at the time of the construction of the railway, they would have been treated to the railway's specification."
RIDICULOUS. The "railway's specification" in 1849 was the ability to safely support a locomotive weighing around 24 tons, such as the Jenny Lind 2-2-2 class. Modern locomotives weigh up to 120 tons. In addition, whatever supports were placed in the mine gallery in 1849 may have deteriorated by now - their condition is entirely unknown.
He states:
"Given the level of exploration at the time the chances of unrecorded working beneath the railway is relatively low, however cannot be discounted entirely."
IGNORANT. The writer reveals his complete ignorance of chalk mining techniques. The roof fall at the end of the gallery was never dug through in 1849 to establish whether it was a slope drift entrance to the mine, or a further continuation of unsurveyed and unknown gallery which may have undermined the railway in another place.
He states:
"Many of our tunnels have large mineworkings in and around them (Box tunnel, Clay Cross tunnel etc), all of these are regularly checked and there is no immediate cause for concern at any location."
DISINGENUOUS. Box railway tunnel in Wiltshire is located underneath a large freestone mine, not above it, so the railway has nothing to subside into. At Clay Cross tunnel, coal was only discovered during the construction of the tunnel, and all subsequent mine workings were located so as not to interfere with the structural integrity of the tunnel. Clay Cross tunnel was driven in the late 1830s by George Stephenson, whose own Clay Cross Company carried out all subsequent mining activities. To suggest that Stephenson would have endangered his own tunnel (which cost the lives of 15 men to build) with his mining activities is absurd.
At Charlton, Network Rail continues to gamble with the safety of the travelling public and railway staff. They must stop lying and trying to re-write history: the facts are, as we have already said, undeniable and unequivocal:
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James Pickard is just doing his job - which is to spin and distort information to the advantage of Network Rail. What is more interesting is the identity of the senior managers who approved this letter - they must be revealed and possibly even prosecuted for endangering the public and railway staff by hindering a safety investigation. However, we will be obtaining Counsel's Opinion on the possibility of a successful prosecution of James Pickard under Health and Safety legislation; he clearly and wilfully distorted a fundamental safety-related fact with intent to deceive. Under the circumstances that's an extremely serious matter. Network Rail have been tasked with looking after the safety of the travelling public, and to have that behaviour from one of their employees is outrageous. But outrageous behaviour is nothing new at Network Rail; they stand accused of supplying false information to the High Court during an injunction application in April 2010 to halt a strike1. Previously in November 2003 Peter Bennett, Network Rail's head of human resources (more recently accused in Parliament of "presiding over a culture of fear and bullying"2) was under suspicion:
More recently:
In November 2003, Mr. Bennett presided over Network Rail's so-called “Project Violet”. Almost overnight, some 600 employees, senior and long-serving managers among them, were dismissed and offered terms that in effect precluded them from voicing concerns in an employment tribunal, given the substantial settlements that were offered—settlements paid out of the taxpayer's pocket.2
More recently:
...in 2007 the company dismissed 247 employees, 38 of whom were covered by compromise agreements—that is, by confidentiality [gagging] clauses. The figures for 2008 were 270 and 57 respectively. In the past two years alone, 95 employees have been dismissed by the company, and the details of their settlements have been covered up. The number seems to have increased year on year.3
If you work for Network Rail (or used to work for them) and have confidential information about this situation (or indeed anything else relating to Network Rail) that you wish to discuss with us at Subterranean Greenwich, please feel free to contact us in absolute confidence. You may wish to discuss initially how best to bowdlerise (disguise the source) of your information before supplying us with that information. If it's difficult to bowdlerise it, then we can publish it in a more general form as deep background to the situation.
Because Network Rail are trying to avoid paying the several million pounds that a proper safety investigation would cost, we would be unsurprised if some level of informal intimidation was used against us. Anything of that nature will be immediately reported to the police, the ORR and the House of Commons Transport Select Committee.
To see the our original article on the Charlton railway tunnel cave please click here.
1 http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=5557
2 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/cgi-bin/newhtml_hl?DB=semukparl&STEMMER=en&WORDS=act&ALL=&ANY=&PHRASE=&CATEGORIES=&SIMPLE=Firearms%20act&SPEAKER=&COLOUR=red&STYLE=s&ANCHOR=90304h0009.htm_spmin0&URL=/pa/cm200809/cmhansrd/cm090304/halltext/90304h0009.htm
3 http://www.theyworkforyou.com/whall/?id=2009-03-04b.307.0
