IN HALF A MILLION pages of submissions to the inquiry into the Southall rail disaster, a critical difference has become apparent between that crash in 1997 and the one in Paddington last month.

FIVE MONTHS after the Southall rail disaster Great Western Trains was still failing to familiarise drivers with the fail-safe automatic train protection (ATP) system that would have prevented the crash, a public inquiry heard yesterday.

TRANSPORT; use of cars in built-up areas to be curbed

under fire" (7 November) previews the Environment Select Committee's possible criticisms of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). David Bergman accuses us of under-doing prosecutions and accident investigations. But he is playing in a different ballpark. He believes that the Robens Committee got things wrong in its 1972 report on health and safety at work: but that report underpins the law that Parliament passed with all-party backing, and is the basis for all that the HSE and the Health and Safety Commission (HSC) do.

PLAY-OFF SHOWDOWN English coach Alan Hodgkinson is working hard to improve reputation of goalkeeping north of the border

PLAY-OFF SHOWDOWN: Scotland secure between posts as Hodgkinson transforms reputation for butter-fingered goalkeepers

THE GOVERNMENT is preparing a retreat on its controversial proposals for the semi-privatisation of the National Air Traffic Control Service (Nats).

The Sketch

A SAFETY watchdog should be set up, armed with "robust" powers to punish errant companies as part of its role as regulator of the transport industry,MPs recommended yesterday.

FIRSTGROUP, one of the two rail companies involved in the Paddington crash, may replace its entire fleet of high-speed trains on the Great Western line in a move which analysts believe could cost pounds 500m to pounds 1bn.

WELFARE

SENIOR RAIL industry executives believe it is increasingly likely that the bus and rail group Go-Ahead will be stripped of its Thames Train franchise following the Paddington disaster last month in which 31 people died.

Time to be in Earnest: a fragment of autobiography by P D James Faber pounds 16.99

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