A CATALOGUE of Network Rail (NR) safety management shortcomings were exposed yesterday in a final report into last year’s Cumbria rail crash.

A planned inspection that “should have detected” the faulty set of points which caused the February 2007 derailment at Grayrigg was not carried out, the report from the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) said.

After the crash in which one passenger died – 84-year-old Margaret Masson whose daughter lives in Crossens, Southport – and nearly 90 people were injured, the track section manager said he had forgotten that he had agreed to include the area of the faulty points in his inspection. Also, records were incorrectly updated to record that the part of the inspection which would have included the faulty points, at Lambrigg, near Grayrigg, had been completed.

The Pendolino train crashed after the train, travelling at 95mph, had gone over a set of points in an unsafe state after a combination of failures.