A judge has fined a rail maintenance company half a million pounds for putting lives at risk following a train derailment in Essex.

The judgement concerns the derailment of freight wagons at Rivenhall End, near Witham, in September 1997.

Judge Brian Watling QC blamed "short cuts" by of a gang of rail workers and their lack of supervision. Balfour Beatty Rail Maintenance admitted a charge under the Health and Safety at Work Act. Costs of £6,700 were imposed.

Nicholas Wood, prosecuting, said at 1.47pm on a Tuesday the rear eight wagons of a 21 wagon Freightliner travelling at about 65mph left the down track causing £1million of damage to the wagons, track, signalling and overhead lines.

A 10-man gang routinely replacing ballast under the rails in the average of 10 minutes gaps between trains failed to take necessary equipment with them so did not work in accordance with guidelines.

Julian Bevan QC, mitigating, said the company had no previous convictions and since the accident spent £1million on retraining and employing more assessing staff.

Judge Watling said: "Tens of thousand of people travel on this line every day.

"They need to be reassured that rail travel remains what it is generally recognised to be - the safest method of transport there is.

"It is entirely the fault of the defendants and their employees that the East Coast line on that afternoon became a dangerous place to be.

"A video, dating from the late 1980s, which showed a gang carrying out the method was played to us; it was so easy to follow that a child of five could have understood it.

Yet the gang working on this day chose to ignore the approved method and used an unsafe method. If a passenger train had been passing it could have gone off the rails leading to death and mutilation."

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