SECURITY AT STROOD STATION RAIL COMPOUND

Friday 13 Feb 2004

SECURITY AT STROOD STATION RAIL COMPOUND

Region & Route:: | Southern

Network Rail has learnt valuable lessons from the tragic loss of Bobby Woods and has put safety measures in place to prevent this from happening again. The fencing and gates at Strood are inspected on a weekly basis. Vandals have damaged a small section of steel mesh at the bottom of the steel gates to the rail compound. Network Rail engineers are on site and are carrying out necessary repairs. Safety is our top priority and the damaged gates do not provide access to the operational railway. Should an individual have breached the gates by climbing underneath they would not have been able to gain access to the tracks, but would have found themselves in the compound. We will continue to monitor this site and constantly strive to improve security. Anyone who has information on this act of vandalism is urged to call Crime Stoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111. A reward of £3000 is on offer for information leading to the arrest of the perpetrators. The community is asked to report all incidents of rail crime to British Transport Police on 0800 40 50 40. The number is open 24 hours a day and calls are free. Are thoughts are with Bobby Wood’s family and we would like to thank them for bringing this to our attention.

Contact information

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03457 11 41 41

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About Network Rail

We own, operate and develop Britain's railway infrastructure; that's 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations. We run 20 of the UK's largest stations while all the others, over 2,500, are run by the country's train operating companies.

Usually, there are almost five million journeys made in the UK and over 600 freight trains run on the network. People depend on Britain's railway for their daily commute, to visit friends and loved ones and to get them home safe every day. Our role is to deliver a safe and reliable railway, so we carefully manage and deliver thousands of projects every year that form part of the multi-billion pound Railway Upgrade Plan, to grow and expand the nation's railway network to respond to the tremendous growth and demand the railway has experienced - a doubling of passenger journeys over the past 20 years.

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