Ten years ago today, seven people were killed when a tram derailed at Sandilands in Croydon. This morning, London Ambulance Service staff are gathering in New Addington to remember them.
The service is marking the anniversary with a memorial event at Central Parade in New Addington at 11am. Liam Lehane, the service’s head of specialist operations, has been reflecting on the day ahead of the event.
“The enormity of the situation never leaves you,” he said. “These catastrophic incidents have a lasting impact on emergency service staff of all stripes.”
“There can be an emotional toll that you can’t measure, but which is always there.”
At 6.07am on Wednesday 9 November 2016, tram 2551, travelling from New Addington towards Wimbledon, derailed and overturned on a sharp bend at Sandilands junction. Seven of the 69 people on board were killed and 62 were injured, 19 of them seriously.
The seven who died were Dane Chinnery, 19, Philip Logan, 52, Philip Seary, 57, Dorota Rynkiewicz, 35, and Robert Huxley, 63, all from New Addington, and Mark Smith, 35, and Donald Collett, 62, from Croydon.
The Rail Accident Investigation Branch found that the driver had lost awareness before the crash, possibly after a brief microsleep, and that the tram took the bend at around 45mph — more than three times the 12mph limit. The investigation also concluded that the risk of trams overturning on curves had not been properly understood.
An inquest at Croydon Town Hall in the summer of 2021 returned verdicts of accidental death for all seven victims. The families, who described the inquest as a “farce”, called for a new inquest and sought a judicial review of how it had been handled.
In March 2022, the Office of Rail and Road announced it would prosecute the driver, Tram Operations Ltd and Transport for London over the crash. The driver was cleared after a trial at the Old Bailey in June 2023.
Since the crash, Transport for London has made a series of changes across the tram network. The maximum speed has been cut from 80kph to 70kph, chevron signs have been put up at the four sharpest bends, and every tram has been fitted with a driver protection device that alerts drivers to signs of fatigue or distraction. An automatic braking system — the first of its kind on a UK tram network — was developed following the investigation’s recommendations, and will apply the brakes and bring a moving tram to a controlled stop if it approaches a bend too fast.
The coroner who presided over the inquest also made prevention-of-future-deaths recommendations, including automatic braking, stronger tram doors, an anonymised whistleblowing system for staff, and a government-funded national tram watchdog.
The anniversary falls in a week when Croydon’s transport network has again been under strain. Addington Road remains closed after a burst water main, and Transport for London is facing a £6.5 billion repairs backlog across its network.
