RAIL unions have renewed their calls for better safety for maintenance workers after two men were killed during track engineering work near Cannock, in Staffordshire, last week.
The accident follows the deaths of four track workers at Tebay earlier this year, when two Carnforth men, a Tebay man and a Morecambe man died after being hit by a runaway flatbed wagon which had rolled four miles down a slope on the West Coast Main Line.
This latest incident happened at about 4.30am on a well-lit stretch of track. The men, a 37-year-old from Sheffield and a 45-year-old from Burnley, died instantly when they were hit by a dual purpose road/rail maintenance vehicle.
RMT general secretary Bob Crow said after the Tebay tragedy he had called for an inquiry into safety in the fragmented privatised railway regime. He said: "We now renew that call and once more we demand that all track renewals be brought back in house."
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