:00:00. > :00:11.Is the Balcombe tunnel safe? We investigate the partial collapse on
:00:11. > :00:14.the London to Brighton line. It was certainly a dangerous incident and
:00:14. > :00:17.we would not want to find ourselves in that situation again. Clearly,
:00:17. > :00:21.something has gone terribly wrong, so it's false economy not to get the
:00:21. > :00:31.job done properly. Face—to—face with the Saxons of
:00:31. > :00:35.Eastbourne. Oh, wow. Wow. Quite emotional.
:00:35. > :00:41.And rescued from the Goodwin Sands — behind the scenes at the restoration
:00:41. > :00:45.of a German bomber. Only this morning, we found this on the
:00:45. > :00:50.propeller. You can see where the sea life has washed off and it reveals
:00:50. > :00:54.what we believe to be a bullet hole. I'm Natalie Graham with untold
:00:54. > :00:55.stories closer to home. From all around the South East, this is
:00:55. > :01:15.Inside Out. Hello. We're underneath the
:01:15. > :01:21.spectacular Balcombe viaduct in West Sussex and we're here because we are
:01:21. > :01:25.not far from the Balcombe tunnel. Two years ago, part of the roof
:01:25. > :01:28.collapsed and we have been asking how passengers' lives were put at
:01:28. > :01:36.risk on one of the busiest commuter routes in the country. Mark Norman
:01:36. > :01:39.reports. Early on a Friday morning, two years
:01:39. > :01:42.ago, engineers made a routine journey through the Balcombe tunnel
:01:42. > :01:50.on the busy London to Brighton railway line. But this was to be
:01:50. > :01:53.anything but routine. Part of the tunnel roof had collapsed. The
:01:53. > :02:02.tunnel was immediately closed, journeys were delayed... And we now
:02:02. > :02:06.know lives could have been lost. And so begins this Rail Accident
:02:06. > :02:10.Investigation Board report. Three metal girders had come loose, they
:02:10. > :02:14.were hanging less than a foot above the train.
:02:14. > :02:21.Extremely thankful for the crew on the engineering train, that they
:02:21. > :02:25.spotted the failure. It was certainly a dangerous incident And
:02:25. > :02:29.we would not want to find ourselves in that situation again. But is that
:02:29. > :02:33.good enough? The detail in this report is shocking. Network Rail
:02:33. > :02:40.knew that bolts used to support the roof had been missing or broken for
:02:40. > :02:45.three years. At any one point, one of the huge steel girders could have
:02:45. > :02:50.fallen onto passing trains. And potentially thousands of lives were
:02:50. > :02:53.put at risk. We have spoken to a Network Rail engineer who wants to
:02:53. > :03:00.remain anonymous but he has told us that if just one girder had hit a
:03:00. > :03:04.train, passengers would have died. You are looking at a fatality. If
:03:04. > :03:08.that steel bar would have come, it would have been spinning around. It
:03:08. > :03:11.would have just been spinning round. It would have gone through windows,
:03:11. > :03:14.God forbid. Ripped it, ripped the train — a whole carriage, half a
:03:14. > :03:19.carriage. There would have been fatalities there.
:03:19. > :03:25.So what exactly happened? Using the report, we have recreated the
:03:25. > :03:28.situation in 2011. This false roof is used to manage the water that
:03:28. > :03:33.constantly drips into the Balcombe tunnel. It is supposed to have been
:03:33. > :03:37.checked and maintained regularly but it wasn't. Three of
:03:37. > :03:41.checked and maintained regularly but girders that support the roof had
:03:41. > :03:46.partially collapsed. They were left hanging, just 11 inches above the
:03:46. > :03:50.top of the train. When safety staff went into the tunnel, they found
:03:50. > :03:55.more than a dozen bolts were missing. Bolts that were supposed to
:03:55. > :04:02.be fixing the beams to the wall but had in fact either been missing,
:04:02. > :04:05.broken or not replaced for years. Worryingly, the report tells us that
:04:05. > :04:12.as far back as 2008, engineers were telling the company things were
:04:12. > :04:15.going wrong. But for three years, what is described as inadequate
:04:15. > :04:22.reporting meant the problems weren't fixed and bolts weren't replaced. We
:04:22. > :04:25.now know these three beams were just inches away from hitting trains that
:04:25. > :04:30.travel through the tunnel at 70 miles per hour.
:04:30. > :04:35.The company acknowledge that things weren't working properly at the time
:04:35. > :04:40.and that their staff weren't being given the right support. Our
:04:40. > :04:42.processes let our colleagues and the travelling public down at that
:04:42. > :04:45.point. Communication wasn't appropriate and our processes
:04:45. > :04:49.weren't in place in a manner that allowed staff to report the failures
:04:49. > :05:00.of that nature in the right place at the right time to make sure they get
:05:00. > :05:03.recovered and repaired expeditely. Perhaps most damning of all is the
:05:03. > :05:06.fact we are told the engineer responsible for 120 tunnels,
:05:06. > :05:13.including Balcombe, wasn't suitably qualified and wasn't given the right
:05:13. > :05:16.support. The report says he did not recognise the problem, didn't
:05:16. > :05:21.appreciate the risk and didn't consider more widespread concerns.
:05:21. > :05:23.Our whistle—blower, who has worked for decades on the tracks
:05:23. > :05:26.Our whistle—blower, who has worked country, including inside many of
:05:26. > :05:29.our Victorian tunnels, says the problem of inexperienced staff is
:05:29. > :05:44.still an issue and the passengers' lives are still being put at risk.
:05:44. > :05:47.These tunnel should be inspected more often than what we're doing now
:05:47. > :05:50.and with competent and knowledgeable people, not someone who... No
:05:50. > :05:53.disrespect, but not someone who has just come out of university or
:05:53. > :05:58.college with a degree in one hand and a torch in another. They haven't
:05:58. > :06:01.got enough men as it is on the ground to do track examinations.
:06:01. > :06:05.What used to be examined three or four times a week is now examined in
:06:05. > :06:09.some parts once a week or once a fortnight. That is... That is... You
:06:09. > :06:13.know, it is a bit worrying. The London to Brighton line is one of
:06:13. > :06:17.the busiest in the country. More than 70 million passengers a year
:06:17. > :06:18.travel on the main route and 2,500 trains a week pass through the
:06:18. > :06:29.Balcombe tunnel. And the fact that so many of us want
:06:29. > :06:34.to travel by train is part of the problem for Network Rail. The
:06:34. > :06:38.company have very little time to get onto the railway between the last
:06:38. > :06:45.train at night and the first train in the morning. More and more people
:06:45. > :06:49.want to travel, more and more people want to travel early in the morning,
:06:49. > :06:52.late at night, said there is continual pressure on the window of
:06:52. > :06:55.opportunity in the night—time to get on the track and so the railway
:06:55. > :06:58.staff are always fighting that tension between running trains for
:06:58. > :07:06.passengers and finding the time to work on the track. When the Balcombe
:07:06. > :07:10.tunnel was closed after the roof collapsed, this was the scene at
:07:10. > :07:13.stations up and down the line. But while passengers don't want this
:07:14. > :07:20.sort of chaos, they do want a safe railway. Often, we don't get to hear
:07:20. > :07:24.of the sort of smaller incidents and this one is obviously a major one.
:07:24. > :07:27.Clearly, something has gone terribly wrong. It is maybe not the people
:07:27. > :07:30.who are maintaining it themselves but perhaps those who oversee it.
:07:30. > :07:37.Because it should be closely monitored. I mean, these things
:07:38. > :07:40.should never happen. The London to King's Lynn service had derailed at
:07:41. > :07:46.nearly 100 miles an hour... This is not the first time Network Rail have
:07:46. > :07:50.come in for criticism. The company was fined £3 million for lapses in
:07:50. > :07:58.health and safety that let to the Potters Bar train crash in 2002. And
:07:58. > :08:00.while the authors of this latest report don't apportion blame, they
:08:01. > :08:09.did tell us they'd asked Network Rail to...
:08:09. > :08:15.Potters Bar was in 2002. The Balcombe tunnel incident in 2011.
:08:16. > :08:20.But let's bring things bang up—to—date. This document has just
:08:20. > :08:24.been published by the rail regulator and in it they highlight issues with
:08:24. > :08:30.the track in Sussex, issues with planned maintenance by Network Rail.
:08:30. > :08:36.But the company have insisted things are better and that the Balcombe
:08:36. > :08:37.tunnel is safe. From my perspective, I can assure the
:08:38. > :08:39.sure the general II I c II I c
:08:39. > :09:25.Mark Norman reporting. Coming up on Inside Out...
:09:25. > :09:28.So here I am, crouched precariously right inside the ghost of the
:09:28. > :09:32.Dornier, surrounded by bits of the Goodwin Sands, shells and pebbles.
:09:32. > :09:34.Each day, more comes off and each day a little bit more of the story
:09:34. > :09:44.is revealed. You may remember last year we met a
:09:44. > :09:49.team of archaeologists examining hundreds of Saxon skeletons that had
:09:50. > :09:52.been buried in Eastbourne. Now we have been back to see some flesh
:09:52. > :10:03.added to those ancient bones. Kent and Sussex were once
:10:03. > :10:08.Anglo—Saxon kingdoms. So, like many towns in the South East, Eastbourne
:10:08. > :10:11.has a rich Anglo—Saxon heritage. Until recently, though, much of that
:10:11. > :10:17.heritage, in the form of 200 skeletons, were hidden in cardboard
:10:17. > :10:19.boxes in the town hall. But a team of archaeologists and volunteers
:10:19. > :10:25.have been steadily working their way through each box. Piece by piece,
:10:25. > :10:30.they have been building up a picture of the people who lived in the South
:10:30. > :10:33.East more than 1,200 years ago. After studying every skeleton in the
:10:33. > :10:36.collection, Hayley Forsyth, from the Eastbourne Ancestors Project, has
:10:36. > :10:39.chosen the three skulls to be examined in more detail, to find out
:10:39. > :10:47.when these people lived, what they ate and what they looked like.