A man who drove into the path of an oncoming train at a Highland level crossing has been convicted of dangerous driving.
Ivan Nicol passed through the crossing gates, ignoring red flashing lights and a warning siren, and collided with the two-carriage train from Elgin.
Nicol, 51, had denied a charge of dangerous driving in relation to the incident at the Lower Cullernie crossing, near Allanfearn, on January 31 last year, but was convicted following a trial at Inverness Sheriff Court.
Pauline Smith, the driver of the 12.36pm service from Elgin to Inverness, said her train was travelling at around 68mph when she spotted Nicol’s pick-up truck emerging onto the track.
In evidence led by fiscal depute Eilidh Gunn, the driver said: “I was worried we were going to end up derailing”.
She said: “Everything seemed clear, it wasn’t until I was just about on the crossing that the car came out.”
Ms Smith described how Nicol’s vehicle “just drove straight out” into her path at the user-operated crossing.
CCTV footage from the train, played for the court, showed that she had only moments to react as Nicol’s vehicle moved onto the railway line.
She said: “I threw the brake on into emergency and I was trying to get to the horn.
“I went for the emergency button, I was worried we were going to end up derailing.
“It felt like a it was a couple of seconds between hitting the brake and hitting the car.”
Safety protocols for train drivers states they should leave the cab before impact, but Ms Smith said: “There was no time.”
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The Lower Cullernie crossing requires road users to check the lights and listen for the warning siren before opening the gates – a process that would need to be done manually, as the push-button system was no longer operational.
A signalling engineer told the court that warning lights and sirens were triggered automatically as soon as a train enters that section of the track.
But he said: “I am led to believe that the gates were open at the time,”
Nicol’s solicitor Duncan Burd led no evidence in his client’s defence.
Finding Nicol guilty of dangerous driving, Sheriff Eilidh MacDonald said: “You drove your car over a railway track just as a train was coming.
“That is a very clear example of what it is to drive dangerously.”
In mitigation for his client, Mr Burd said: “The crossing continues to cause concern, even today the gates are not operational – they are open all the time.”
The solicitor said Network Rail had “failed to attend to the crossing”.
He noted that the CCTV footage viewed in court had not shown a stop sign and said his client had driven over the crossing “at a slow speed”.
That remark prompted Sheriff MacDonald to question the wisdom of this approach, in the light of the oncoming train.
She said: “It looks to me like he took a chance. That’s what it looked like – he has made a serious mistake.”
The sheriff added: “I expect it must have been quite an unpleasant experience for everybody on the train.”
She fined Nicol, of Drumduan Park, Forres, £1,040 and banned him from driving for a year, after which he must sit and pass the extended driving test before getting back on the roads.
Speaking after the court case, a spokesman for Network Rail declined to comment on the specific case but confirmed there had previously been a problem at Lower Cullernie where “people were deliberately misusing the crossing”.
She added that there was “no issue with the infrastructure itself if used correctly.”