Brandon level crossing causing town gridlock says councillor

Councillor Victor Lukaniuk said the crossing at Brandon had failed "hundreds of times"

Residents in a small market town that becomes gridlocked when its level crossing fails are being treated as "guinea pigs" by Network Rail, a councillor has said.

The crossing in Brandon, Suffolk, was automated in 2012.

West Suffolk independent councillor Victor Lukaniuk said it had failed "hundreds of times".

However, Network Rail said frequent closures were due to the route being busy rather than faulty equipment.

Before 2012, the crossing on the A1065 Mundford Road was operated manually and a resident has called for the return of "the man in the [signal] box".

Gary Brocklehurst, who lives locally, said the system had been "failing for over a decade, but in the most recent incident it was down for a couple of hours".

The crossing is on the main road in and out of the Suffolk market town

He said the barriers got stuck on Tuesday and engineers were sent to manually lift and lower them to ease traffic that had built up for about two miles (3km).

"It doesn't take long to cause a back-up and completely gridlock the town," Mr Brocklehurst said.

'Funeral procession stuck'

A number of businesses told the BBC they had been impacted by delays caused by the barriers.

Mark Skinner, the town's undertaker, said on one occasion a hearse had crossed the tracks, but the barriers then went down and "did not go back up".

"The local priest and half of our funeral procession were stuck the other side of the line for about 30 minutes and it was an absolute nightmare," he said.

"By the time they'd reached the point where they realised they'd have to go another way, we'd almost missed our slot at the crematorium.

"It really ruined what should have been a celebration of someone's life.

"When we had a signalman, we didn't have any faults. My great grandfather was the signalman in 1900 and I'm sure he did a much better job than they're doing now."

'Small number of faults'

Mr Lukaniuk said: "Since [the barriers] were put in they have failed hundreds of times and Network Rail have failed the people of Brandon hundreds of times as well."

Calling on Network Rail to compensate businesses, he said the technology used in the system was "experimental" and "we have been the guinea pigs in Brandon".

Network Rail apologised for the issues on Tuesday, and a spokesperson added: "While the level crossing at Brandon has had historical issues following an upgrade in 2012, new equipment installed before 2018 means the crossing now has only a very small number of faults each year.

"Brandon level crossing is situated on a busy road and at peak times the barriers are down more frequently which can lead to queues, but this is not indicative of a problem with the equipment itself."

Its recent data showed there had been four recorded faults in the equipment at the crossing in 2018, three in 2019, 2020 and 2022, with two in 2021 and one so far this year.