Swithland Steam Gala 26th – 28th April 2013

Of course they don't. However it would be wise to be aware of the publicity issues here. We are in an age of instant communication. There are websites and, in more and more cases, services such as tickets and shop items can be purchased online. Someone takes a video of an incident, publishes it on Youtube and it is seen by thousands. No amount of grumbling and stuffy indignation will alter this.

For the railways sake I hope they are not subject to any formal procedure. If they are not though, they need to be a bit pro-active and set out their position.

PH

 

Let's be honest here though, how many of the people demanding to see a report would actually understand it ? If it is the contention that one needs to be published in order to satisfy the Youtube demographic, then - going by the current showing of comments on the video - it would necessarily have to be written to cater for such a generally low level of understanding of railway operations that it would make the average RAIB report look in-depth and technical.

 

as quite a few members have said on here they are not subject to any formal procedure in the slightest. Also they do not NEED to be proactive and set out there position any further than acknowledging an incident has taken place which they have here, http://www.gcrailway.co.uk/news/#7387.

yet again I sit here wondering if you are here for the sole intention of stirring the excrement in places you have no right to stirr them...

when the Welshpool had a more dangerous incident of the wasp running away I don't believe this forum kept on about it as much as you seem to be going on about this. but that's another matter.

have some courtesy for another Preserved Railway once in a while will you. then again, perhaps you were at Quorn on the day of the incident and witnessed events prior to this accident... but I doubt it.

 

I agree with you. Not a report but something saying in clear language what happened in order to bring everything to a conclusion.

 

Were you? The Youtube posting exists and people have said much more extreme things on this forum than I have. It is in the public domain and "nothing will lure it back to cancel half a line" as the poem puts it.

 

indeed! in my other hobby of Rallying, on all tickets, or within the official program it states 'all photos and videos taken at this event are the property of the organisers of the event' now im not sure why this is but I assume it is to stop videos/photos that are bad for the publicity of rallying as a sport/and family of those concerned getting onto the internet. whilst the incident will still be reported publicly all witnesses could be told that they cant publish photos/vids of the incident for exactly this reason and should they the event/governing body can (I assume) ask youtube to delete it or legal action can begin (im not entirely sure...)

in light of this incident perhaps the same needs to happen on steam railways during Galas... sad to say but it will stop those with no idea wrongly passing judgement and speaking out of turn...

 

You reckon? I'd say that in the 21st century it'd more likely end up being uploaded again and again whilst the organisers, if they cared enough, wasted their time playing catch-up. Just look at that infamous video of the bloke filming 70013 and nearly being hit by a unit - how many hundreds of copies of that are up on Youtube? You can't blame the one bloke who filmed it, it's not likely he's sat and uploaded it to hundreds of different accounts with titles varying significantly in intelligence. Once something's on the internet, you can all but guarantee it's been copied somewhere. Whether you see it as a good or a bad thing, it's much more difficult than it ever has been to suppress information!

 

No I wasnt, but im not on here saying X, Y and Z were at fault, Z had a SPAD and should feel the full force of the law and RAIB this and that! I have looked at the video and come to my own conclusions using what knowledge of railway operating I know and out of courtesy for the GCR have not added to the fuel of the rumour mill fire. I have gone and through my contacts have found out the course of events through a friend of a RAIB inspector.

in my view having one outburst in a post isnt as bad as trying to keep flogging a dead horse and keep the thread going. can we leave this thread to either get back to photos of this event (the Gala as a whole) or just die now?

 

true, and I can see what your saying, but whilst there are plenty of crashes of rally cars on the internet as its part of the sport. There are however no photos or videos on youtube (as I have seen) showing when a bad/life threatening incident has occurred in rallying in the UK so it is possible. or perhaps those with the footage of bad accidents have more respect for the rally organisers, and competitors involved than railway enthusiasts do for their equivalents.

 

Hardly like-for-like then, is it? I think we'd all feel differently about the video had someone been seriously injured or worse...

 

What's your problem Talyllyno7? Everytime someone posts anything on this thread you shout them down in flames quoting this that & the third thing. You may have connections with a Welsh narrow gauge line (living in Holland?), but that does not entitle you to put everyone else down. Another case of a railway connected person treating everybody else as dorks. All too rife on this & other forums, one forum in particular I could mention.
As for censoring people's private videos & allowing site owners to claim ownership/copyright, words fail me. This is not M15 material. What happened to freedom of speech?

 

my reasoning is due to those commenting and passing judgement plainly have no idea about the contents of a rule book, or the procedures the RAIB have. Yes I live in the Netherlands now (since 2011, but whats that got to do with anything?), but my 'connections' to that NG line is as a Fireman, Blockman (signalman), Booking Clerk, Station Master and Trainee Dutyshedman and a member of the Traffic and Operating Committee (2008-2011). Away from the operating I can also be seen on the track gang, loco sheds, paintshop etc etc doing other things too!! away from the Talyllyn I was a paid employee at another NG railway in Wales as a Fireman/Driver/Fitter... so I do consider myself to have some experience of what I speak.

cheers

AT

 

Indeed. Trying to supress film or photos taken from a public vantage point (or even a private one, for that matter) is nigh on impossible these days: just ask the Duchess of Cambridge - and she had all the resources of the British State trying to supress unflattering photos. The greater the public interest, the quicker the photos / film will spread and the harder they will be to supress (and in a railway context, film of a derailment will inherently be more interesting than the same viewpoint of a train departing safely). And I bet there was speculation about the causes on Twitter, Facebook etc within minutes of the event occurring. That's simply a facet of modern life.

The explosion of photo and video sharing websites on the internet over the last ten years or so has almost certainly been a net benefit to the Heritage Railway industry in the way it can bring publicity and keep supporters up-to-date with what is going on; but the downside is that bad news can travel just as fast, and you also open yourself up to an army of backroom "experts" poring over every photograph or video looking for problems. So an intelligent communications strategy allows for that fact, rather than trying to supress all evidence "pending an enquiry". [Thought experiment: Just imagine the GCR had tried to get YouTube, Flickr etc to remove offending photos and videos, and that fact became known. Can you imagine just how much bigger this thread would be as people speculated about what they were trying to hide, even if they had been acting on pure motives?]

To be fair to the GCR, given what I have seen, I don't think they have handled this situation badly, all things considered.

As for the relevant regulatory bodies: I am sure they are perfectly capable of distinguishing what they can see in such films on YouTube from the drivel and flame wars written in the comments section below.

Tom

 

From the GCR Newsletter. General Managers notes.
As many of you will be aware already, Saturday morning was marred by an incident at
Quorn - this was at very low speed and involved 46521 being derailed in the trap points.
The first thing to say is that no-one was injured - metal can always be replaced or repaired,
but humans can't - nevertheless for the operational staff involved such events can be
traumatic.
In terms of the event, we were able to resume running trains in less than an hour. This
reflects the fantastic response by our Operations team and the collective expertise from
right across GCR which was on the scene at Quorn within minutes. The co-operation by all
concerned in working together was a tribute to GCR. Elsewhere in this newsletter you can
read some of the tributes received from visitors who recognised what was achieved.
The recovery operation was planned throughout the afternoon and began in earnest in the
early evening. The loco and tender arrived back in Loughborough at 2 am on Sunday
morning. Again, hats off to everyone who worked in such an exemplary fashion in the cold
and arduous conditions. The teamwork was awesome to me as a virtual bystander.

And from "Shed News".

Well, unlike most of our galas this one did not leave us unscathed, and we have a lot of
work to do. Details of the Ivatt 2's excursion onto the ballast are reported elsewhere, I will
just comment on the damage as I see it from a poke around underneath. As the loco was
moving backwards, you would expect more damage to the tender, and this is what we
have. In fact the engine seems to be almost unmarked, except for ballast scraping on the
bottom of the spring hanger bolts. We did, however, have to cut the drawbar, on which
the loco and tender apparently lurched apart. The main damage to the tender is to the
brake gear, with the massive cross beams being, bowed up in the middle. One guard iron is
also off. Not sure how long it will take to rectify, but wouldn't mind betting that the
paperwork will take longer that the engineering. We have already located a replacement
drawbar
Further problems afflicted the Red 8 no. 48624, which was failed with a leaking tube. In fact
we have already by Tuesday night removed the offending item and fitted a replacement; it
all seemed to be tight on Wednesday. The problem is the nature of the defect, as the tubes
are only five years old. In fact most of the surface of the removed tube is as new, but it has
mysterious defects like ulcers, the worst of which had penetrated right through. Most, but
not all, were in one plane, presumably along the top. Are all the other tubes about to fail,
or is it an isolated defect, such as rolled in slag inclusions?
Those of you who peered under the Webb ‘Coal Tank’ looking for Joy valve gear will, like
me, have been unable to spot it. This is because, despite being informed by an impeccable
source, it has Stephensons gear!
Locos for the BankHoliday weekend should be the ‘Coal Tank’, the ’Jinty’ and the Red 8.
The Ivatt was due to go to Ruddington, but we can manage to send them the Standard 2
instead.

Hope this helps.

 

The GCR seem to be moving in a positive way and are now making statements setting out their position, which is to be welcomed.

Making any report public is of course a matter for them, on one hand have if there has been serious operational irregularities, this might do them serious damage to their reputation, on the other hand open dialogue and an acknowledgement of problems shows lessons are willing to be learned and does a lot to take away any sniff there is a cover-up, which never goes down well, especially if incompetent individuals are being protected. It's a fine line to tread, however this is now a PR battle and all options need to be considered. With the amount of views on You Tube, it's at the point of going viral and reaching the national mainstream press.

As for banning photography, that's a can of worms in itself. Clearly from the railway's point of view targeting people will cameras isn't going to go down well in the general enthusiast community, and they may end up boycotting the railway. It's bad enough the TOCs doing in the name of terrorism! But they aren't a tourist attraction. There's also some shaky legal stuff about ownership of images taken on the railway property. And morally it just looks like a cover up, and the railway is not confident it its own abilities.

Besides photography from a public place, such as a highway, is entirely legal, especially if it's in the public interest - which this is. In order to stop that, the GCR would have to infringe on civil liberties, and it's highly improbably they would win any legal case. Apart from having most people against them, the entire media and most of the law makers of this country, to enforce it smacks of a police state. I don't think any organisation, and especially the GCR would be that silly to even think about going there, it would be the worst publicity any organisation has ever had.

 

humans are capable of making errors without being incompetent! you have never made a mistake?

I never said 'banning' of course take pictures! that's a large part of any tourist attractions publicity, whilst videos from enthusiasts of such a nature as this should really be seriously thought about by the individual before being uploaded to the internet due to the damage that is possible to be done for the railway and the tourist railway industry as a whole from the wider press or members of the public viewing it.

 

I may be mistaken, but I thought the HRA had a system for disseminating safety related information amongst its members? I'm pretty sure in the past I've seen bulletins issued after incidents on heritage lines where there were lessons to be learned to the benefit of the wider movement?

 

Talyllyn07: Please go back and note the magic word "Privately" in my original post. I said nothing about "because it happenend in front of xxxx etc" or "publicly"

Frankly I would have thought it reasonable and sensible for someone like the HRA to circulate in private the results of internal investigations, so that others may learn and hopefully prevent the same or similar happening on their railway.

46118

 

fair cop guv! privately noted! whilst you didnt say happend infront of X, Y and Z or publically others have and maybe wrongly I included that into a reply quoted with your words.

but yes, I can see no reason why the HRA wouldnt do that, as has been noted by Sheff, that is my understanding too!

appologies. I can occasionally be too quick to press send!

AT

 

Of course, you are are completely correct. Because people make mistakes doesn't mean they are incompetent, these things have to be seen in context and to a certain extent many accidents are an organisational failure. This is why it's not fair to point fingers at individuals.

This particular case is interesting, and there can be a number of scenarios that led up to the incident.

For example, a scenario which MAY have happened here, and it must be stressed this is to purely demonstrate the point: The signalman thought there was some sort of equipment failure and authorised the train to pass the signal at danger without checking the route, then communicated this (perhaps badly?) to the guard, who then communicated (perhaps badly again?) to the fireman and driver, instantly there are 4 people who have failed to carry out their duties correctly.

Beyond that you have to look at training a competence of the people concerned and whether other operating staff where involved. There may be other failures in terms of assessing individuals, the training they receive for example. There maybe cultural issues, such as staff are unduly pressured or they are not briefed properly. So this brings others into the frame and indeed the management themselves. Who assesses them, how are they appointed, how are staff appointed beneath them? Does it bring the safety case of the railway into question?

This is the point of any report, to find out the systematic failures that that are put in place to prevent this sort of thing happening and especially a repeat at the GCR or indeed elsewhere.

It must be stressed clearly we don't know what happened here, but it's probably not one individual making a mistake, as we all do from time to time in our daily lives.