WCRC Licence Suspended

It's now against the law, I believe, to force someone to retire. We have regular medicals which increase to yearly from 62 or 64. As long as we are fit enough we can carry on, subject to maintaining our rules compencies.
But, as I mentioned earlier, if we want to. A lot of drivers have had enough of working full time by then. We are not in a 9 to 5 industry here. I have just this week been getting up for work 0230 and 0130 in the morning, and as I write this apart from Monday I do not know what I'm doing the rest of next week. I'm 55 now, and find it a struggle at times, in ten years it will be worse. A number of chaps also retire to have more time with their families. Irregular shift work takes it out of you, perpetual jet lag. As much as I love working on steam, one day I'll have to walk away from it. DBS do not let us work part time, several of the chaps would have stayed on if they could have. West coast have a number who do work part time that's why they still do it. I think I might not have a lot of motivation to get up at 0130 to do an eleven hour shift on an engineering worksite on a Sunday morning when I'm 70!

 

I tell you what Wayne. Any time you and the Eastleigh boys are on the footplate, then I will book to be behind you every day of the week! Plus the opportunity to shake hands with the legend who is Colin Kerswell.

Nick

 

Politicians can be useful in that, whilst none of them would risk being seen as downgrading safety concerns, they will be alive to the tendency for safety concerns, and particularly safety solutions, becoming embroiled in bureaucratic empire-building and a desire to control and dictate for the sake of demonstrating who is in charge. I think that NR's letter of licence suspension was careful to set out its concerns and its require remediation in a measured way, possibly with one eye on the public and political reaction to a loss of economic activity. David Smith has done wonders with the engineering at Carnforth, even if he does seem to take pleasure in secrecy to the chagrin of NP contributors, but I see the need for a proven operator to be brought in to tighten up tour operations and staff supervision generally. Finally, whilst there are serious implications for steam operation, this should not be seen as an attack on steam on the mainline as such. If a WCRC driver had done the same in a diesel there would have been the same outcome; it is the operational culture hat is at fault, not the hardware.

 

That makes it confusing, the "new" thread now has quotes in it which aren't even there because they are still here. In other words a lot of it is "gobbledegook".

 

but we aint happy about it, its got a diesel on the back.

 

I see there's a longish article in today's Sunday Telegraph, and on-line here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/11530499/Off-the-rails.html

I note 3 interesting points:

• There's a little more detail about the ORR investigation
• There's a fairly optimistic statement from Marcus Robinson: “In the short term there will no doubt be issues, but longer term I’m sure this thriving and popular industry that employs up to 2,000 people will survive”. Is this a case of "he would say that, wouldn't he?" or does he know of plans for an alternative heritage TOC, just in case WCRC don't get their licence back?
• Abellio have dropped WCRC as "preferred bidder" for their steam operations "are urgently looking at other options to fulfil our summer steam operations”.

It shows that this subject is getting quite a lot of attention outside railway enthusiast circles. I think the Scottish angles in particular - Abellio, the new Waverley services and The Jacobite - will keep the story in the papers.

 

Aaah, thanks Al. So confusing having these two threads discussing the same subject, isn't it.

 

Whatever happens we've still got our sense of humours to fall back on,

 

we actually have three threads.......

 

Yes, but are they officially "short" threads or "long" ones?

 

I'm not sure, but I understand there are people on here who believe that it was done as a result of a complaint from certain members of the WSRA who felt that in its combined form this thread would soon be longer that the WSR one.

 

I can see the sense in that - splitting the threads will minimise the economic impact on ex-pat Scots residing in Minehead

 

They don't have an option to do otherwise.

 

Whilst I agree it makes sense to have separate threads for discussion of, here, anything new about the WCRC suspension per se and, there, the impact on steam operations and which companies might operate what, it isn't working very well yet. There are several posts on the other thread about the SPAD and the suspension. But I don't see a solution other than by shifting a lot of posts, which could lead to more orphaned quotes.

 

I think someone should be given limited moderation tools for the threads concerned and be given the task of collating all the replies in all the WCRC threads and putting them in the appropriate places and in the correct order. And of course ongoing till the publication of the RAIB report in a years time.

Your name has been put forward and heads the list - In fact yours is the only candidature. Congratualtions.

 

Basically, to prevent anyone (in this case me!) wading through pages of tripe to get to anything worth discussing perhaps the Mods could simply rename a thread and insert "(froth)" then lock the thread.

I love a good bit of banter and discussion but pointless 'my opinion is better than your opinion' does someone spoil the enjoyment of reading this site sometimes..