Cathedrals Express to Cardiff 1/03/18. New date: 14/06/18

Ah well now you see, thats the point. It used to happen regularly so resource, planning and finance was put in place to cope and mitigate. Now its not so frequent, the balance has tipped into not investing, and taking the financial and disruptive hit if it does. Its a bit like Ford working it out was cheaper to pay out for deaths rather than pay to fix the safety issue.

 

Looking at a few places on RTT such as London Bridge, Liverpool St, Norwich and Cambridge, it seems to me the system has coped pretty well this morning. I would defend South Eastern's announcement yesterday that there could be disruption after 1800. If there had been then dealing with tens of thousands of people in sub zero temperatures would have been problematic. Advising people with the flexibility to go home early was a good move.

Maybe my memory is failing but I think I recall some pretty horrendous occasions on the third rail system in the 50s with frozen points etc where the job ground to a halt. People were a bit more stoical then!

 

Agree entirely. Last night Anglia railways were advising passengers that trains would not run after 2200 so get home early. As it happens, it appears there was no disruptive weather on the rails network in East Anglia last night. Yes, there is adverse weather approaching from the south with heavy snow and blizzards, but not until Friday/Saturday by which time OC could have got down to Southall in readiness for the Cardiff and back in the comfort of Southall long before the snow arrives. Unbelievable.

 

In Norway they have no problem with snow on the Bergen railway.

Have a look at this YouTube train drivers videos - shortened versions from some of the train drivers own videos.

Subscriber is called HinduCowGirl - who happens to be a lady train driver.

Excellent videos - the following clip is a shortened version off the train plotting through snow drifts.

 

I don't think we could ever justify the investment needed to deal with those conditions but we are going into a flat panic just because there might be some snow.

 

It reached -12 near Shrewsbury. It was a very cold day, but it was a wonderful run by The King.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/nov/28/cold-weather-snow-winter

 

Whilst I agree there may have been a tactical decision by SD to cancel this tour, or NR told them to so as to remove stress from the Network (lets face it we are unlikely to find out which, but the latter is a far more reasonable reason in my opinion) I find some of your other comments strange.
If you book many things, theatre tickets, flights, non refundable hotels rooms etc and you do not turn up you loose the money. It would not be SD's fault if your connection was late on a sunny summers day so why should it be on a snowy one.
If there is a safety issue over trains getting stranded then surely the network should be shut down and the whole country told to remain indoors as people will still be travelling to stations, and trains will be running (even if slower and less of them). As I write this neither National Rail or GWR's own website mention any GWR routes in any of this weeks snow warnings.

 

It is not the undertaking of risk assessment that is the issue. We all routinely conduct informal undocumented risk assessments as part of our daily lives but I guess the connotations associated with the phrase by the reactionary minority have tarnished what is only applied common sense.
You may disagree with the risk management in this case but do we have all the facts available to make any judgement?

 

Got to agree - my experience is that safety professionals will usually say 'do the risk assessment, identify the risks and then how to mitigate them'. It is usually 'barrack-room lawyers' and those looking for an excuse not to do something who just say 'health & safety' and 'risk assessment' while probably revealing how little they actually understand about the business they are meant to be in that they can't identify and work out how to mitigate risk - or that they are too lazy to bother!

Train services in the north running fine today despite quite a bit of snow - at worst, a few minutes delay.

Steven

 

Why do we need a whole industry of busybodies to apply common sense? It's the sort of thing that encourages the overreaction that has occurred this week and is killing off the natural positive 'can do' attitude that we have been used up to the last 20 years or so. Safety is best assessed by the Mk1 human brain with its inbuilt self preservation instinct. The whole thing has bred thinking that is now so risk averse we get the latest nonsense where people who have paid for a day out have had it cancelled just because it might snow.

 

A pejorative rant seems to be the stock reaction these days ......
In these cases a single or few mk1 brains have to exercise reasonable precautions and due diligence in order to discharge a duty of care to many hundreds of mk1 brain owners. It may prove to have been excessively cautious but that requires hindsight after the facts presented.

 

We have raised a generation or more that are used to others protecting them from risk and many have not developed useful assessment skills of their own.

 

I wouldnt disagree, taking ordinary caution to mitigate a hazard has become much rarer in modern generations it seems. However, organisers have to be cognisant of these deeply regrettable facts and plan accordingly, almost for the lowest common denominator so can hardly be blamed for taking an ultra cautious approach especially with the litigious way things have gone.

 

But we've lost out on the advanced fares to and from London as I'm sure many have.

To be honest neither the outward nor return paths were worth getting up in the morning for. Perhaps WCR will come up with something better in June. Not to have excessive shoveage on the GWML we need a Class 8 on the train. Hope No9 is fit and well then as it's booked for the Venturer on the Saturday so might well take the train on.

 

I repeat, my experience of property H & S Professionals is that they aim to help work out how to do things safely, not prevent them being done at all. If you consider 'doing things safely' isn't important, where you you stop the 'bonfire of rules'? Railway rule books, motoring laws, indeed any laws? I would be the first to agree that this puts a huge impetus on those making laws to be sensible and ensure that the laws they make don't make a mockery of the concept of regulation and legislation, but I would suggest the H & S world is far from the worst offender!

The other thing one must remember is how much of this is caused by the blame culture/litigious world we live in. 'Mark 1 common sense' (when I was at school, many years ago, I suggested that the first 'Laboratory Rule' should be 'use common sense at all times' and was told by a teacher with a slightly pitying look on his face 'if it was common, we wouldn't need rules!') isn't enough in a world where considering risk and deciding how to mitigate it isn't enough in itself - the ability to prove you have done so is unfortunately all too often seen as more important than the actual risk assessment, whilst 'let's do nothing' is often, and usually mistakenly, seen as the route for which 'we can't be criticised or prosecuted for something going wrong'!

Steven

 

If conditions turn out as bad as they are forecast (and there seems to be some growing confidence that they could be), then maybe the ‘official advice’ will be not to travel unnecessarily and perhaps refunds will be granted.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the cancellation and I see Cromwell is slowly today making its way down from Norwich (which bearing in mind all the bad PR the railway is getting I am surprised they let happen) the most disappointing thing to me is the words in the SD statement.
"with no other steam locomotives available we would normally run with diesel at this short notice rather than cancel"
If your company markets steam tours as its prime business and you know 3 days out that no steam loco is available would it not be reasonable to expect that the tour was postponed, as this was one was but it seems for a different reason. As I guess the date change may allow you to claim a refund then perhaps you have dodged the diesel hauled tour due to the snow.
I have heard it rumoured some SD management have allegedly said that passengers do not mind if tours are diesel hauled rather than steam, maybe that is indeed their view.