Bluebell Railway General Discussion

That’s the end of steam then …chance of burns ,scolds ,too many hot surfaces ,chance of running someone over at a crossing ….crew falling from a running board ….and that nasty hot fire too close to the cab ….

 

The joys of survivorship bias.

It's all fun and games until someone loses a bollock.

Perhaps you could go and comfort my late grandad who saw his friend crushed to death in a shunting accident...

By the way, I'm a Manx Grand Prix marshal, so don't think I'm risk-averse, but we reduce the risk in every sane way we can.

Remember, at one stage the continuous brake on passenger stock was considered a needless expense.

 

It's GWR tanks that are the biggest problem. The top lamp bracket is recessed and there's no real place to put your feet while putting the lamp up there. If you look at other locos there are flanges around the bottom of the bunker or steps for your feet. Even in BR days some drivers didn't bother putting the lamp up on the top bracket, not worth the risk. Ergonomics was a word that completely bypassed the GWR!

 

Honestly I almost didn't post that comment as I was expecting a load of "in my day" responses rather than trying to engage. Seems people would rather have a whinge than a discussion.

 

They didn’t even think it was worth the effort to fit cab doors to tender engines. I don’t like climbing up onto the back of a Stanier tender using those inadequate steps and a couple of handrails that never seem to be in the right place, at least Bulleid Pacific tenders have proper ladders. The blower valve on LMS is located over the firehole door so in the event of a blowback the only alternative to putting your hand in the flames is to whack it with the shovel, not ideal. As you say the science of ergonomics wasn’t that well developed in the 30s

 

The key word is “sane”. @andrewtoplis outlines something well intentioned but which too easily throws out baby with bathwater because of how it’s framed. With very slight adjustment, it becomes something we should all welcome.

As for top lamps, I both agree with those who suggest it’s appropriate to derisk, and those who fear the thin end of the wedge. In both cases, the question of “why are we doing this” is central, and the justification of “preservation” dangerously open to challenge.


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The top bracket on an A4 is pretty hard to get at too. That's why headboards are usually placed on the lower middle bracket rather than up top.

Peter

 

No it is the premise that the first question is "do we need to do it, not "how can we make it safer". On a macro level the answer to do we need to do it i.e. have a heritage railway in the first place is no. Because whilst it brings extreme pleasure to many both volunteers and public, it is a leisure industry and therefore not essential.

 

Not really.... Swindon started a seemingly low priority program in the mid 30s of moving the top lamp iron from the top of the smokebox to one welded to the upper part of the smokebox door itself - for precisely this reason. It was never universally applied but is a useful point when trying to date photos.

They did think of such things - just not something that was considered important. It was a different time...

 

I agree, I mentioned climbing up onto the top of a Stanier tender, in practice I don’t think it’s done now using the steps unless there is no other way. The problem is applying modern H&S to old technology

 

The risk of falling when putting a lamp on a top bracket can be avoided entirely by not using that bracket. Whether that is the right solution may be a matter of opinion. The risk of falling while manhandling the hose(?) of a water crane into the hole in a tender is probably somewhat greater, but cannot be avoided entirely, so how is it minimised?

 

You could minimise that risk - low level water fillers with fire hose attachments; and do the watering from a high pressure hose supply away from a platform. (Many main line locos are set up that way since - in the absence of water cranes - it is a way to get water from a fire truck, particualrly if you at times need to take water under overhead wires). You'd lose a lot of the theatre that makes a heritage railway more than just a train ride. A former loco director wanted to go along that route for tender locos.

Tom

 

This is reducing the whole world to necessary or unnecessary. Should we stop cooking food as we could all eat cold? No, it's daft. The approach I outlined above is how you facilitate activities with risk being carried out safely, which begins with the very fair question "should we do it at all"? The answer may well be yes, in which case you would say " how can we do it as little as absolutely necessary"? and work that through. From there you might say "what could we do to give any additional protection?", which might give you some options like a safety harness if you were working at height. If that doesn't fix it, or isn't practical, you would look at things like training for the staff and PPE. By the time you get to the end point you will have reduced the risk to As Low As Reasonably Practicable which is what the law requires of safety risk. The activity can, therefore, carry on in a much better manner than without this process.

Back to the headcode example, what this achieves is reducing the frequency of working at height, it doesn't ban it if you wanted that particular code for a charter or some occasion when it was important. Assessment of risk is about Likelihood and Severity, if you reduce the frequency of a task being carried out you reduce the likelihood of injury.

Ultimately this is all about allowing things to continue, not getting rid of them.

Andy (27 years on heritage steam and looking forward to another 27).

 

It's looking rather good at the Buebell tomorrow. 31065, 73082 and 80151 hopefully in use.

https://www.bluebell-railway.co.uk/bluebell/pti/index.html

Especially interesting to me is the BR Standard five on the Pullman train, I really hope it stays that way.

Not the Golden Arrow, but I did have a run on the up working of the all Pullman Bournemouth Belle behind a Standard 5 once. It would be great to get a photo of 73082 on a Pullman train to go with that log, that I timed on Sunday 4 December 1966.

On that day, John 'Boy' Gaffney aka the 'New Cross Lip', one of the really fast lower link drivers (100 mph with Lapford later on in 1967), and a great guy as well, took 73020 down to Bournemouth on the 11.30 ex Waterloo. And both him and his fireman, Ryecroft, were booked back on the Belle, with, I think the same loco.

73020 did ok on the lightly loaded 11.30, but Gaffney wanted something a bit stronger to have good run back on the Belle. I'm not sure how the conversation went in Bournemouth loco shed, but being young and with the New Cross Lip nickname I doubt it went down well with the shed foreman and certainly couldn't have been printed here! So him and his fireman appeared with 73022, far from in the best condition, for the up Belle of over 450 tons behind the tender. For a Bournmouth crew in that position at Bournemouth no doubt the shed foreman would havc said something along the lines of, "I've just checked round the back and found a fully coaled, watered and ready to go Merchant Navy" you can have. Especially as there were a couple of Bournemouth crews (amongst some very good drivers), who I am sure would have refused point blank to have taken a knackered class 5 on a train usually booked for a class 8.

The crew of Gaffney and Ryecroft did the best they could. A decent run to the water stop at Southampton. But the almost mandatory signal check near Eastleigh where the long climb to Roundwood starts saw a recovery to the mid 40s, but with steam presure falling it needed full regulator and 45 to 50% cut off most of the way up the climb to eventually get over the top of the bank at 37 mph. Running after that was mid to high 60s, with a number of signal checks - I didn't ask at Waterloo (12 minutes lost on schedule, mostly due to all the signal checks) but I suspect care was being taken after we got over Roundwood to avoid a prolonged water stop, as the consumption must have been quite high.

Oops, story time over. Back to the Bluebell, I hope 73082 is ok for the GA tomorrow and that Horsted Keynes buffet is open for coffee and snacks.

Bryan B

 

But the framing is the problem, because it elevates necessity to be the dominant decision factor.

There are other ways to get to ALARP that do not elevate necessity in this way. That needs to consider the hazard, the mitigation(s) and the importance of the activity, to work out the trade-off.

In the heritage sector especially, I think this is important - because overwrought though some of the examples are, they are the reductio ad not particularly absurdam of this particular framing.

 

Real life has changed, in the old days you didn't have the same independent investigation if someone got seriously hurt/killed. In the old days people didn't sue for damages. You only have to look when there is a serious road accident, roads are mow closed for hours to do an investigation etc. It didn't usually make the national press if someone was killed in a road accident. Accidents now usually make the national press = bad publicity. I also don't think most people are generally as responsible as they were, or use common sense as much, hence it leads to more regulation etc. It's not rocket science either to apply sensible H&S rules. We live in a different world. Sensible H&S shouldn't mean the end of heritage.
And yes I am old enough to remember steam trains on the Cuckoo Line !
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If it may please at least some, I put some photos of visits to the Blubell this year. https://www.flickr.com/photos/ady77014/albums/72177720319320553

I am not sure how do I ended up going 3 times this year. Still not managed to ride in the Mets though...

 

I think that "non-essential" argument is dubious anyhow. The "non-essential" parts of the economy - the entire leisure, entertainment and tourism industry for a start, plus a very large proportion of "unnecessary" consumer goods (fast fashion, many gadgets, luxury foods) - are big enough in total that if they were removed overnight, the economy would collapse and there would be no money for "essential" services. So you could argue that the "non-essential" parts of the economy are in fact just as essential as the "essential" parts!

 

I agree. The key words of ALARP are the last two. reasonably practicable. The problem with reframing everything to “should we do it at all” is that the test becomes very simply can we avoid doing it? And the obvious very far end of that line of thought is that we could simply avoid running a heritage railway at all.

Since that might reasonably be seen to be taking things too far, the question is where is the reasonable point? That is very much harder to define, but if we accept that running a heritage railway is an acceptable form of “necessary “ then I think it should surely follow that the purpose of such is to preserve elements of the way things looked in period. Whether lamps should still go on top brackets or not is then a matter for individual duty holders, but my feeling is that they probably should, but specific thought be put into HOW and training provided for that “how”.

In the example of the GW tank engine, personally I open the doors on the cab sheet if possible and reach over the coal.

 

Another very pleasant day at the Bluebell today. Except for going to the old West Hoathly station for the last return run by 80151 I spent all day at Horsted Keynes, which is what I usually do. It can be quiet there, especially when, like this weekend there was an event (Fireman Sam) at Sheffield Park. Trains looked quite well loaded most of today, so I hope that event went well for all the young visitors and was a money earner for the Bluebell. And getting back to HK, I will mention the small cafe on platform 3 & 4, to which I made three visits during the day for coffee, with two of those visits seeing me enjoying a large sausage roll with a lot of tasty sausage meat inside!

30165, 80151 and 73082 (Golden Arrow) were booked to be in service. Which is why I went, as I need photos of a Std 5 on a pullman train to go with my only timing log of a Std 5 on the all Pullman Bournemouth Belle: see #7214 And I also wanted to get appropriate photos of 80151 to put with my timing logs of the same class of loco on the Brockenhurst-Lymington branch. Along with those locos 31065 (aka 65) was kept busy on its scheduled workings.

A few photos from today below.

Bryan B