Heritage Railways, are they in trouble, generally?

That’s fair, but also applies to paid staff. @Andy Williams gives one example, the RAIB report in the runaway of 37198 at the GCR comes to mind as another.

 

Absolutely! It was really to make the point that all heritage railways have a vested interest in everyone in the sector having effective safety management embedded in their organisations. In the context of the title of this thread one cavalier could cause trouble for others.

 

More of your generalised "justification" for imposed bureaucracy, I feel! In my experience, in the LNERCA, we always worked as best as we could to the best possible safety standards, even when the overall working conditions were difficult (for example, working on carriage roofs in Pickering yard - it wasn't feasible to put scaffolding up because the yard was shunted on a daily basis) but we did the best we could and I cannot recall a serious accident. By and large I think we matched the standards of what the paid staff used and improved our standards to match theirs, so I don't think that was a cavalier approach. Ironically, and more recently, when an ultimately fatal accident did occur it was inside a workshop, where a wheel on some safety staging had not been locked, allowing it to move as the victim stepped onto it, allowing him to slip and fall. An HSE inspection afterwards found that all the appropriate equipment was present, routinely used, and better that usual. Anywhere I have worked, or seen work going on has been generally done under safe practices, but inevitably there are occasional careless operators. I don't think I'm wrong in suggesting that a certain member of paid staff on the NYMR was "let go" quite recently because they hadn't a clue about safe working and nearly caused a serious accident so no-one is necessarily immune to criticism. Safety officers have a difficult role, I accept - more often nowadays they are "safety advisors" and quite often (in my professional life experience of dealing with far more dangerous materials than anyone is ever likely to encounter at a heritage railway!) can find it hard to separate the important matters from trivia , and that has a tendency to make people treat them with disdain. It's another area where choosing the right person with good people skills is important- no-one wants a safety officer to be a self important would-be dictator - they need to be someone willing to understand and work to come up with practical measures to ameliorate risks.

 

I must admit that it wasn’t affiliated and associated groups that I had in mind so much as other railways but the principle holds good. The implication of 60044’s post is that the decision on safety standards and compliance was a decision that LNERCA were free to make when working in the railway’s premises. There can be an assumption that owners owning groups have such discretion but in practice compliance with the host railway’s safety management system should be mandatory.

 

Fair comment. Apologies for missing them.

 

Where does you base contention that volunteers dislike Health and Safety come from? You can have a good culture or a bad culture around HS. You can individuals who behave well or not. Neither of those things has anything to do with whether they are paid or not.

As a rule (having managed people in dangerous industries from manufacturing to heritage railways) I don’t see any difference in behaviour between volunteers and paid staff. In fact volunteers are marginally less likely to be complacent as a rule. Whilst there are occasions where someone has been cavalier in my “eyeline” I have dealt with about the same proportion of disciplinary cases among paid and volunteers.

In the case of the South Devon let me quote from the report “The railway's management decided that the door would be secured and notices placed on the door,” The management were paid employees. The decision was nothing to do with a volunteer being cavalier.

I completely reject your notion that the concern for volunteer morale is at odds with good health and safety or that because it is very very difficult to understand the railway volunteer unless you have been one, that that means you increase the risk of poor management. That conflates two entirely separate ideas, but is in any case demonstratably wrong because a great deal of H and S management which is very good is done by volunteers, and bad cultures can be created quite rapidly by paid staff.

 

All of which is true but the difference can be that as volunteers are often undertaking work primarily for enjoyment there can be resistance to measures that make their hobby more like being back at work. I’d be surprised if you hadn’t come across that. Where I’d agree is that being put right by a recognised volunteer tends to be more palatable and therefore effective .

 

Where did I say volunteers universally dislike health and safety?

 

Well, for example it is strongly implied here that, even if not universal, problems with implementing a safe working culture would be problematic with volunteers:

As others have said, H&S transcends any distinction between paid and volunteer staff. Certainly some people can be resistant to changes in working practices, but if you hadn't wished to single out volunteers specifically, why not write e.g. "My personal bet on the failing of a preserved railway will come from a fatility in a workshop where a member of staff ignored all the training/codes etc, gets themselved killed" or "that creates risk that the views that suit the staff will take precedence over good HSE practice." etc. etc.

Your wording strongly implied that difficulties implementing a safe working environment were universally down to volunteer dislike of such things, and by inference that paid staff were exemplary in such matters. If that is not what you meant, then why specifically single out volunteers amongst the wider issue of staff working practice?

Tom

 

Disagree entirely, my initial post was in response to the initial post that "only" someone who has volunteered can be a good GM. I have been very careful to use terms such as "can", not "will", or "must". I have also pointed out the importance of volunteers and stated it's a balancing act.

With any grouping, the idea that only an insider can possibly manage them can lead to a refusal to take on board necessary change.

I stand by my prediction, I hope I am wrong, but I stand by it.

 

From this forum alone, there appear to be a number of heritage railways with in-house directors or trustees who have apparently not got all their members agreeing with them.

It's inevitable. Those with the people and management skills won't necessarily want to take on more of the same, but those without these skills may see an opportunity for "promotion" to a position which they haven't been able to achieve in their (paid) career. Their years as a volunteer with a particular railway doesn't mean that they have the necessary skills to take on a managerial role.

 

I'm astounded: my rough old comp had all of that stuff back in the 70s. As it was a feeder school for the likes of Perkins Engines, Peter Brotherhood and the brickyards, these were all useful skills.

 

You've clearly never had to deal with some of the maverick staff I have then.

 

Fair comment. However in terms of getting an effective GM/CEO it perhaps becomes more important to have someone who can take the railway's stakeholders (be they, employees, volunteers, shareholders or members) with them, and understands the underlying ethos that created the railway that they seek to manage. I can think of one large heritage railway where forays into employing external candidates proved nothing short of disastrous.

 

What happens these days if a volunteer has line management responsibilities? When I was working, nearly 20 years ago now, this was a grey area in legislation.

 

Many of us were astounded at the time!

 

In my experience, contempt for H & S seems to be more of an age thing, rather than whether its a volunteer or paid person. Younger people have grown up within a health & safety environment whereas us old timers can remember when there were few rules and you looked after yourself when it came to safety for the most part. That's not to say I ignore H & S and I'm quick to pull up anyone I find not obeying the rules. I do get annoyed at those who take it too far, though, such as with not allowing lone working under any circumstances.

 

The other big question is how does a heritage railway select this volunteer director with all these people skills, against all the available candidates?

Does the railway have the interviewing and selection experience within their working membership? How does it identify if any candidate will be successful? How does that volunteer get a wider view of the organisation?

The volunteer'd popularity within their current team or role may not be reflected when they take on wider responsibilities. What happens when they are faced with a difficult decision which potentially may adversely affect the department they worked in before? Like postponing a pet project or even cutting their budgets.

 

I’m always interested to see the breadth of experience displayed, so would be very surprised if it were just a popularity contest.

As importantly, if recruitment of volunteers is that weak, why is recruitment of senior staff going to be any better?

 

Yes I agree Steve, that was blatantly obvious in my work life. The same thing also applied to the likes of Diversity Training. And if this training is computer based like much of ours was, then many would just straight go the the test at the end and keep doing it until they passed.
It can run the risk of being another tick box exercise, and too many "stupid rules" such as you are 6ft you must have your desk raised (even if that actually causes you discomfort), is a great way for people to say H & S is BS.