RAIB Investigation: South Devon Railway

There is not a great deal

there is a great deal in common between aviation and railway safety. Both can learn from the other. Both deal with machinery and people

 

More by luck than judgement, it has to be said. Never mind the empty "lessons learned", how about the more proactive "heads will roll" - and have they?

 

There's not an awful lot of point sacking someone if you don't update the relevant safety documents/change the working practices, and once you've done that there's not a lot of point sacking someone unless they refuse to play along I'd have thought?

 

Well, at the very least I hope that those responsible for letting this carriage out in that state have been made very forcefully aware of the error of their ways.

And, at the risk of going over this yet again - how hard would it have been to have either refitted the floor pending repairs or replace the floor even temporarily? Further upthread, Big Al calls it 'sloppiness' - a most apt description.

Perhaps now heritage railways will pay more attention to those carriages that actually earn them money; there isn't an infinite supply of Mk. 1s any more after all. I am left wondering how much repair/restoration work the £53,000 this has cost SDR would have effected on any of the remaining 21 carriages the SDR owns.

 

That is a real concern of the ORR and has been for some time. Boards need to consist of people competent to undertake their roles. That doesn't necessarily mean a knowledge of railway operations though.

 

If they was the only criterion, your board would be very short of the necessary skills and knowledge. Knowledge of Engineering, finance, SHE and Companies Act to name but four necessary attributes of the overall board.

 

I think you know as well as I do that running a railway takes more than what I suggested in my post

 

Problems seem to arise when the shareholders/ members etc. are asked to vote for their 'mates' who's only qualification may be that they have been volunteering for some time. They may have little or no professional experience in any appropriate discipline but people like them.

And then there's the case where you struggle to find people to stand for election. In this case you can easily get a real numptie elected simply because no one else stood.

At the other end of the scale there are those who always seem to be pushing themselves forward who stand for election. Then, once in office, they seem to think that they almost own the place and that all things shall be done as they say - whether they know what they are talking about or not.

These problems occur in almost all voluntary committee run organisations everywhere.They are by no means exclusive to heritage (or tourist ) railways.

 

Or indeed, political parties!

 

The voice of experience speaking here I suspect!

I have said in the past that those who understand the responsibilities will probably run a mile! And that is certainly true of any organisation which expects volunteers to take a leadership role with the ultimate corporate responsibility.

As I have previously stated on this thread, there is also the problem that there are those involved in the preserved railway movement seem to take a pride in avoiding 'big railway' experience or with H & S experience. Of course, the issue at hand is only in part a operating matter (not removing the coach from service, even after the event, not reporting the incident when it should have been etc.) but also an engineering and perhaps above all business planning and management issue. Again, berating, belittling and undermining management is a standard feature of railway preservation - presumably recreating the 'staff/management' relationship of old!

I know I am repeating myself but it is worth doing - commercial, operating and engineering need to work together and show more openness with and respect for each other than is all too often the case. By 'respect' I mean not saying 'please' and 'thank you' but not treating each other, and each other requests and requirements, with disdain and the disrespect of giving unrealistic answers (or no answers). Without appearing to refer to this case (of which I know nothing beyond what is in the public sphere), Commercial saying 'we think we need a 5 coach service set, with a spare available to strengthen' should then become operating and engineering stating what they need to achieve that, and any requirements they see in order to do so (for example, actually refine what this requirement means by saying that means having a 7th vehicle available to cover failures, where the spares are located for ease of access and use even before we get to 'but we only have 4 serviceable coaches and need top spend £XX,XXX to achieve 7'). Financial and other resource requirements must be genuinely assessed (too many across preserved railways believe they are expected to 'make do and mend' instead of saying 'well, to do it properly will cost £XX,XXX' and giving finance and commercial genuine targets to manage achieving) and communicated, proper plans, including a programme with suitable allowance for unknown factors, drawn up AND SHARED and then the whole process kept under review with information passing between the 3 areas (Engineering, Ops and Commercial, as well as of course Finance) as time and hopefully work progresses.

Noe of this may seem to be Health & Safety but the nicest written systems in the world mean nothing if there aren't business systems capable of actually delivering them.

How many businesses generally, let alone preserved Railways measure up to this?

Steven

 

I hope that we get somewhere approaching that ideal and then you get thrown a curved ball which throws all of that careful planning out of the window. Be it a totally unexpected failure, a delay by a contractor or the potential to be in a TV programme

 

I agree with the general premise of your post but I just wanted to comment on this. Whilst I agree that heritage railways could (and indeed almost certainly do) learn from 'big railway' practice, over on the main line all is not perfect either.
For a very basic example I shall mention the wearing of hard hats. On Network Rail, for some time, all trackside staff have to wear them regardless of what they are doing or where. In many cases they are totally unnecessary and in some cases contribute to a reduction in safety; a friend of mine used to do S&T maintenance for NR in the midlands and told me that one of the problems they experienced was rain water dripping off one's hard hat and straight into the electrical cabinet they were working in. He also told me that in summer the hats were quite handy for collecting blackberries in. Now, the problem with this is that if staff start to disrespect the equipment provided for their safety, it becomes a joke and they may not use it correctly (or at all) when doing a task which actually needs it.
London Underground, incidentally, I believe take a different view of hard hats and only require them to be worn for certain tasks. And this seems to be the way on most if not all heritage railways too. So it is certainly not always the case that 'big railway = best practice'.
I daresay there are numerous other examples. I think the important thing is an awareness of the risks involved in any given task and a willingness to listen to the experience of others, rather than just blindly copying what others do and assuming that others have all the answers. On this particular topic, I personally prefer the LU approach over the NR one, and personally I would still advocate the risk-based approach even if LU changed their policy and fell in line with NR.

(Incidentally, before someone finds a photo of an LU worksite which is a sea of hard hats - many contracting organisations simply make their staff follow NR rules regardless of whose railway they are on.)

 

Many years ago, in BR days I was advised that I needed to wear a hard hat to go to the toilet in a Signal Box as the frame room was a designated hard hat area

 

I'm sure we can all quote examples of where H&S procedures have been implemented badly or inappropriately and have ended up creating new issues rather than resolving the original one.

PPE and head protection issue mentioned above is a classic example, I regularly see inappropriate head protection, not because it is wrong to use it- but often the type selected is not compatible with other ppe or doing the task required.

However, done right it should be a useful tool and should actually assist in management practices and designing working procedures.

It's all down to who is advising and implementing.

Chris

 

There's a lesson there. Being able to say "Stop!" if one sees an unsafe practice should extend to practices introduced in the name of H&S that are actually counter-productive.

 

Takes time to filter through though.

This used to be the case on airlines where "pilot always knows what's best". From what I remember this resulted in an air disaster where the passengers and cabin crew warned the pilots that one of the wings was on fire but because the instruments were saying the engines were fine they ignored the passengers and cabin crew despite the fact the rest of them could see it.

Now-a-days cabin crew are treated as the pilots eyes and ears on the rest of the aircraft.

 

Which crash was this?

 

Unfortunately I can't remember. It was on an air crash/safety show on the telly years ago.