WCRC Licence Suspended

Have seen tweet from Phil Haigh saying that ORR have found "significant safety weaknesses" in WCRC documentation.

I fear this will get worse before it gets better.

 

Oh dear

 

Also noticed on the WC facebook page. A scathing attack from a, FGW Driver, aimed at WC. Wasn't a pretty read. Hopefully a view which is not shared by the majority of, First Great Western.

Transcript below

Facebook user via WCR

What your staff done (Overriding safety devices) was downright dangerous & Stupid I use that junction daily at high speed. Do I have to be concerned that inexperienced or inadequate Drivers may put me & my passengers in Danger!!!
Support Network Rail & other TOCs completely in requiring a FULL investigation & keep you off the Tracks until solved.

 

I wonder how Phil Haigh knows that?

 

Look. You can hardly blame the FGW driver for having such a view. He is imagining the awful loss of life should his HST have collided with this train including his own life. Whether the driver tampered with the safety devices is still under investigation (or so I thought) but even as a big mainline steam fan, I can see his point of view. To LMarsh1987, in response to "Hopefully not a view shared by the majority of FGW drivers is wildly optimistic. Carry a poll out today and you surely would get a 90% view of a similar nature as the facebook posting. We are talking about life and death here, which according to the FGW driver, could and should have been avoided.

 

I believe also the WCRs licence expires on 15th May and they will need to apply to have it renewed anyway?

Don

 

Good IMO, identify the area's that require improvement and do something about it, I would be more worried if little fault was found.

 

I imagine as a Transport Journalist he will have his contacts in the organisation. Whether or not it's information that should be in the public domain at this stage I don't know, but I can certainly imagine how he may have come by it.

 

Of course they did, thats the reason NR suspended them. Documentation is the easiest thing in the world to fix, however a poor safety culture is much more difficult to resolve.

 

Agreed, but I would imagine that the regulator's involvement will make things much tougher to fix.

 

Two requests:

1 - Can we change the title of the thread to WCRC - Suspended....its a bit more accurate
2 - Is it possible to limit the posts to new info only? I feel I have re-read the same 4 statements over and over for the last 24 pages!

 

Sorry - third request:

3 - WCRC did not CREATE a monopoly - its just that no-one else wanted the task.

You could accuse WCRC of facilitating the expansion of the market, but that's about all they are guilty of.

 

The way I read it, the documentation they've found represents, and illustrates a poor safety culture at work, so in that sense this is not a case of documentation that's easy to fix I would have thought

 

Oh you little spoil sport. Why change a winning formula and possibly the biggest topic since National Steam Preservation started. This is history in the making as I reckon that before 15th May, the posts will reach 1 million. A World Record. Yippeee.

 

The actual tweet is

Add that to the comment in NR's letter to WCRC last week

And it really doesn't look good.

 

No chance will it exceed the WSR thread, that gained 7 pages just yesterday! Perhaps 500 pages before their EGM...

 

You obviously are not folowing the West Somerset thread. 452 pages and over 9000 posts

 

Yes, I suspect quite a few are holding back on this thread anyway, until some more facts are made known. There's only so long a thread can feed on speculation.

 

FACTS?!!! I thought this was Nat Pres?

 

Love it lol





Philm thro the keyhole likes this