Derailment at Paddington

[royaloak]

But apparently it's all OK because they were all low speed with low risk and no casualties (NR's own internal reporting) -  no, ANY derailment is a complete system failure............... it's only a matter of time before it'll be high speed and with greater consequences .................. the sheer volume of PW component failures ........ cracked crossings, broken IBJ's on the SR alone is very, very concerning ............................

I have to agree with you, and being one of the people who is sat right at the front of the train it is a little bit concerning that we seem to have been here before several times and we are all aware where we ended up each time.

 

Its the people on the ground at Network Rail I feel sorry for, they are by and large a damn fine bunch who take a great deal of pride in what they do but they are being undermined and ignored by 'them upstairs' and a lot of them are feeling we are heading towards another Hatfield.

Edited August 20, 2017 by royaloak

[phil-b259]

But apparently it's all OK because they were all low speed with low risk and no casualties (NR's own internal reporting) -  no, ANY derailment is a complete system failure............... it's only a matter of time before it'll be high speed and with greater consequences .................. the sheer volume of PW component failures ........ cracked crossings, broken IBJ's on the SR alone is very, very concerning ............................

 

No doubt it will simply be added to the pile of evidence accumulating that the 'incompetent*' NR needs 'replacing' by 'private sector expertise' once Brexit (and that pesky rule about separation of infrastructure and operations is no more) has taken place.

 

*which it arguably is in certain areas - though not for the reasons the Politicians say it is.

[96701]

No doubt it will simply be added to the pile of evidence accumulating that the 'incompetent*' NR needs 'replacing' by 'private sector expertise' once Brexit (and that pesky rule about separation of infrastructure and operations is no more) has taken place.

 

*which it arguably is in certain areas - though not for the reasons the Politicians say it is.

Some of the government owned companies on the continent don't do any better. Some of them have had some very high profile smashes.

[uax6]

The one at Ely was not low speed, it was a line speed one, and they are very lucky that nothing was coming the other way.....

 

I doubt that it will wait till Brexit, I get a feeing that the flog off is going to happen very soon...

 

Andy g

[TheSignalEngineer]

What is derailment damage and what pre-existed isn't clear from the pictures but the number of tie-bars and state of the baseplates/concrete trackbed should have been enough to close it. 

[Zomboid]

I'm not sure NR will be sold off in the short term. Given the catastrophe that was Railtrack, and the fact that it was recent enough to not have been forgotten yet. And the government isn't really secure enough in its position to do anything as controversial as Railtrack 2.

[Geoff Endacott]

You can only sell it if someone wants to buy it and, unless the price is absurdly low, I don't think there will be many takers at the moment.

 

Geoff Endacott

Edited August 20, 2017 by Geoff Endacott

[uax6]

I'm sure that there must be a politician that is registering a company as we speak. A quick buy it cheap, and flog it on for a bit more will be the order of the day... As long as they make out of it, they won't care about corporate manslaughter. In fact they may well get the government to keep that bit of the overall responsibility as the only way to get the correct investment....

 

Andy G

[Supaned]

I dunno - sell it off cheaply and then watch them find another £1 billion down the back of the sofa to miraculously do lots of work...

[The Stationmaster]

There's a tie-bar visible under the front of the derailed power car in the BBC head-on photo ................. DEAD giveaway - failure to manage wheel-timbers properly yet again ............... gauge spread .............. no if no buts

 

Yet more Railtrack era lessons being unlearnt ............ Bexley derailment ...................... My God NR is really going down the pan

 

And two tie bars visible in the upper of the two photos published above plus what looks like what might be some spread of the nearer rail in one of the other photos on the 'net.  Utter shambles by the look of it - i wonder how many 'suits' from Swindon etc pass that way every now and then and don't have a clue what they're looking at?

[Robert Shrives]

Hi ,

Sad reading of  all of the above and have to agree its is all going wrong and having spoken to many across my level in the industry it is expected that we will suffer a major loss of life in the nearest of futures. Grayrigg was a wakeup call, Ely is another the plethora of low speed derailments however not all those are on NR infrastructure so its not an even picture.

The thought of another witch hunt fills me with dread as career bullies will push out the quietly competent ones seen as a challenge to the next "new way forward."  And as taxpayers we all lose again. 

 

Entertaining to note in all this pics of recent actions how many folk are holding and using communicators of some kind , the makers of startrek must be pleased but clearly the "beam up Scottie" button still not working. Not sure if a mobile phone can actually put a train back on yet but I guess there will be an app for it soon.

Robert    

[Siberian Snooper]

The last time I looked, a few years ago, several of the low number platform roads at Pad were being kept to gauge using alternate tiebars and Acrow props.

[jamie92208]

From what has been said here it beggars belief that with all the various closures of Paddington over the last few years for Crossrail related works, no one has managed to put some platform track fettling into the work programme. However having worked in another organisation where experience and hard learned knowledge was often dismissed as negativity it doesn't surprise me.

 

Jamie

[dj_crisp]

Looks similar to my track laying skills....

 

Paddington this morning

 

Cheers

Will

[TheSignalEngineer]

Back in 1990 the track in my depot siding was kept in a better state than that.

[TheSignalEngineer]

The pressures on staff being talked about were exactly what made me leave the industry as soon as I was in a position to be financially secure and before I had a nervous breakdown or heart attack. There had been been bad at times during the financially strapped days of the 1970s and into sectorisation, but from the early 1990s got many times worse. Under BR I was spending about 80% of my time on engineering decisions and making sure the job got done right, the other 20% on managing staff and doing the paperwork. Within a couple of years I was lucky to spend 20% of my week on engineering matters. Backside covering paperwork and contractual arguments had almost swamped us, not to mention the Magic Roundabout of escalating costs trying to retain competent staff after so many had been retired early.

Edited August 21, 2017 by TheSignalEngineer

[Northroader]

Quite why is that length of track still laid as baulk road? Surely there's no specific requirement for it, and the implication is that it has been there for ... how long?? Was it just left to show how things were done in the old days?

[Grovenor]

Quite why is that length of track still laid as baulk road? Surely there's no specific requirement for it, and the implication is that it has been there for ... how long?? Was it just left to show how things were done in the old days?

That's not baulk road as in GW, terminal platforms were built that way to allow for drainage of effluent from vehicles parked there, as this looks fairly short maybe just for leakage from locos/hst power cars, but this construction was used for platforms where sleeper trains stood to deal with the toilet waste.

Regards

[Zomboid]

Some of the platforms at Waterloo have the same longitudinal timbers arrangement for the last 20m or so, so it's not a western peculiarity.

(And similarly, some platforms at Paddington have what looks to my untrained eye like slab track at the buffers)

[The Stationmaster]

Back in 1990 the track in my depot siding was kept in a better state than that.

 

I'm trying desperately to remember when that track at Paddington was laid and I reckon it can be no later than the last big layout alteration in the early 1990s and possibly even before that.  In other words it's at least 20 years old and while the rate of rail wear will be low clearly timber deterioration is more age related than anything else.  Incidentally the steel spacers seen in the platform 1 line in Post No.39 were installed from new and are similar to those used in earlier track at Paddington.

The pressures on staff being talked about were exactly what made me leave the industry as soon as I was in a position to be financially secure and before I had a nervous breakdown or heart attack. There had been been bad at times during the financially strapped days of the 1970s and into sectorisation, but from the early 1990s got many times worse. Under BR I was spending about 80% of my time on engineering decisions and making sure the job got done right, the other 20% on managing staff and doing the paperwork. Within a couple of years I was lucky to spend 20% of my week on engineering matters. Backside covering paperwork and contractual arguments had almost swamped us, not to mention the Magic Roundabout of escalating costs trying to retain competent staff after so many had been retired early.

Fortunately most of my experience with NR at a technical level has been from outside their employment but some of what I have come across has shocked me because of its ineptitude or pure lack of knowledge about how to do a job.  Some years back (Bletchley - Bedford resignalling so it might have still been Railtrack days I think) I had to translate a set of the manufacturer's technical information about emergency local level crossing controls into a set of Instructions for the staff who would be required to operate the crossings under local control.  That work was given to the company I then worked for as an occasional consultant because the Zone, or whatever they were called then, had nobody with the necessary knowledge and experience to do it - yet it was all very straightforward.  Similarly, and this is in NR days I 'helped out' a particular post because it's holder, who had the responsibility as part of his job, didn't really understand how to write Signalbox Special Instructions, and he wasn't the only person I know of on that particular Zone who was in that state - all because they had either been incorrectly appointed or had not been trained after appointment.

 

I remain in sufficient touch with the industry to know that these sorts of things are not isolated incidents. Similarly the April electronics failure which affected the signalling between Didcot and swindo revealed another massive shortcoming where it was virtually impossible to restore the train service due the the sheer lack of people qualified to get involved in temporary bloc working.  Back in BR days on the Western something like that on - as on that weekend - our only route to the west would have seen all hands to the pumps including - if necessary - even senior operations managers deployed on the ground in order to keep the railway running; that relatively simple dedication and depth of knowledge to do such jobs just doesn't seem to be there.

[Trog]

As the Stationmaster says in BR days when the brown stuff hit the fan every one mucked in, and you got to see quite senior people demonstrating that they still remembered how to do the basics. One that sticks in my mind is helping the Divisional Civil Engineers P-Way Assistant to tip mermaid wagons. The local TME who was of a more modern outlook was most unimpressed at being directed to help the Engineering Supervisor tip the adjacent wagon.

[Supaned]

And herein lies the problem. We now seem to have a generation of Managers by title , who no doubt have all sorts of degrees and letters after their name , but very little actual experience or knowledge of the basic principles of how the railway that they're in charge of actually works on a day to day level . 

 

As many have said , good, experienced staff have been either pushed out or left to save their own sanity , understandably so , and the state of the p-way in general these days is declining - speed restrictions on for the best part of a year because it isn't deemed cost effective to carry out a repair , and as others have said , I hate to say it but I can forsee another Hatfield or Grayrigg type incident on the horizon before long - I certainly don't want to be on the train that comes off the road at high speed....

[D1059]

And herein lies the problem. We now seem to have a generation of Managers by title , who no doubt have all sorts of degrees and letters after their name , but very little actual experience or knowledge of the basic principles of how the railway that they're in charge of actually works on a day to day level . 

 

 

 

Sadly, this is relevant to many walks of life these days - many of the coal face jobs in my field, IT, have either disappeared altogether, or been outsourced overseas to people who haven't got a clue what to do when it all goes pear shaped

[The Johnster]

Is it just me or have things got suddenly and noticeably worse since the Theresa May government came into power?  Not trying to make political capital here, there seems to be a correlation and I am wondering if the root of the problem is higher than NR, who have done pretty well overall since inheriting the mess Railtrack left behind, but now seem to be circling the same drain.  

 

The last generation of traditional railway managers and engineers are retiring, or getting out before the ship goes down if they've got any sense, so I may be being unfair to Theresa and this is just unfortunate timing, or a combination of factors.  I will not air my opinion of Chris Grayling here, it would not be constructive...

[chris p bacon]

Is it just me or have things got suddenly and noticeably worse since the Theresa May government came into power?  Not trying to make political capital here, there seems to be a correlation and I am wondering if the root of the problem is higher than NR, who have done pretty well overall since inheriting the mess Railtrack left behind, but now seem to be circling the same drain.  

 

The last generation of traditional railway managers and engineers are retiring, or getting out before the ship goes down if they've got any sense, so I may be being unfair to Theresa and this is just unfortunate timing, or a combination of factors.  I will not air my opinion of Chris Grayling here, it would not be constructive...

 

No matter what political persuasion I don't think you can lay the blame at the feet of the current PM. My wife worked with Government departments for a while, and the only thing that stayed constant was the civil servants. 

They are the ones that really wield power and influence.