Private locomotives running regularly on BR metals

[ardbealach]

14 hours ago, Wheatley said:

This is the connection with the main line between Carron and Dailuaine halt, I believe that is Carron's distant signal.

 

https://flic.kr/p/WpKq1f

 

There are some stunning photos of the pugs working at Dailuaine and Balmenach distilleries in that album too. The juxtoposition between the gorgeous Barclay pug and the monstrous 7 storey asbestos granary at the latter is just crying out to be modelled !

Thanks Wheatley for the interesting images on Dailuaine in your recent posting.  I had seen some of them previously, having found them on the Speyside Visitor Centre website - [go to their website and then to Galleries and then Railway Gallery for more similar Boyes images] 

 

Over the lockdown last summer and autumn I maintained my sanity by building this distillery cameo - image attached - which was inspired by the Barclay Pug at Dailuaine.  Complete with the Parkside hopper wagons.   

 

And it was from this cameo that started this thread.  [Alisdair]

[Compound2632]

I suppose Dunrobin was the only private locomotive regularly to work passenger traffic over the main line (though not BR)? Or are there instances of colliery locomotives working workmen's trains over the main line?

[Tim Hall]

3 on a Barclay footplate is common at places such as Pontypool and Blaenavon.

Edited February 26, 2021 by Tim Hall

[AMJ]

The number of staff on a loco footplate depends upon the rulebook for the railway.  At Middleton we have a limit of 3 so that can be driver, fireman and a cleaner (aka trainee fireman).

 

I have seen some preserved locos fitted with the "can operate over BR metals between point x & y" type of plates and must see if I have any photos.

 

Safe working is all down to understanding and agreement of practices being carried out between all staff.

 

As a curved ball, there were a number of locos given loaded tests on BR metals that never carried plates.  One well known image exists of a Hunslet w/n 4000 on goods trials before shipping to a Peru at Guisley.  

 

[Compound2632]

58 minutes ago, AMJ said:

Safe working is all down to understanding and agreement of practices being carried out between all staff.

 

I should hope it is primarily down to knowledge and understanding of, and adherence to, the rules.

[Edwin_m]

On 22/02/2021 at 17:27, phil-b259 said:

The point is that such an unorthodox arrangement would have been required to be specifically authorised for that particular location.

 

In modern terms it would have been 'risk assessed' and things like the prevailing gradients, any level crossings, distance over the mainline to be covered without a brakevan all considered.

 

If said assessment was believed to show any risk of a runaway was within acceptable limits (remembering that we are considerably more 'risk averse' these days* than was typical in the 1950s or earlier) then such movements would be authorised by way of signal box instructions and exerts from the sectional appendices.

 

* For example it is mandatory that ALL vehicles running on the national rail network are equipped with a functional automatic braking system and the rescue of rolling stock without functioning brakes is considerably more onerous than used to be the case a mere 25 years ago.

To be strictly pedantic it's mandatory for all trains.  For example hauled moves of electric units are often done with the unit unbraked and brake force vehicles coupled each end, the brakes on the rear ones being operated via an air pipe laid through the unit.  The link below is a recent SPAD investigation where such a train was going too fast for the brake power available.

https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports/report-10-2020-signal-passed-at-danger-at-loughborough-south-junction

On 23/02/2021 at 10:27, 62613 said:

How are Earle's Sidings, on the Hope Valley line, worked?

The private locomotives don't go onto the main line.  Main line locomotives enter the exchange sidings.  There should be more detail in the Sectional Appendix which can be downloaded from the NR website.  

13 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I should hope it is primarily down to knowledge and understanding of, and adherence to, the rules.

It requires both but if I had to choose one, I'd say that reaching a clear understanding between the people involved is more likely to assure safety than the question of whether something is strictly compliant to the rules.  However the rules do say things about the need to reach such an understanding so I guess doing so is part of compliance anyway.  

[LMS2968]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I should hope it is primarily down to knowledge and understanding of, and adherence to, the rules.

Nope. From experience from the back of the train in the early to mid-seventies, it was a mixture of knowing the Rules, when to stick with them but also when to bend them just to get the trains to run.

[Compound2632]

14 minutes ago, LMS2968 said:

Nope. From experience from the back of the train in the early to mid-seventies, it was a mixture of knowing the Rules, when to stick with them but also when to bend them just to get the trains to run.

 

But when things go wrong, it's failure to adhere to the rules that comes back to bite.

[The Johnster]

What usually happened in practice is that each individual job was done in a particular way, which worked, was within the rules or local instructions, and had never caused any problem.  Railwaymen in the operating grades are small c conservative by nature in general, and once a routine was established it was kept to; this meant that everybody knew and understood what was happening and what was going to happen next.  Any diversion from the routine was likely to disrupt this, and would be discouraged.  If unavoidable, then a considerable discussion of what was going to take place took place, and everybody was on their toes.

 

If anything went wrong or caused a problem, then officialdom examined the matter with some rigour, and notices published amending or prohibiting the procedure, not to mention Form 1s issued to anyone who was being held responsible ('Please explain...).  These were on a 3 strikes and you're out basis, but would be withdrawn if you explained yourself in such a way that showed that the blame lay elsewhere.  They were A Bad Thing, and informal warnings much more common. 

 

As for 'bending the rules to get the job done', we didn't, not in the course of normal working anyway.  I once went back to protect my train with detonators in a block failure despite the driver telling me I didn't need to; I considered it my job, and in fact flagged a train that had been allowed into the section behind us down.  It's driver reckoned he would have seen my tail light and pulled up anyway, and I delayed things a little, but felt I'd done the right thing.  There were no repercussions to staff in the loco or traffic departments in this case, but a signalman had some explaining to do and another one should have IMHO; he was persuaded to take early retirement shortly afterwards but I'd have sacked him.  But my driver would have been happy just to send his secondman to the box to find out what was happening and let me stay in the back cab; this is not just bending but actually breaking the rules, which were quite clear in the matter of protection in block failures when there is a tunnel in the section; 2 minutes and you go for a walk with the detonators.

 

It is when the normal course of working is disrupted that one has most need to consider rules and that what you are doing is within them, but if you are outvoted all you can do is point out what you think is the proper way to do it, register your disapproval about what is going to happen, and do the best you can.  That said, there must have been many instances where the rules were bent or broken in the normal course of events for years, and because no problem ensued nothing was ever done about it.  That was the way the job had always been done, and that was enough to silence all discussion of the matter. 

 

Rules are not made to be broken, not railway ones anyway.

[Northmoor]

2 hours ago, The Johnster said:

As for 'bending the rules to get the job done', we didn't, not in the course of normal working anyway.  I once went back to protect my train with detonators in a block failure despite the driver telling me I didn't need to; I considered it my job, and in fact flagged a train that had been allowed into the section behind us down.  It's driver reckoned he would have seen my tail light and pulled up anyway, and I delayed things a little, but felt I'd done the right thing.  There were no repercussions to staff in the loco or traffic departments in this case, but a signalman had some explaining to do and another one should have IMHO; he was persuaded to take early retirement shortly afterwards but I'd have sacked him.  But my driver would have been happy just to send his secondman to the box to find out what was happening and let me stay in the back cab; this is not just bending but actually breaking the rules, which were quite clear in the matter of protection in block failures when there is a tunnel in the section; 2 minutes and you go for a walk with the detonators.

Hopefully you would have been defended for your decision.  Your actions perhaps delayed trains by a few minutes; not doing them could have caused a collision, so explaining that would have been considerably more career-limiting.  Accidents are prevented by addressing the far-misses before they become near misses, before those become hits.

I have read a few stories from the days of steam where old hands who would not be told they were in the wrong, were quietly managed out rather than actually being treated for what they were: reckless and a danger to life and equipment.  I read of one accident where a driver wasn't keeping a proper lookout, argued with his fireman who dared to point it out right up to the collision with another train, fortunately at low speed.  The truth was explained to the enquiring inspector, who pointedly closed his notebook and told the crew that "their view must have been obscured by steam".  There is a difference between instantly treating a railwayman involved in an accident as a criminal (which was a culture introduced during privatisation) and not removing from safety-critical roles, people with a negligent mindset.

[The Johnster]

I think criminal proceedings against criminally negligent or wilfully harmful railwaymen pre-date privatisation, or the grouping for that matter.  There was a prosecution involving one of the signalmen involved in the Quintinshill disaster, and his union successfully influenced.  the outcome by arguing that his employer, the Caledonian, had been fully aware of the situation that was partly the cause of the collisions, an abuse of the regulations regarding the way relief of duty was managed at the box for some time, but as they had benefitted from the convenience to working the service and had tacitly condoned it.   This may have the nascence of the concept of corporate responsibility for safety issues; previously, companies had been able to evade this by pointing to employees who had broken the rules. 

[The Stationmaster]

On 27/02/2021 at 14:36, Compound2632 said:

 

But when things go wrong, it's failure to adhere to the rules that comes back to bite.

The answer was actually 'yes' and 'no' for many years.  At the end of the day if you can't find any other way to pin down why something went wrong then you can quote the relevant Rule or Regulation which was not observed or especially not observed to every last comma and syllable.  But in many instances it would be no more in the past than part of a sensible conclusion as to why something went wrong because somebody simply didn't think what they were doing.    And interestingly we were never allowed to charge anybody on a disciplinary form with a breach

of the Rules etc in respect of operational mishaps etc.  We could charge them quoting a Rule for failure to observe something relating to personal discipline e.g. drinking (alcohol) on duty because that was very clear cut.

 

So you will obviously find breaches of Rules and Regulations mentioned in old HMRI Reports but in many respects that's just rounding up thinsg in teh case of somebody who did something stupid or didn't do something  sensibly.

 

But all that changed after privytisation when members of the legal trade started getting too closely involved in Inquiries.   They work in a world which is only in black and white with no commonsense in between.  Thus someone I knew who was a very competent railwayman and, as it happened, an expert in Rules & Regs, was accused at Public Inquiry by a woodentop from the legal trade (a QC as it happens) of not doing precisely, to the last comma and syllable, exactly what the Rule Book said when he was the first person with any sort of authority to arrive on the scene of a collison which involved passenger fatalities.  As it happened the man concerned did what any sensible railwayman would do - the very first thing he did was ensure the site was properly protected on all four running lines - you'd be a quid short of a shilling if you didn't do that first.  But  Mr Woodentop QC decided that a different part of the Rule Book was more important and heavily criticised the poor bloke - who had done his job scrupulously correctly.

 

And that also shows why we never charged anybody with a breach of an operating Rule - because 99 times out of 100 a decent union rep who really knew their stuff (there were some, not many but they did exist) could get them off the charge by quoting another Rule etc in mitigation or directly conrtrary to the one they were charged against.

 

When railway coliisions etc lead to loss of life it is not unusual, even nowadays, for ill-informed witch hunts to start accompanied by a search for scapegoats.  And if the scapegoats are readily identfied by errors of omission or commission things can, and often, do become even nastier.   The Quintinshill collision was a case in point where feeling got very high and extremely nasty encouraged by the editorial approach of 'The Scotsman' newspaper.   The two Signalmen - Meakin and Tinsley - were not really well served at their trial by their KC although he did his best in his summing up but the weight of public opinion was solidly behind the prosecution and the jury brought in verdicts of guilty in respect of both men.  The union took no part in the trial although the the overall situation in respect of supervision was to some extent brought out but served as no real defence.  The two men had broken the Rules and that was that as far as the court, the jury, and the public, were concerned although their KC tried hard to get them shorter sentences - but failed.

 

The union (the NUR) only got involved some time after the two men were imprisoned and Jimmy Thomas from the NUR had a far better idea of what he was doing, and how to play  political cards, that anyone in the law dept in Scotland.  So Thomas - eventually only by implying the threat of a national railway strike - had the sentences of the two men shortened although It appears that their convictions were not overturned.  For Meakin that in reality meant nothing, he was released on the day he would have been released in any case from his 18 month sentence with one sixth deducted for good behaviour.  But it was good for Tinsley who had been sentenced to 3 years with Penal Servitude as he was released on the same day  as Meakin (he would have only had 9 months of his sentence deducted for good behaviour).

 

PS Diciplinary Form No 1 (' a Form 1') was not a 'Please explain...' which was exactly what it said, aform or a memo asking for an explanation of something which that person had apparently been involved in.  Form DP1 - to use its correct title - was a 'charge sheet' directly equivalent in process terms to a legal charge issued by the police or CPS albeit entirely a civil thing.  A person was charged on Form DP1 and subsequently a hearing took place if the person charged asked for one.  The person taking the hearing considered the evidence and what was said at the hearing in mitigation and either withdrew the charge or stated what the punishment would be.  The Punishment was then formally advised to the person involved on Form DP2. ('Form 2') afte receipt of which they had the option of either accepting the punishment or of making an appeal against it.  If they appealed they were entitled to a second hearing to be conducted by someone senior to the person who took the Form 1 hearing.   The person taking the appeal hearing could either dismiss the original 'conviction' (i.e. the Form 1 was withdrawn), or confirm the punishment awarded at the original hearing or - if they saw fit - increase the original punishment (which did sometimes happen).  In addition there were circumstances in whuch summary dismissal could be carried out without even issuing a Form 1 (drunk while on duty would be an example).

Edited March 1, 2021 by The Stationmaster
Typo corrected

[Edwin_m]

An interesting question is what sanction BR would have had against the crew of a "private" train who were responsible for an operating problem or even an accident.  They could obviously be banned from access to BR metals but I'd guess disciplinary action wasn't possible so nothing further could be done unless they'd broken the law.   

[The Lurker]

On 27/02/2021 at 19:59, The Johnster said:

   This may have the nascence of the concept of corporate responsibility for safety issues; previously, companies had been able to evade this by pointing to employees who had broken the rules. 

There were a couple of cases in late Victorian times involving the London Omnibus company that established vicarious liability for corporates and then limited it to employees acting in the course of their duties. In the second case, the company was not liable where the omnibus was driven by someone who was a fare collector and who was not permitted to drive.

 

Up until the 1840s, the concept of deodand could also result in the forfeiture of goods or a fine for what could be regarded as corporate negligence. Quite a few cases involved the early railways although wikipedia gives only the example of the GWR being fined a deodand £1,000 for the deaths of 8 passengers in an accident in Sonning cutting; they were later exonerated and the deodand quashed.

[Compound2632]

19 minutes ago, The Lurker said:

Up until the 1840s, the concept of deodand could also result in the forfeiture of goods or a fine for what could be regarded as corporate negligence. Quite a few cases involved the early railways although wikipedia gives only the example of the GWR being fined a deodand £1,000 for the deaths of 8 passengers in an accident in Sonning cutting; they were later exonerated and the deodand quashed.

 

My understanding is that the deodand was forfeiture of the implement that was the case of death, in cases of manslaughter. Reading the Wikipedia article, I learn that the courts had established the priniciple of commutation of the forfeiture into a fine; which disproves the tale I'd heard that the practice fell into disrepute when locomotives become subject to forfeit, the authorities not knowing what to do with them.

[The Stationmaster]

15 hours ago, Edwin_m said:

An interesting question is what sanction BR would have had against the crew of a "private" train who were responsible for an operating problem or even an accident.  They could obviously be banned from access to BR metals but I'd guess disciplinary action wasn't possible so nothing further could be done unless they'd broken the law.   

Remarkably simple in reality.  As far as the individuals were concerned the process would not be dissimilar to that involving railway staff apart from the fact that the railway could not charge them and deal with them under its disciplinary proces.  But it could withdraw their permission although most likely would be a re-examination in Rules & Regs with particular emphasis on anything directly relevant to what had happened.  And if they failed at re-examination that would be that - the end of their carrying out work on raklway property.

 

As far as the costs arising from the incident are concerned they would be totted up and charged (at outside party rates) to their employers.  Even in BR days in my experience the accountancy folk were very good at getting to hear of incidents and you then had to put together as much information as you could in respect of the costs of what had taken place - right down to overtime etc costs for staff who had to work on or come in on a Rest Day etc.  The accountant's people would total up all the input from the different depts involved, charge it up at outside party rates and then pass it to the Claims Dept who would make a claim against the miscreant's employers (who very likely would plead whatever mitigation they could come up with).

 

The weirdest one I ever got involved with involved a German symphony orchestra who turned up at Reading unannounced off the coach from Heathrow and proceeded to delay a West of England train by c.30+ minutes while they sorted themselves out and loaded their instruments.  They were sent a bill for delaying the train at a cost of so much per minute of delay using the standard cost per minute for delays due to temporary restrictions of speed caused by something being done for an outside party  - it cost them several hundred £s but they coughed up.   Far more common of course were charges against the vehicle owners where privately owned vehicles had failed in some way causing damage and delays.

[The Johnster]

About 6 months after I started working as a guard at Canton in 1970, a driver known to be a bit of a liability took an 08 and a cut of parcels vans out of the Strawberry Sidings behind the Riverside platforms at Cardiff Central throught the protecting trap points, the old Cardiff West signal box which was being used as a training facility for new inductions of guards at the time and which I'd very recently attended, fortunately empty at the time, and managed to pull up at the top of the pathway leading down the embankment into the busy Clare Road.  This individual was an old hand, and an alchoholic who could not drive a train when he was sober, clearly an accident waiting to happen,  The previous week I'd worked a class 8 to Hereford behind him and the secondman reckoned we'd been doing over 70mph in the dips on this 45mph speed restricted and 35mph timed train; fortunately I'd had a good brake van which rode well!.  Didn't much like the way the 16ton minerals were bouncing around, though.

 

He was very obviously an accident waiting to happen when the accident happened, a speed merchant and rough operator.  He should have been sacked like a dog IMHO, but was 'persuaded' to take redundancy, this being the culture on the railway at the time to cover embarrassments such as him.  I wondered what you had to do to get yourself sacked; the answer was that you stole stuff or fiddled money in which case the Investigation Branch of BT police dealt wiith you, or you punched the station manager at Bristol TM when he accused you of being drunk on duty, which you were, and I had to work your train home for you after helping to restrain you a bit.

 

The health and safety culture was pretty strong and self policed to a very large extent, but the West Box incident showed that one was effectively rewarded for dangerously bad behaviour and incompetence in order to cover up managerial shortcomings.  It was pretty obvious that this bloke had been a danger to himself and everybody else for a long time, and should have been dealt with earlier and effectively.  He'd apparently been offered redundancy several times and refused until the sum offered made him a happy bunny, which is of course shameless manipulation of a system that allowed itself to be shamelessly manipulated.  My view at the time was that a weak management culture which relied on the general culture of safety and doing the job properly had not acted effectively, or indeed at all, in this case.  It was not fear of the unions; I doubt that ASLEF would have fought his case as there'd have been little chance of them being successful, and there would have been little support if they had; he was an unpleasant and unpopular individual, though this does not of course mean that he should have been treated differently to anyone else.

 

I wonder if Stationmaster Mike recalls this incident; I fully understand if he is reluctant to comment on it.  Some drivers who resented the new intakes of 'back cab jockey' guards commented that he'd done them a favour in knocking down the training facility... 

[pharrc20]

On 23/02/2021 at 10:27, 62613 said:

How are Earle's Sidings, on the Hope Valley line, worked?

In the past twenty years I have visited Earle's Sidings the works shunters would either be Blue John or one of the various Class 20s hired in. It has been quite a while since Blue John has left the works from my own observations.

 

I don't recall seeing Blue John go any further west than the siding it was reversing a rake of tanks into. The 20s certainly traverse the through lines and I'd have to double-check photos but also the Down Loop next to the main Down Hope Valley line too. Usually a rake of 16 PCAs would be brought up from the works and once in the east end headshunt, would be propelled back into one of through sidings. Rakes of empty tanks have been known to be propelled backwards either by the class 66 and split into two rakes using both lines of the east headshunt, left clear of the works turnout. Usually the 20 would be waiting just on the branch and would then move forward to couple to the first half rake then draw forward then back to collect the second half. Then all coupled up it would take all 36 down the branch for reloading.

HTH Paul

[009 micro modeller]

On 22/02/2021 at 11:45, Fat Controller said:

I believe privately-owned locomotives had to be registered with the British Transport Commission, if there was a likelihood of them crossing, or travelling on, the tracks of the main-line railway.

 

 

Would this also have applied for narrow gauge locos like the Shapwick Heath Listers, which crossed a BR line at right angles?

[The Stationmaster]

21 hours ago, The Johnster said:

About 6 months after I started working as a guard at Canton in 1970, a driver known to be a bit of a liability took an 08 and a cut of parcels vans out of the Strawberry Sidings behind the Riverside platforms at Cardiff Central throught the protecting trap points, the old Cardiff West signal box which was being used as a training facility for new inductions of guards at the time and which I'd very recently attended, fortunately empty at the time, and managed to pull up at the top of the pathway leading down the embankment into the busy Clare Road.  This individual was an old hand, and an alchoholic who could not drive a train when he was sober, clearly an accident waiting to happen,  The previous week I'd worked a class 8 to Hereford behind him and the secondman reckoned we'd been doing over 70mph in the dips on this 45mph speed restricted and 35mph timed train; fortunately I'd had a good brake van which rode well!.  Didn't much like the way the 16ton minerals were bouncing around, though.

 

He was very obviously an accident waiting to happen when the accident happened, a speed merchant and rough operator.  He should have been sacked like a dog IMHO, but was 'persuaded' to take redundancy, this being the culture on the railway at the time to cover embarrassments such as him.  I wondered what you had to do to get yourself sacked; the answer was that you stole stuff or fiddled money in which case the Investigation Branch of BT police dealt wiith you, or you punched the station manager at Bristol TM when he accused you of being drunk on duty, which you were, and I had to work your train home for you after helping to restrain you a bit.

 

The health and safety culture was pretty strong and self policed to a very large extent, but the West Box incident showed that one was effectively rewarded for dangerously bad behaviour and incompetence in order to cover up managerial shortcomings.  It was pretty obvious that this bloke had been a danger to himself and everybody else for a long time, and should have been dealt with earlier and effectively.  He'd apparently been offered redundancy several times and refused until the sum offered made him a happy bunny, which is of course shameless manipulation of a system that allowed itself to be shamelessly manipulated.  My view at the time was that a weak management culture which relied on the general culture of safety and doing the job properly had not acted effectively, or indeed at all, in this case.  It was not fear of the unions; I doubt that ASLEF would have fought his case as there'd have been little chance of them being successful, and there would have been little support if they had; he was an unpleasant and unpopular individual, though this does not of course mean that he should have been treated differently to anyone else.

 

I wonder if Stationmaster Mike recalls this incident; I fully understand if he is reluctant to comment on it.  Some drivers who resented the new intakes of 'back cab jockey' guards commented that he'd done them a favour in knocking down the training facility... 

I don't recall that incident but what i well say is that the Western tried its best to treat people who were ailing as fairly as possible.

 

Dealing with alcoholics is a notoriously difficult area and it was even more difficult before the Transport & Works Act gavea  legal power to have somebody tested for alcohol content in the event of an incident or even a suspicion that they were under the influence.  Roaring and obviously drunk has always been easy to deal with but in my experience many alcoholics don't appear to be drunk and don't behave as if they are under the influence.  in that situation you rely very much on their colleagues to draw attention to them and, where opportunity exists to put them where they can do least harm.  Managerially before the T&W act you had very little chance to do anything formally unless somebody admitted their alcoholism or you managed to get them to the Medical Officer for examination and he (all ours o the WR were male) were able to get an admission out of them as part of explaining their physical condition.  

 

One of my Drivers was persuaded by his colleagues to come to me and talk about his illness and when I talked things through with him he told me that he was getting better and only drinking 4 bottles of whisky a day - fortunately he agreed to go to see the MO who worked veery closely with a sort of Alcoholics anonymous organisation run by a teaching hi ospital.  H That Driver's mates and made sure that he hadn't driven a train once they sussed what was wrong with him and that he was always working with someone else but as ever with someone in that state you were stuck about what you could do until it was admitted although you made sure officially that he was not in harm's way at work.  All far easier today - ypu call in your contracted testing firm at the first hint or suspicion.

 

The next problem is what do you do with somebody who is obviously ill?  You can of course book them off sick and steer them to the MO who might direct them towards suitable treatment, hopefully.  Ideally you should get rid of them but you'd be up before a tribunal without a leg to stand on if you dismissed somebody just because they were suffering from an illness - you have to be a lot more subtle than that.  there are two ways of doing it and it depends really on where you want the cost to fall or who you can persuade to do certain things.  Thus while alcoholism is recognised as an illness it is also considered as something which can be cured and is not along term condition - so you can't retire the person on ill-health grounds and the pension fund wouldn't accept it if you tried.  So if the situation is suitable you could make them redundant - fairly easy back in the '70s and it didn't cost the railway too much once you took the subsidy into account.  of course somebody who went on redundancy lost out considerably compared with going under ill-health although teh exact effect depended on their age and which pension fund they were in.  as long as they were over 50 they could draw their pension but under 55 they still suffered quite a loss, until the day they died.  In some cases, such as Driver that loss would still be their if they went before their early '60s. 

 

Since T&W came in the situation is very different (or it was in BR days) if someone is suspected of being on drugs or alcohol and doesn't come to ask for help to get off the stuff and they then fail a test it was instant dismissal, no good asking for help after the failed test.  Overall a very sensible piece of legislation which actually made some useful sense.

 

Now think of this - a good old training course question.  if a Driver passes a signal at danger by, say, a train length or two and stops clear of everything  is that any different from passing that signal by that distance by that distance and colliding with another train killing several people in the process.  In both cases the cause of the SPAD is precisely the same - let's say 'inattention' and the Driver has admitted his error of omission..  What punishment should that driver, a person in good health, receive fr what happened?

 

BTW you could not 'adjust' redundancy money - it was paid to a standard formula with no exceptions made.  If the Driver mentioned above had previously refused it sounds as if he might well have been offered Ill Health resettlement - which is worth a lot more than redundancy the longer you live but doesn't come with a very large lumps sum when you leave.   Lots of folk would opt for the money now if they had the choice but it really depended on your age and how long you thought you would live - always an interesting calculation..

[The Johnster]

Thank you Mike; a fascinating overview of the matter from a management perspective.  This particular driver was in his late 50s and had recently been removed from main line work and given the downside pilot job, so  was already losing out on both short and long distance mileage bonus.  He was fairly obviously drinking very heavily, and while your point about not appearing drunk or under the influence was relevant in his case (he could walk steadlly and his speech was clear and rational), he was flush-faced, had dilated pupils, and was short tempered and irritable; he looked drunk and his behaviour revealed it.  He told me himself on the Hereford trip mentioned, while we were coming home on the cushions, that he 'needed' alchohol to function and could not drive sober because he got the DTs; I was horrified, especially since he'd given me such an 'interesting' run on the outward part of the job...

 

The Secondman reported him for excess speed, and suffered a great deal of approbation for this action; some drivers refused to work with him. He'd asked me to validate the report.  I didn't, for the reason that I had no means of confirming that we were speeding from the brake van other than a general impression, no harm had been done on this occasion, felt unwilling to condemn a man on the basis of a general impression.  I suggested that the signal box passing times be checked (we'd managed the passenger timings).  But I had been lucky with the brake van, and might have had a different attitude had I been thrown around more!

 

It was at this point that he was taken off main line work and given the downside pilot, but he was on his final warning, had an apalling record, and should have been dealt with more severely IMHO, but it was right that he was treated fairly and the same as anyone else in the situation whateve my personal views and axes to grind were.  The culture was, as you say, to treat men 'as fairly as possible' (I consider BR as the best employer I've ever had), but this guy had been given the benefit of the doubt several times too often IMHO and had abused the leniency with which he had been treated.  He was, to my view, an arrogant and manipulative bully whose arrogance and manipulation had been repeated rewarded and validated; he'd gone off the rails after a divorce, but he was hardly the first or last to do this and most coped a lot better.  Other men may have elicited more sympathy, and one would hope they would have been treated as fairly, but this bloke was frankly dangerous and should have been removed from situations in which he could have caused death or injury.  It was in the event only good luck that he never did; the thought of the 08 dragging it's vans down the bank and perhaps into the side of a crowded double decker on Clare Road is not a happy one!

 

There was, I think it is not unfair to say, a degree of an 'officers and men' mentality in those days, which is not to say that I am complaining about it.  It was what it was, and there were roundabouts  and swings.  Most of the managers I had to deal with had come up 'through the ranks' and knew what they were talking about, and you, I remember, were willing to learn and did quickly.  The culture was that the management trusted the men to carry out the work safely and efficiently, and let us get on with it, which we duly did, one of the attractions of the job.  An example is the situation regarding alchohol; prior to the Eltham Well Hall accident which marked a sea change in attitudes, the rule book stated that it was against the rules to be drunk or under the influence of drugs whilst on duty, or to sign on for duty in such a state. 

 

So, a beer or two on duty was acceptable, and maybe more than two if you were going home on the cushions, so long as common sense prevailed and things were kept in check.  There were men who abused this, and we covered for them on the basis that they'd return the favour, which they sometimes did.  I once worked a train to Severn Tunnel Junction and, with the driver, came home on the cushions some 3 and half hours earlier than we wrote on our journals, the result being a session in the Great Western Hotel in which I made the error of going in rounds with a seasoned drinker who could really put it away; result, Johnster sent home the worse for wear in a taxi and our 'tickets' sold to another man booking off later (this was defrauding the company, but tolerated on a sort of return favour basis, give and take, again part of the culture).  That's how things were.

 

There was a wagon checker based at Barry who we used to take to Rhoose and Aberthaw with us on the Aberthaw Cement job, young chap my age who I got on with very well, swapped cassettes with him, but on Fridays he'd spent his wages the previous night on becoming, shall we say, chemically refreshed, and the safest place for a stoner was sleeping it off in the back cab while I did the wagon checking while I was shunting.  A lot of that sort of covering for others went on; management were fine with it so long as they didn't officialy know about it (nobody deluded themselves that they weren't fully aware of what was going on, shades of Meakin and Tinsley and their relief arrangement at Quintinshill).  Officers and men; the armed forces seem to operate to a very large extent on a similar basis, it's a sort of game, and the divide between officers and men is used to shield each side from the abuses of the other.

 

I once went for a beer in the 'Red House', the Penarth Railway Hotel which was on the Ferry Road/Ely Harbour branch and one of two pubs in Cardiff you could park a loco outside, when an Area Traffic Dept. manager from Marland House appeared.  I had only been a few weeks in the job and thought my number was up, but the driver reassured me.  'Apart from anything else', he said, 'the young lady with him is not his wife!'.  He sort of nodded at us and we sort of nodded back; no conversation ensued.  You couldn't get away with this sort of no names no pack drill behaviour these days! 

Edited March 2, 2021 by The Johnster

[The Stationmaster]

I bet I can guess her name (and maybe even his, or at least pin it down to one or two).  The one to avoid was the one who asked if he could borrow a 3 because you knew it would be 'invested' in a three legged horse although give his due I once called an extremely rude name although not to his face.  He rang me the next day opening the conversation with 'this is that *!*! from Cardiff you were talking about yesterday, what have I done wrong now?'   So I told, but he was a proper railwayman and could take it as well as dish it out and all in good spirit with no ill feeling.  I'll say no more about The Great Western (where part of my Rules exam was conducted on one occasion but only the last half hour of an exam which had started over 4 hours earlier at 08.00) let alone the Spanish Club.

[The Johnster]

On 03/03/2021 at 16:35, The Stationmaster said:

I bet I can guess her name (and maybe even his, or at least pin it down to one or two)

 

I would be very surprised if you couldn't. Mike.  No names no pack drill.

 

When I worked in Penarth Road sorting office for Royal Mail, it was accepted as an unbreakable and immutable law of nature as fixed as the coursese of the stars in the heavens that we drank in Curran's Club or the Grange, and management drank in the Merrie Harriers at Leckwith traffic lights.  RM management was very culturally different to BR's, at least is was in Cardiff which goes a long way to explaining the appalling local industrial relations history, and I was once reported by a junior manager for 'insolence'; who did he think he was, Captain Bligh?  To be fair to the Chief Inspector, who had us both in front of his desk at the same time, he did bring Bligh up in the correct context...

 

Curran's was 'fun'.  If you were on afternoons it was the first port of call at the end of the shift and everybody would migrate there from the sorting office, Harris' Ford Dealership across the road, and Freeman's Cigars just up it on Fridays.  A divorce or two was the result of a good number of these sessions, and a full on Wild West style bar room brawl would be par for the course, at which point the grille shutters would come down on the bar but you could still be served, by them being lifted momentarily to slide a pint under.  Supposed to close at midnight but I've more than once caught the first bus home in the morning...

[tomparryharry]

Most (if not all ) of the Blaenavon  Company's fleet were registered to travel over BR lines, but only down as far as Blaenavon High Level.  These would be used to bank 42xx's from High Level, up to the exchange sidings.  I don't know when the practice ceased, however. 

[The Johnster]

Ceod Ely Colliery's Austerity Hunslet used to run down the track of the Llantrisant-Penygraig branch as far as the top end of Llantrisant Yard; I know this because I somewhat unofficially took it down there and back light engine with my mate Graham Thomas in the summer of 1969.  He drove back up and I fired; too much actually (under the influence of reading tales of derring-do by Prof. Tuplin on the Cornish Riviera), as she was blowing off when we gave her back to the NCB crew...

 

This may not have been entirely 'legitimate' and I would not like to say that the line was owned or operated normally by the NCB down that far, but I doubt I'll get anyone living into trouble for revealing our sins now.  It's not as if we took the loco without permission...  IIRC there was a stop board we were told not to pass, but this was south of Ynysmaerdy.  It was a very pleasant trip on a summer Saturday; we'd cycled up to Coed Ely from Cardiff, which impressed the NCB guys who felt a bit sorry for us as they'd just finished work for the day and were getting ready for disposal. 

 

The friendliness of NCB establishments in South Wales was matched only be astonishment that anyone was interested in their locos; most of us took up the practice of frequenting collieries after the end of BR steam.  It was almost impossible not to get footplate rides and you were usually given a chance to 'have a go', but this escapade, unsupervised and effectively giving a couple of teenagers as loco in steam to play with, was exceptional.  I had driving and firing opportunities at Maesteg and Abersychan around this time as well; stalled with two empty 16t minerals on the 1 in 14 at Gelynos!  Happy days...