Flying Scotsman trip cancelled

[rockershovel]

Possibly because Ipswich had Ransomes Sims & Jeffries who made a range of small crawler tractors?

Ipswich Town FC are apparently also known as the Tractor Boys, so possibly.

[Bon Accord]

As has lately been demonstrated in court, allowing a perceived potential hazardous situation to continue in tne expectation that a third party will comply "in good time" isn't a legal defence. Don't forget also that he may well be on recorded cctv and has no reason to incur a possible disciplinary action on your behalf.

 

What a sad world we live in.

[mcowgill]

Possibly because Ipswich had Ransomes Sims & Jeffries who made a range of small crawler tractors?

 

Now't to do with us 'ere at Ransomes.

 

As sung by Norwich and Colchester fans in the direction of Ipswich fans at local derbys down the years:  'I can't read , I can't write, but I can drive a tractor'

 

Martin (Col U fan and System Admin at Ransomes Jacobsen Ltd, successors of RS&J Ltd)

[PhilH]

Breaking news...even more anti cockwomble devices have been fitted to the thing.

 

[Glorious NSE]

 but no one in their right mind is going to endanger themselves or others; self preservation is a wonderful thing!  Is this another piece of bureaucratic over reaction? 

Look back at the thread on Flying Scotsman's return.

 

Look at the linked-to video shot by folk stood between running rails on an active main line railway, with virtually silent electric trains running at up to 125mph, and to cap it all standing with their back to the direction of traffic.

 

The first they would have known of a threat would have been a bit of track noise a second or two before the approaching train....rearranged several of them. Given they were concentrating on something else I seriously doubt whether they would have even noticed in time to turn round to know what was there*.

 

I claim no clinical information on their mental health status, but those people were most definitely endangering themselves and others.

 

*An experiment to try if you believe standing about on a live main line is fine - stand well clear of the line on a station platform which sees fast moving trains, facing away from traffic, turn around when you hear the noise of the train coming, then consider whether when you turn round you'd have had enough time to react to seeing the train and move several feet to the side before it gets to you. My own experiment with this suggests that my hearing is good enough to give me just enough time to turn around quickly enough to get hit in the face rather than the back of the head. Add in a second or so reaction time (pretty standard for a human) and the first two cars are already past me, the train is gone before I could have stepped clear.

[PhilH]

Look back at the thread on Flying Scotsman's return.

 

Look at the linked-to video shot by folk stood between running rails on an active main line railway, with virtually silent electric trains running at up to 125mph, and to cap it all standing with their back to the direction of traffic.

 

The first they would have known of a threat would have been a bit of track noise a second or two before the approaching train....rearranged several of them. Given they were concentrating on something else I seriously doubt whether they would have even noticed in time to turn round to know what was there*.

 

I claim no clinical information on their mental health status, but those people were most definitely endangering themselves and others.

 

*An experiment to try if you believe standing about on a live main line is fine - stand well clear of the line on a station platform which sees fast moving trains, facing away from traffic, turn around when you hear the noise of the train coming, then consider whether when you turn round you'd have had enough time to react to seeing the train and move several feet to the side before it gets to you. My own experiment with this suggests that my hearing is good enough to give me just enough time to turn around quickly enough to get hit in the face rather than the back of the head. Add in a second or so reaction time (pretty standard for a human) and the first two cars are already past me, the train is gone before I could have stepped clear.

 

 

When we did our original NR Sentinel card course we went trackside at Lichfield Station, which is 110 mph line speed. One of the things the instructor got us to do was to rudimentarily count the time from first hearing a Pendolino through track noise to it passing us....just 4 seconds. Not enough time to do anything.

[Reorte]

I claim no clinical information on their mental health status, but those people were most definitely endangering themselves and others.

But presumably not realising that they're doing so. This is an issue well beyond the railway, about peoples' entire perception of the world around them, and as a society we seem far more interested in tackling the symptoms than the causes (possibly because it's easier, possibly because it's not the job of those having to deal with the consequences to fix society's problems but to just, for example, run a railway).

[brianusa]

There have been a lot of comments in this rather lengthy thread and replies concerning the individuals close to FS on the main line.  Pictures are my only source of info, as no doubt a lot of others and while there have been a lot of action shots, most  seem to have concentrated on the occasion when the run was stopped or so it appears. Hence the crowd around the loco.  Perhaps if there was a helicopter filming the trip we shall see a more detailed picture of any incidents throughout the journey.  Perhaps there is already.

 

Now, if it was KGV, I could understand the crowds!

 

Brian.

[Talltim]

[Glorious NSE]

Brian - this is the specific video i'm referring to (Tim's put in a helpful still above!):
https://twitter.com/JSimonCar/status/702782227722141696

 

But presumably not realising that they're doing so.

Sadly I have to agree...as I wrote when I first saw it:
 

Honestly don't know what you do with folk that unaware of the risks. 

 

[brianusa]

Brian - this is the specific video i'm referring to (Tim's put in a helpful still above!):

https://twitter.com/JSimonCar/status/702782227722141696

 

Sadly I have to agree...as I wrote when I first saw it:

 

Thanks for the link, Martyn although it wouldn't work for me.  The comments told the story as did the one picture.  Obviously a stupid thing to do and my initial comments certainly didn't refer to such foolishness.

 

Brian.

[JDW]

image.jpeg

Oh, and look, lots of nice thick smoke to obscure anything coming the other way... 

[rockershovel]

I started in heavy field engineering in the days when it was genuinely dangerous, much more so than now and there was a general acceptance of this. It came from the fact that many of the older workers were war veterans of various descriptions and were more-or-less desensitised to danger, injury and death.

 

A lot of our heavy industries then were very "old school" or plain obsolete, and the working practices reflected this.

 

What I learnt over time, was that there is absolutely nothing, nothing at all, so obviously dangerous or plain stupid, that someone who knows better, won't do it for some trivial reason. Peer pressure in groups paid by piece work is a particular driver, most of all contract gangs, but individual negligence is endemic.

 

For this reason, a degree of coercion is necessary in any safety system. Most if the things people describe as "railway jobsworths being petty" is better described as "railway officials following courses of action instilled in them, by systems designed to produce least-risk courses of action in incompletely defined situations". London Underground are an extreme example of this; from long experience they have developed a system by which many hundreds of workers from all manner of backgrounds, with very varying language skills, are put in the track, execute their tasks and clear the tracks again within a very short window, night after night, week after week, and it works. It can appear to be petty bureaucracy in close range, but when you have a view if the sheer scale and complexity of the task, the wonder is that it works at all.

 

We now have situation where the majority of people have no experience at all of heavy machinery or speed. Couple this to an inbred resistance to observing any sort of precautions or instruction on general principles, and the result is what we see.

[Glorious NSE]

We now have situation where the majority of people have no experience at all of heavy machinery or speed. Couple this to an inbred resistance to observing any sort of precautions or instruction on general principles, and the result is what we see.

But I wouldn't have thought the folk above would (for example) think it okay to wander around on a motorway. 

 

I know on a motorway the traffic flow would provide a more constant reminder of the risk, but i'd be very surprised if they hadn't seen other trains pass whilst they were getting to that location...

[Reorte]

But I wouldn't have thought the folk above would (for example) think it okay to wander around on a motorway. 

 

I know on a motorway the traffic flow would provide a more constant reminder of the risk, but i'd be very surprised if they hadn't seen other trains pass whilst they were getting to that location...

If the frequency of traffic on the motorway was the same as on the railway perhaps they would think it's fine. I'm speculating of course but perhaps the reason people (usually) stay off motorways is lots of fast traffic, and even then if there was something to draw them to the motorway in the same was as the Flying Scotsman did to the railway who knows, they may be standing all over the hard shoulder.

 

I feel like I may be straying into questionable territory here but there have been a few posts remarking on the extreme unpleasantness of dealing with the aftermath of people in the wrong place. Perhaps that clean-up should be the punishment for those people.

[Peter Kazmierczak]

Do we know the grounds on which the BTP decided not to prosecute?

 

Surely they have enough evidence from the Facebook page of the person who made that video (above) for them to at least go round and give him some "words of advice"?

 

Do train driver's have the capability of radioing control to warn them of trespassers? Just wondered what'd happened if a Cl.91 and Mk4 stock pulled up alongside the group and the driver/train manager told them what for.....

Would've bowled their view too, though judging by the lack of awareness of the group, they might've just gone around the train to get a "better" view.

[Glorious NSE]

If the frequency of traffic on the motorway was the same as on the railway perhaps they would think it's fine.

Just looking at St Neots RTT for today (which ought to be reasonably equivalent in terms of timetable) - it seems likely there was a train passing on average about every 3 or 4 minutes, almost all of them expresses. Which ought to have been a pretty big visual clue.

 

It might be relevant to their perception(!) of the risks though that all bar 4 moves would most likely have been on the fast lines.

[Reorte]

Just looking at St Neots RTT for today (which ought to be reasonably equivalent in terms of timetable) - it seems likely there was a train passing on average about every 3 or 4 minutes, almost all of them expresses. Which ought to have been a pretty big visual clue.

 

It might be relevant to their perception(!) of the risks though that all bar 4 moves would most likely have been on the fast lines.

A road with a vehicle every 3 or 4 minutes would look like a pretty quiet road to most people, most of the time there's nothing visible on it. Motorways usually have numerous vehicles visible all the time. If the danger isn't right in front of them (by which time it's too late) it doesn't exist... Well, that's my speculation, it would be interesting to know what reasons the people in those pictures gave.

[Glorious NSE]

They won't have turned up there at the exact time it went through though, which suggests they were the wrong side of the fence (but likely not actually standing on the track, judging from another image on the guys feed*) whilst several trains went past. Do people completely ignore any hazard they aren't constantly reminded of?

Given the existence of the video, maybe so...

(*He seems to have gone off the idea of posting on Twitter after that day, wonder why! )

[Rugd1022]

Do we know the grounds on which the BTP decided not to prosecute?

 

Surely they have enough evidence from the Facebook page of the person who made that video (above) for them to at least go round and give him some "words of advice"?

 

Do train driver's have the capability of radioing control to warn them of trespassers? Just wondered what'd happened if a Cl.91 and Mk4 stock pulled up alongside the group and the driver/train manager told them what for.....

Would've bowled their view too, though judging by the lack of awareness of the group, they might've just gone around the train to get a "better" view.

 

 

An urgent call directly to the controlling Signaller via the in cab GSM-R would have been FS's Driver's first move Peter.

[rockershovel]

Pedestrians on or about motorways are quite common

[Richard E]

I see comment above about standing behind the yellow line.

 

A tale to tell:

 

On race days in York there tend to be temporary ticket barriers erected to carry out ticket checks. There is a very heavy footfall and many are, shall we say, far from sober when they are going home. They are also rather easy to pick out through their dress, mannerisms, sobriety or a combination of all three. As such there are both permanent and agency staff mobilised to make sure everyone is behind the yellow line. Running on the platform roads is, unless it is a coal or steel train, pretty slow.

 

One day I observe a regular passenger who, I believe, works for Network Rail in their offices. He is stood with the toes of his shoes about 10mm overlapping the line (which is 70mm or more wide). Anyway one of the 'Security' staff comes along and asks him to stand behind the line. We got a two minute standoff discussion as he was behind the line - technically, he certainly was not on the running line side of it.

 

A lot of it was around the way the request was made, it wasn't a direct personal request which, I think, would have been acted upon. Instead it was along the lines of "Can everyone stand behind the yellow line". No please or anything like that.

 

It isn't what is said but how it is said a lot of the time although the pig-headedness of some folk has, sometimes, to be seen to be believed. And in this instance I think it was 'Security' who were being a bit pedantic, perhaps understandably so though in the overall circumstances.

 

And as a further observation on one occasion a couple of years ago the curvaceous young lady at the racecourse wearing just a see through dress and thong got a lot of looks ......

[rockershovel]

Breaking news...even more anti cockwomble devices have been fitted to the thing.

 

IMG_0916.jpg

Is that an original, or the replica originally built for the film "War Horse" and bought by the museum?

[Reorte]

They won't have turned up there at the exact time it went through though, which suggests they were the wrong side of the fence (but likely not actually standing on the track, judging from another image on the guys feed*) whilst several trains went past. Do people completely ignore any hazard they aren't constantly reminded of?

 

Given the existence of the video, maybe so...

 

(*He seems to have gone off the idea of posting on Twitter after that day, wonder why! )

I'm only guessing at what they might be thinking, it seems just as odd to me, yet we've got the pictures and videos showing what they show, and arguably similar sorts of behaviour would appear to be quite common (look at the level crossing or driving standards threads).

 

Another guess is that we're all rather caught behind a rock and a hard place. Looking further up the thread there's a suggestion of a greater acceptance of people getting hurt and killed when that was a common occurence and people became desensitized to it. Remove that and people getting hurt and killed is possibly remote enough that it just isn't something that happens in their world (even though it's on the TV often enough). It's rather hard to think of anything to say that doesn't just sound arrogant and insulting (so perhaps I'd better drop the amateur psychologist!)

[Dunsignalling]

I think that the development of the Health and Safety culture over recent decades is, perhaps, something of a double-edged sword.

 

Some people have got so used to the idea that some nebulous "they" have taken the risks out of life and an assumption has arisen amongst the less bright elements in society (aka the F***wit Tendency) that anything is safe unless the dangers are spelt out in words of one syllable and letters two feet high.

 

John