Network Rail to ban Flying Scotsman?

[Hroth]

The BBC are reporting that Network Rail might be considering a ban of Flying Scotsman from mainline tracks due to the problem of trespassers hoping to get a closer look of the locomotive as it passes.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-48229400

 

As the oldest surviving British Pacific locomotive, now is probably a good opportunity to retire it from active duty and place it in the (National) Railway Museum for everyone to be able to see it in a safe environment. Restricting it to Heritage Railways would merely concentrate the trespass problem and cause a good deal of financial pain to any Heritage Railway if a tresspasser is injured or killed in their insane desire to get "close" to the locomotive.

 

 

[cctransuk]

I read this as a deliberate attempt to provoke a furore; I hope that the wider readership don't bite - but I won't hold my breath !!

 

Regards,

John Isherwood.

[Tricky-CRS]

Modern liability management move risk to small companies or voluntary sector and problem is gone.

[Paul80]

Anyone know the GOG in the photo ?

[Oldddudders]

Old enough to know better, certainly. And therefore old enough, like me, to have seen it in service, where it was more than a curio. 

[DavidMcKenzie]

Woke up and noticed the same article. I found it a huge shame that as a railway community we have managed to get such an icon into the national press for such a terrible reason.

 

I can only hope that it's a wake up call and everyone can stay safe and responsibile in the future. It would be a shame to have any kind of heritage railways banned just because spectators refuse to stay safe just at the chance of a slightly better photo. 

 

Dave 

[jonny777]

Even if they banned Scotsman, the trespassers would simply follow Tornado around, and then that would have to be banned as well. 

 

I shudder to think how the P2 will fare, if it is ever allowed on the network. 

[Hroth]

2 hours ago, cctransuk said:

I read this as a deliberate attempt to provoke a furore

Really?

 

Would it be better to sweep debate under the carpet until someone gets mown down and suffer life changing injuries or are killed because they think they're "safe"?

 

Think of the rows we'd be having then.

 

ALL steam specials would be banned at least until an enquiry had been held, the views of the ignorant and those with axes to grind taken into account and swingeing safety requirements implemented.  Consider the "no win no fee" civil cases that would be brought against the railway and the locomotive operators on behalf of the "victims".

 

Those rail "enthusiasts" who think they have a right to get good photographs and feel that they have professional regard to their own safety and consider that they're far enough away from the loading gauge may get away with it, but they're setting a lethal example to other less aware bystanders who just want to see an old locomotive and get too close for comfort.

 

We are all railway enthusiasts and this needs to be talked about before things get heated and really out of hand.

And perhaps some of those photographers, who's actions may well encourage the inexperienced to encroach upon the tracks, will think about what they're doing.

 

[Dunsignalling]

2 hours ago, jonny777 said:

Even if they banned Scotsman, the trespassers would simply follow Tornado around, and then that would have to be banned as well. 

 

I shudder to think how the P2 will fare, if it is ever allowed on the network. 

Probably not, the "F**k-wit Tendency" seems to have disproportionately latched on to FS and the trespass around it far exceeds anything suffered by Tornado, Clan Line, etc. etc. before 60103's return to traffic.

 

I'd expect "normality" to return once its ticket expires and it gets stuffed and mounted, hopefully for good.

 

As for potential legal fall-out arising from one or more of these idiots being run over, I wouldn't see any logical reason for the courts to treat the operators of steam-hauled specials any differently than those of regular service trains so long as all their procedures and certifications were in order.

 

John

Edited May 12, 2019 by Dunsignalling

[cctransuk]

24 minutes ago, Hroth said:

Really?

 

Would it be better to sweep debate under the carpet until someone gets mown down and suffer life changing injuries or are killed because they think they're "safe"?

 

 

We have already gone through all this at https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/144343-flying-scotsman-aaround-burton-earlier-today/ ; why do we need another thread to (again) trawl through all that argument and counter-argument?

 

Will it have any effect whatsoever on the eventual outcome of this issue?

 

I think not - the time would be better spent modelling.

 

Regards,

John Isherwood.

 

[Dunsignalling]

33 minutes ago, Hroth said:

Really?

 

Would it be better to sweep debate under the carpet until someone gets mown down and suffer life changing injuries or are killed because they think they're "safe"?

 

 

Nobody is truly "safe" as soon as they venture the wrong side of the fence.

 

That's why the live railway has become increasingly "off-limits" even to those with thorough training unless they have a compelling reason to be there.

 

John

[Nearholmer]

Some people’s behaviour around/towards this loco is very weird, even by the high standards of weirdness that, taken as a whole, us railway enthusiasts are capable of exhibiting.

 

Risking death or maiming to photograph a thing that’s been photographed a trillion times before seems particularly irrational to me, but there you go.

 

NR have done the right thing by putting a warning shot across the bows of those involved, and quite cleverly by (hopefully) causing sane gricers to help manage the less sane ones.

 

Not a new form of weirdness, though ........ I remember the almost disturbing-to-watch emotions and behaviour that some of the many Western finale railtours elicited in the 1970s.

[John M Upton]

Perhaps the BTP need to make an example of a few, make a nice big public arrest, prosecution and ensure they get the full £1,000 fine and eighteen months in prison?

[slilley]

Back in the 1960s between 3 and 5 staff a month were being killed in service on BR. The Board would receive a report of each individual case at its meetings. Most of them were the result of being struck by trains. As a result, Hi Vis and yellow warning panels came in etc and the numbers fell. Nowadays if a member of staff is killed it is a newsworthy event.  Even if an enthusiast was the wrong side of the fence can imagine the uproar in the media if one was killed?  It is quite possible as has been said already that mainline steam would be banned.  Those that are tresspassing need to be called out for their actions. It is quite possible the two people photographed last week near the limited clearence sign will be identified and possibly prosecuted. Maybe that will send out a message that this sort of behaviour is not acceptable. There are some though who feel they are above the law no matter what. They are perhaps the worse. I saw a woman with child in car seat besides her texting on her mobile phone whilst driving the other day.When I indicated to her I had seen what she was doing she gave me the finger.

 

We have a very safe railway system, as someone who works in the industry, I would like to keep it that way. 

[James Harrison]

What a shame there's not a decent stretch of preserved mainline in the country*, between two cities say, where we could just let big engines run at a decent chat without running the risk of one breaking down or otherwise causing chaos on what is, after all, a major transport system. 

 

*Tongue in cheek if you can't tell, there are four I can think of, one of them even double track. 

[lmsforever]

To ban all steam specials is a knee jerk reaction its a typical reaction to a problem that happens all the time,FS  has always been a loco that attracts non enthusiasts ever since it came back to running.As to problems on preserved railways its not a big one and these lines enable a great number of people to ride behind a famous loco. I watched a video last week of two idiots trespassing near a bridge and all trains had to stop and proceed with caution ,I hope they were satisfied with there idiocy.     The big problem today is that so many people have been brought up in the belief that no matter what they do someone will save them.Responsibility for themselves is a notion they cannot comprehend  due to from being nannied from primary school onwards. They hardly ever go outside and have no comprehension of how to behave and keep safe thus we have trespass mark you I have so called enthusiasts do some mind blowing things.To put FS back in the museum is not a good idea it should be seen by as many people as possible as should all preserved locos .I agree a few prosecutions for major trespass might reinforce the law but I am not holding my breath.

[w124bob]

I really hope that the two people in that photo get the book thrown at them ( and any others identifiable)by BTP, as someone who had close calls at high speed with trespassers and pw I have no sympathy . Had I been I been the driver on that 220 the old g** would have been picking the bits of his camera up from under that bridge.  As for a steam ban (or railtour ban) there's a vocal minority within NR and the bigger TOC's who can't wait to bring it on. 

[DCB]

Is there a problem?    We hear so much about global warming that if there is one thing we have no shortage of is people, especially stupid ones. 

[rab]

8 hours ago, DavidMcKenzie said:

Woke up and noticed the same article. I found it a huge shame that as a railway community we have managed to get such an icon into the national press for such a terrible reason.

 

I can only hope that it's a wake up call and everyone can stay safe and responsibile in the future. It would be a shame to have any kind of heritage railways banned just because spectators refuse to stay safe just at the chance of a slightly better photo. 

 

Dave 

As has previously been said, this subject has been aired a number of times; the conclusion many of us have come to is that it is not the railway community who are responsible, it is Joe public who only goes near a railway line when Flying Scotsman is mentioned.

 

I may have shared before, i was at Wellington when City of Truro did the centenary run. I was with  a number of enthusiasts in a field next to the bank. After she had passed an idiot, who it was obvious was not an enthusiast, emerged from the trees beside the line, shouting to his mates that he'd been that close that the water from the injector had sprayed him. 

[Trog]

Arrest and prosecute some of these idiots, an ideal time would be after an event such as this. While they have the medias attention have the BTP do an interview where they state that they have arrested X number of people and are going to throw the book at them. 

[polybear]

6 hours ago, John M Upton said:

Perhaps the BTP need to make an example of a few, make a nice big public arrest, prosecution and ensure they get the full £1,000 fine and eighteen months in prison?

 

Agreed - get a big stack of BTP in plain clothes, with a load of police vans tucked away inside a nearby warehouse to collect.....

[Hroth]

6 hours ago, cctransuk said:

 

We have already gone through all this at https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/144343-flying-scotsman-aaround-burton-earlier-today/ ;

 

An interesting thread.  When I saw the item on the BBC website, I thought it would be interesting to share it here as there wasn't anything about it in the prototype discussion forum and I didn't make the connection to the thread in the Prototype Questions forum due to the odd title and it not really being a "question" subject...

 

You might have linked that in your original post here, then we could all have gone through the arguments/counter arguments there instead of here!

 

[mikejames]

FS seems to cause some problems where ever it goes

but was there any reason for it being so bad around the midlands that day.

e.g. publicity in the papers?

 

If so may provide a action plan to help in the future?

mike james

[jjb1970]

I have already proposed a masterful solution to the NRM. The Flying Scotsman should be cut up and the bits sold to rail enthusiasts and collectors of tat, the funds to then be used by the NRM to support preserving our railway heritage. There will be thousands of people who would happily pay a tidy sum to own a bit of FS whilst also doing their bit to support rail preservation. And it'd stop all this trespassing by lunatics determined to compete for a Darwin award by being mown down by FS. This really is a brilliant idea, I can't see any downsides at all.

[brack]

If you ran FS around more, and faster, there may be a solution through natural selection?