Level crossing stupidity...

[SHMD]

not yet....

(I guess the ramps would upset too many...)

 

 

Kev.

 

[Fishoutofwater]

6 hours ago, martin_wynne said:

2. that a train will pass a signal at danger AND that the TPWS will fail AND that the driver will be unable to brake sufficiently to avoid a serious collision. How often has that happened in recent years?

Salisbury Tunnel Junction

[martin_wynne]

17 minutes ago, Fishoutofwater said:

Salisbury Tunnel Junction

 

Yes, I was thinking of that when I wrote it. But in that case the problem was a failure of the leaf-cleaning regime. Hopefully that has been changed since, or extra speed restrictions introduced when conditions are bad.

 

Martin.

[St. Simon]

6 minutes ago, martin_wynne said:

 

Yes, I was thinking of that when I wrote it. But in that case the problem was a failure of the leaf-cleaning regime. Hopefully that has been changed since, or extra speed restrictions introduced when conditions are bad.

 

Martin.

And could easily happen at Farnborough North, it is in a known area of low adhesion.

 

Simon

[Jonboy]

8 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

 

No - NR have a ramped solution which avoids the need to purchase land from the builders merchants (who are described as 'difficult to deal with' and would presumably need to be served with a CPO)

 

Is it just me that wonders how fair it is to describe them as “difficult to deal with”?

Given they are likely using every spare inch of space if our local merchants are anything to compare to and may have their own processes and risk assessments in place based on layout.

 

That is before you get into whether they own the land in the first place, or any rights held by (sub) landlords, finance companies etc etc…

 

Certainly on the last warehouse I managed the landlords wanted to do an external spruce up of the estate, and the architects presented some lovely plans. Once I pointed out they were proposing to make some small changes to our demised land boundaries, and we used the area for HGV manoeuvres that area of the plans were simply dumped in the too difficult to change box and never mentioned again…

[The Stationmaster]

21 hours ago, martin_wynne said:

 

Yes, I was thinking of that when I wrote it. But in that case the problem was a failure of the leaf-cleaning regime. Hopefully that has been changed since, or extra speed restrictions introduced when conditions are bad.

 

Martin.

It's an interesting area with some little known data which can make thoughts about such incidents a lot scarier.  Tunnel Jcn was a relatively short distance overrun of a signal at danger; only a few hundred yards although obviously adhesion was lost/could not be regained over a much greater distance than that.

 

But that was almost as nothing in the scale of loss of adhesion overruns where the greatest distance I know of was over 1 mile. (it was station overrun, not a SPAD so much lower likelihood of a collision).  There are other recorded instances of statoion overruns in excess of half a mile so even with TPWS (as was the case at Salisbury) there is no guarantee about just how far a train might run in the event of a losr adhesion SPAD.

 

Incidentally I don't think we've seen a  final Report in respect of the Tunnel Jcn collision so while it is clear that loss of adhesion when braking was the immediate cause of the collision.   From the Interim Report  we know there was leaf contamination on the railhead, and from a comment in that Report, we know about the retiming of the RHTT .  But that is all we know so far and we don't yet know if any other factors had any part in that railhead contamination or the circumstances leading to it.

 

[uax6]

On 25/04/2023 at 10:36, phil-b259 said:

Although this might be great for staff safety it does bring the complication that things like your 'oiling of points' or other relatively quick tasks now require disruption line blockages to achieve - and whats more because of the amount of signallers who mess up and run trains into / through line blockages pressure is being applied to NR to ensure such line blockages are given 'additional protection' like occupying track circuits or restricting signals so the signalmen cannot mess up either.

 

The problem with all this is it takes extra time - as staff must wait until trains are out of the signalling section (not just wait till it passes before resuming work, there are forms to be filled out and additional protection to be applied (sometimes by another person in the signal centre) etc all of which eats into the potential time a team have to do their work - and thats before we get to the fact that many lines re-signaled by BR do not give the signalman control of every signal so the line blockage might be much larger than it needs to be in work terms.

 

 

One of the reasons that there has been an increase in signallers 'messing up' and running trains into line blockages is again the age old problem of the split between the engineering and operation side of the business. 

The engineering side was given various improvement notices to comply with, so what they did was the obvious: Stop red zone (that is working under look-out protection) working over night, and move the risk from the COSS to the signaller.

What they didn't do was to consult with us on the operations side, as we would have pointed out that by removing red zone working will lead to a vast increase in Line Blocks, which will increase the risk of the siggy messing up, and therefore causing a death. We ended up being swamped with requests that we just couldn't give, but then you got pressure from managers to grant as many as you could, until you pointed out that there was actually a prescribed amount of blocks that could be given, worked out on our work load (and you can only grant them if the train service allows). There was a collective 'ohh'.

 

Long sections are a real nightmare out in the sticks (we have one section of single line that is in effect one ten mile stretch, which even at 90mph take 8 mins to clear. We managed to get an exemption from the section having to be clear, but all other lines don't have this, and it can take ages for trains to clear if they are waiting for the road at the junction.... Not conducive to getting work done. 

 

Andy G

 

[corneliuslundie]

I was also thinking of that decision when I mentioned the need for proper decisions on where to spend money, though several people here seem to be against putting a value on a life. Was any cost-benefit analysis done when the decision was made to ban red zone working? It seemed to me at the time like a knee-jerk reaction. Did they consider such things as the effect disruption of train services would have on road accidents when people gave up on trains because they were not reliable or available when they wanted them? A classic example is bank holiday and summer weekend closures - closures when many people will want to use the railway for leisure trips but will go by car rather than a rail replacement bus - and probably increase the number of road accidents as a result.

Essentially no decision about the railways should be done without consideration of the cost. And in doing so you have whether you like it or not to put a value on a human life, And even if it is justified, with a set amount of money available to Network Rail it simply means that if one scheme is approved another is not. Those looking at health and safety and risk simply should never make decisions without considering the wider results of their decisions.

Jonathan

[ianathompson]

18 hours ago, uax6 said:

One of the reasons that there has been an increase in signallers 'messing up' and running trains into line blockages is again the age old problem of the split between the engineering and operation side of the business. 

The engineering side was given various improvement notices to comply with, so what they did was the obvious: Stop red zone (that is working under look-out protection) working over night, and move the risk from the COSS to the signaller.

What they didn't do was to consult with us on the operations side, as we would have pointed out that by removing red zone working will lead to a vast increase in Line Blocks, which will increase the risk of the siggy messing up, and therefore causing a death. We ended up being swamped with requests that we just couldn't give, but then you got pressure from managers to grant as many as you could, until you pointed out that there was actually a prescribed amount of blocks that could be given, worked out on our work load (and you can only grant them if the train service allows). There was a collective 'ohh'.

 

From my own point of view, when the ban on red zone working was introduced, the main objective was to create a paper trail.

The higher manangement simply wanted to have a scape goat if as and when something went wrong.

There were a number of occasions when this descended into paper filling for the sake of paper filling.

 

The culvert near Ely North was a good example. Fill in form, cancel form, record authority number, then make TRB entry referring to authority number, then enter cancellation into TRB.

All for the ganger to walk over a 10 metre long bridge.

It was such a short walk that he remained on the phone rather than waste time redailing!

As the visibility was about three miles in any direction previous inspections were safely carried out without any need for paperwork.

 

Of course whenever higher management made a mistake the paper trail disappeared very quickly.

(Remember the near miss with a tractor down the Norwich Road?!)

 

Ian T

[IWCR]

Could  a  rotating  type  gate  be  used  such  as  those  fitted  to  some  shops  which  allows  2  or  3  people  at  a  time  through.

Locking  this  would  stop  all  passage  and   there  is  no  means  of  holding  it  open  for  the  next  group.   

 

Pete 

[St. Simon]

18 minutes ago, IWCR said:

Could  a  rotating  type  gate  be  used  such  as  those  fitted  to  some  shops  which  allows  2  or  3  people  at  a  time  through.

Locking  this  would  stop  all  passage  and   there  is  no  means  of  holding  it  open  for  the  next  group.   

 

Pete 

 

Hi Pete,

 

I think you'd have the problem of how long it would take to get a train load of people through the gates, potentially trapping people on the crossing with a train approach without a fast means of escape, however it could be used in conjunction with a 'crossing clear' function by the Crossing Attendant linked to the signalling to resolve that issue.

 

Simon

[jcredfer]

6 hours ago, St. Simon said:

 

Hi Pete,

 

I think you'd have the problem of how long it would take to get a train load of people through the gates, potentially trapping people on the crossing with a train approach without a fast means of escape, however it could be used in conjunction with a 'crossing clear' function by the Crossing Attendant linked to the signalling to resolve that issue.

 

Simon

 

There are such double revolving gates, which allow rotation in one direction only, one inward and the other outward passage.  Such items used to be commonplace on RAF Control Bunkers, secret secure HQs and "sensitive" Bomb Sites, where tight control was required.  Such a pair of gates on either side of the crossing walkway would allow for the inward to be locked, leaving the exit ones, opposite for continued egress.  They are cheap and could be made large enough to accommodate several persons to use each compartment, for more voluminous times.  Wheel-chairs can also be accommodated, if the compartments are large enough, or by electronically controlled side-gates, on request.

 

Initially the RAF ones were operated by a Snowdrop at the gates, but latterly, by remote control using CCTV, with sound.  A modern version of that could be semi-automatic, with visual supervision from the Control Box, covering that length of tracks.

 

Julian

 

[roythebus1]

On 26/04/2023 at 17:42, The Stationmaster said:

It's an interesting area with some little known data which can make thoughts about such incidents a lot scarier.  Tunnel Jcn was a relatively short distance overrun of a signal at danger; only a few hundred yards although obviously adhesion was lost/could not be regained over a much greater distance than that.

 

But that was almost as nothing in the scale of loss of adhesion overruns where the greatest distance I know of was over 1 mile. (it was station overrun, not a SPAD so much lower likelihood of a collision).  There are other recorded instances of statoion overruns in excess of half a mile so even with TPWS (as was the case at Salisbury) there is no guarantee about just how far a train might run in the event of a losr adhesion SPAD.

 

Incidentally I don't think we've seen a  final Report in respect of the Tunnel Jcn collision so while it is clear that loss of adhesion when braking was the immediate cause of the collision.   From the Interim Report  we know there was leaf contamination on the railhead, and from a comment in that Report, we know about the retiming of the RHTT .  But that is all we know so far and we don't yet know if any other factors had any part in that railhead contamination or the circumstances leading to it.

 

Going back to the early days of the 508s at Waterloo, the late Bill Hughes was on the down Windsor approaching Putney, applied the brake and ended up stopping at Mortlake, going through Barnes and 3 level crossings in the process during the evening peak. Luckily the road was set for him already. The whole issue was hushed up. an awful lot was hushed up in those days. I ended up on the sand drag at Hampton Court and got a prize at the coconut shy (railwaymen will know what I mean). that too was hushed up. Soon after these incidents they put the "panic button" in the cab that overrides the WSP. It didn't help very much.

[Ken.W]

On 26/04/2023 at 17:42, The Stationmaster said:

 

But that was almost as nothing in the scale of loss of adhesion overruns where the greatest distance I know of was over 1 mile. (it was station overrun, not a SPAD so much lower likelihood of a collision).  

 

 

I know of a loss of adhesion overrun of a mile which was a SPAD, also running through a trailing junction and stopping at the next signal ahead.

 

Mysteriously, GNER quietly dropped it's "Going the extra mile" slogan shortly afterwards 

[Ken.W]

Hmm, 4 pages of discussion on this so far, and the easy solution was posted among the first posts.

 

There's a long history of abuse at this crossing

There's now a RAIB report into a very serious near-miss incident as a result of this abuse.

The crossing should be immediately declared unsafe and closed on safety grounds. Make the lazy s*ds walk the long way round, whatever that is

 

Then sit back and wait to see how quick the footbridge plans get approved 

[phil-b259]

11 minutes ago, Ken.W said:

Hmm, 4 pages of discussion on this so far, and the easy solution was posted among the first posts.

 

There's a long history of abuse at this crossing

There's now a RAIB report into a very serious near-miss incident as a result of this abuse.

The crossing should be immediately declared unsafe and closed on safety grounds. Make the lazy s*ds walk the long way round, whatever that is

 

Then sit back and wait to see how quick the footbridge plans get approved 

As attractive as that might be, such a course of action would very quickly see Lawyers and the courts get involved while parents complained to their MP etc about the unacceptable attitudes of a state run enterprise.

 

We don’t live in the 1950s anymore and telling people to ‘lump it’ is not considered an acceptable way for any organisation to behave.

[Compound2632]

6 hours ago, Ken.W said:

There's a long history of abuse at this crossing

There's now a RAIB report into a very serious near-miss incident as a result of this abuse.

The crossing should be immediately declared unsafe and closed on safety grounds. Make the lazy s*ds walk the long way round, whatever that is

 

Then sit back and wait to see how quick the footbridge plans get approved 

 

What you are overlooking, I think, is that the great majority of users - certainly in this particular instance - were passengers just got off a train; the crossing provides the access to and from that platform. You might as well say, "close the station"!

 

The other point that you are overlooking, which a quick glance at a map would have told you, is that if one takes the footpath - the only access to this platform - in the other direction, one has to cross another railway line by an unsupervised foot crossing before one gets anywhere else.

Edited April 29, 2023 by Compound2632

[Michael Hodgson]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

What you are overlooking, I think, is that the great majority of users - certainly in this particular instance - were passengers just got off a train; the crossing provides the access to and from that platform. You might as well say, "close the station"!

So close the station.  It's unsafe.  In the old days when the Board of Trade inspected a new station they insisted insisted on a footbridge.

[Compound2632]

3 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

So close the station.  It's unsafe.  In the old days when the Board of Trade inspected a new station they insisted insisted on a footbridge.

 

Close the railway, it's unsafe. 

 

Your statement is untrue for a good deal of "the old days" - there were plenty of stations without footbridges, where passengers had to cross the line to reach the platform on the opposite side to the booking office. Farnborough North is of course one such.

Edited April 29, 2023 by Compound2632
typo.

[martin_wynne]

4 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

there were plenty of stations without footbridges

 

But not many without a signal box.

 

[martin_wynne]

16 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

So close the station.

 

Build a branch line to the school!

 

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, martin_wynne said:

But not many without a signal box.

 

I'm not quite sure of the relevance. Perhaps better to say, not many unstaffed. 

[martin_wynne]

8 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I'm not quite sure of the relevance. Perhaps better to say, not many unstaffed. 

 

The trains would have been locally controlled, and the wicket gate locked before the signals can be cleared. All under the watchful eye of the signaller.

 

These are not country walkers crossing the line in the middle of a field at their own risk. They are paying customers of the railway who expect to be delivered to their destination in one piece.

 

Martin.

[Compound2632]

14 minutes ago, martin_wynne said:

The trains would have been locally controlled, and the wicket gate locked before the signals can be cleared. All under the watchful eye of the signaller.

 

The Farnborough North arrangement differs from the majority I had in mind, in that the crossing is not just access to the opposite platform but also a public right-of-way. It was common enough for passengers to have to use the barrow crossing at the platform end, which was, like the platforms, within the fenced boundary of the railway and hence uncontrolled except by the watchful eyes of the station staff. 

 

But yes, in the case of Farnborough North, there was anciently a signal box on the very site of the present crossing attendant's cabin. But, anciently, there was no Sixth Form College and passenger numbers would have been very much lower than they are now. 

Edited April 29, 2023 by Compound2632

[martin_wynne]

20 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

But, anciently, there was no Sixth Form College and passenger numbers would have been very much lower than they are now. 

 

Which logically suggests that the railway provision at the station for its customers should be greater now than it was then. Not reduced to almost nothing.

 

Martin.