david.hill64

Small wheels: 19" Goods I think.

And even Robinson ones.............

Good luck with that! I made the mistake on engaging with the online comments. Never received so many downvotes for any point I've made. I had the audacity to suggest that perhaps WCRC was not as innocent as they claimed and that preventing fatalities was a good idea. The top voted post suggested that Brighton beach should be off limits as people might walk into the sea and drown...........

I have just been reading the Telegraph article. The view of the Telegraph readers is that the nanny state is getting in the way and that WCRC should be allowed to get on with it.

Seat belts are useful in situations where the passengers can be subject to very high jerk rates and decelerations, such as motor cars colliding, or planes entering extreme turbulence. These situations tend not to happen in railway crashes. I knew someone who was in the Clapham accident, fortunately at the rear of the train that crashed into the stationary train. He was unaware that they had been involved in a devastating crash that took the lives of many. I am unaware of any railway that has thought it necessary to provide seat belts as a safety control measure.

No, they were led by my erstwhile bridge partner, Sandy Scholes. A tremendously accomplished individual who was in charge of BR Research's vehicle structures department. He also represented BR/UK on the European committees responsible for developing crashworthiness standards: external and internal. He had a better understanding than anyone else of how to reduce risk to passengers in an accident.

In this report WCRC is quoted as saying that the timing of the resumption of the Jacobite services is 'entirely out of our control'. Actually not: if WCRC bothered to make their stock compliant with the regulations, they could start to run again. The timing of the fitment is entirely under WCRC control. However, if your business plan is to evade the regulations for as long as possible, then I agree.

I expect the hardware costs of a CDL installation will be quite small. Preparing the paperwork, getting the approvals and staff training will add a lot. If you don't want to do something, inflating the costs is a good way of stopping it.

Modern safety management has moved on from reacting to past events and putting in place standards, rules and regulations to stop them happening again to a proactive risk based approach. We now brainstorm things that could go wrong - and past experience is still vital - and try to assess the probability and consequence of the hazard materialising. Even if there were no accidents associated with slam door stock in the 5 years up to 2019, that doesn't preclude the possibility of one or more fatalities this year. I agree that the probability is low, but it isn't zero. There will also be an increasing number of passengers who have never experienced the joys of leaning out of a window to use the door handle. Lack of familiarity with the set up is likely to lead to error. Perhaps the probability increases as years pass? Having identified the hazard, its associated risk (= probability * consequence) needs to be managed. If it cannot be eliminated then it needs to be As Low As Reasonably Practicable. WCRC has a duty to demonstrate this. If they cannot then they will be in breach of their legal obligations. If WCRC proposes something other than CDL then they will have to demonstrate that the alternative is a more effective risk reduction measure. That is how the judge will decide.

I wonder if they told the MP's about their appalling disregard for safety in other areas? It's all well and good saying that they have not had a serious injury attributable to the lack of CDL. Ernie hasn't given me the £1m prize for my premium bond holding yet, but that's not to say that he won't next month. They talk about it being a 'temporary exemption' but admit they have made no submission to fit CDL. How long is temporary? Till the stock rots? If WCR doesn't understand its legal obligation to manage risk in line with UK law then they ought not to be allowed to operate anywhere.

Particularly for workforce safety. I have long suspected that there is a direct link between the high costs of maintenance for UK rail and our reluctance to kill or maim our staff.

I agree: my point was that the ORR will have door issues and their management on heritage lines under review because of incidents like that at the GCR.

There are indications that the ORR is concerned about the exemptions that apply to Heritage Railways, so we may well find further tightening of many issues. There was an incident recently on the Great Central Railway where a passenger fell from a door in a situation where on a modern railway Selective Door Opening would have prevented the occurrence. It is likely that door issues will be exercising the minds of ORR staff.

An interesting statement. Where do you believe the ORR has an atrocious record of imposing enormous cost for negligible benefit? Such an action goes against the entire basis of UK safety law where there is an obligation to eliminate risks or at least reduce them to a level that is negligible (clear that the residual risk is at a level that is acceptable - think SIL4 systems) or at worst tolerable (in which case they must be subject to regular management review). RSSB gives a VPF figure of £2.4m. If the ORR were imposing stricter requirements, I think it likely that the industry would have challenged the view in the courts, as West Coast have done. I post this with genuine interest. I have been writing and/or assessing safety cases for railways for many years now, but not for UK applications, so may well have missed some unreasonable ORR impositions.

I wrote earlier about the joys for a Gloucester lad of seeing the Scots specials - what were later to be class 06 and 17 plus the different DMU's - but if I think about it there were earlier delights. A trip to Bristol in 1966 showed me warships for the first time, including the original D600 series, and Falcon. Although Gloucester regularly saw Westerns on the London trains and Hymeks on a variety of things, Warships at that time were rare. The regular diesel classes were only Brush type 4 (47) and Peaks (45 and 46) with an occasional 25, 27 and 37. That same year a trip to Birmingham brought me my first Brush type 2 (31) on a Norwich to Birmingham service and my first EEtype 1 (20) outside Bescot yard and my first EEtype 4 (40) on the Euston trains. Later that year a trip to Derby works yielded all sorts of goodies: the original main line diesels (10000/1 and 10201/2/3) on the scrap line plus a variety of small shunters in the D29xx series and strange shunters that were a bit like the standard 08 but with jackshadt drives! Real wonders.