Patric Crozier has been commenting on Railtrack – or more specifically, the circumstances surrounding its demise. My view is perhaps coloured by being there at the time of Raitrack’s birth and final snuffing out at the hands of Steven Byers.
I’ll be blunt; the privatization of the railways was appallingly botched and driven by political dogma rather than what was in the best interests of the industry, the travelling public and the freight haulage operators.
I would not argue with the assertion that British Rail was deeply flawed. As a recently self-employed person entering the industry, I was horrified at some of the working practices. Driven by heavy unionization and collective bargaining, many of these practices confounded local managers’ ability to operate efficiently. For example, the notorious “walking time” expense. A signaller would be paid to work from the booking on location where he (or she) normally worked. In the event of working away from that location, “walking time” was paid depending on the distance. I occasionally worked at Bridgwater, some forty miles or so from my home location at Bristol. For this, I would be paid four hours walking time each way. That would be eight hours pay before I started. The actual travelling time was forty-five minutes along the M5. Then I would be paid my normal eight hours. If it was a Sunday, then premium rates applied. In the early nineties the writing was on the wall for this type of practice, no matter what happened to the railways. There were occasions when I wondered just who was managing the local area – the managers or the RMT. Sometimes it was difficult to tell them apart.
Following the privatization fiasco of 1993/4, Railtrack was born. Supposedly part of a private industry it was at that time still government owned. It didn’t pass into the private sector until 1996. For me, the immediate difference to what went before was the shattered relationships. Where we had previously made decisions with our opposite numbers working on the station or driving trains, we now had to seek permission – and track authority – before rescuing failed trains, making regulating decisions or changing platforms. No longer did the end user become the prime focus, but the “customer” and the customer was the train operator, not the person buying the ticket. This led to some strange decisions on such matters as regulating trains, switching platforms, providing block protection for trackworkers and arranging for light locomotives to rescue failed trains – common sense was out, the Railtrack Regulating Policy was in.
The other difficulty for those of us who had to work closely with the Train and Freight operators and the Track maintenance teams was the organisations overweening arrogance – it’s our train set and you play by our rules. Unfortunately as the inquiries following such incidents as Ladbroke Grove, Hatfield and Southall demonstrated, Railtrack couldn’t play by the rules. Safety management systems were undermined by an experiment with enabling management, whereby the centre devolved management control to the seven zones, resulting in seven independent fiefdoms. This was particularly confusing for those agencies who operated across the zone boundaries, such as Virgin, EW&S and the emergency services.
By the time Steven Byers decided to call it a day, the matter of who owned Railtrack was neither here nor there – public outrage risk had long since corroded the organisation’s ability to operate effectively. Add this to the inability of senior managers to impose obedience on middle management and the demise was, perhaps, inevitable. I wasn’t too upset by Mr Byers’ decision to pull the rug – even if it was underhand and left shareholders in the lurch. A little homework on their part would have had them offload the shares long before, so I cannot feel too much sympathy.
What followed was, I hoped, to be better. Certainly the board of Network Rail came down heavy on corporate disobedience – at least they said they were. The reality though was much the same as before. Directives from the board failed to reach those who were charged with putting them into practice. Cullen recommendations went unfulfilled – partly because there were too many to manage effectively and a significant proportion were pointless anyway – but also because those charged with carrying them out lacked the support in the organisation to do so. Then, of course, there were the redundancies.
I was one of those made redundant in November 2003. I could see it coming and had my exit strategy lined up. Indeed, many of those ex-colleagues in the same situation walked into another form of employment soon after the 17th November 2003. Since then, I’ve watched developments. Given that Network Rail, like Railtrack is not a private company, nor is it a truly nationalised one, it continues much as Railtrack did. The arrogance unfortunately, is still there.
Railtrack is dead. Long live Network Rail.
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