While out and about last week, I heard that another track worker was killed in the line of duty during the early hours of Thursday morning:
A railway worker has been hit and killed by an empty train near Reading in Berkshire.
The 62-year-old maintenance worker was clearing up at the end of an overnight shift when the train hit him at 60mph shortly before 0500 GMT.
The Network Rail employee was a blockman in charge of setting track flags and detonators which warn trains of people working on the track.
It’s too early to speculate on what went wrong, although this person does fit one of the two high risk categories – the first five years and the last five years of an individual’s employment.
I pointed out yesterday that the health and safety culture that now pervades the industry is becoming counter-productive. So much so, that there are occasions when planned work does not go ahead. Yet, despite this, the industry is still killing its track workers. The Railway Rule Book has grown from a relatively slim volume (supplemented for signallers with the Signalman’s General Instructions) into a modular volume that is reminiscent of someone who lives entirely on a diet of Big Macs. The rules for blocking the line during engineering work have become a minefield that require detailed planning to prepare even for a relatively simple task.
Certainly the driving logic is commendable – keep trains and people apart. Therefore the safest system of work is one where trains are stopped. Unfortunately, a signaller who delays trains for track workers to gain access will be asked to explain that decision even if the work was planned. Trains take priority and the signaller will be balancing that priority with ensuring that the gang accesses the track under the safest possible arrangements. Hence the delays I witnessed yesterday. Anyone planning this access will have to bear in mind the need to keep trains running and will seek to use the safest and most expedient arrangements permitted by the Rule Book. However, those rules are complex and in some cases contradictory. For example, one rule for allowing access in an emergency relies solely on the signaller placing signals to danger. The COSS is required by the rules to consider a more robust arrangement in these circumstances, such as a disconnection of signalling equipment to minimise the risk of signaller error. In another section of the rules, a COSS may access the line under normal circumstances using signaller protection alone.
If you find this contradictory and confusing, so do those charged with carrying them out. And, despite the increasing complexity of the rules; despite the introduction of standardised training and assessment for track safety disciplines; despite rigour in the system to ensure that those standards are maintained; we still killed a man on Thursday morning.
Something has to change. A radical simplification of the rules to make them easier to follow and with less bureaucracy would be a decent starting point…