18 February 2021 · Railway Safety – Lessons from Privatisation

Presenter: Cliff Perry, Railwayman

All were welcomed especially our speaker Cliff Perry, who would be talking about railway safety and providing an update since his previous visit to the branch in 2018. There was much ‘doom and gloom’ at privatisation which has been proved wrong on all counts, so this presentation would be about data and not dogma.

Safety is a number one priority affected by many factors and Cliff began, as before, with a short quiz on railway accidents adding the context and explanations, including how accidents reflect the railway situation at the time and, perhaps more importantly, lessons learned – resulting in improvements in many areas. At this point Cliff provided a brief outline of his background growing up in a railway family, and his own career and experience as a senior railwayman.

He noted that we cannot be complacent about improvements in rail safety to date, and in addition to improved planning and sustained investment, highlighted three key areas: digital revolution; competence management; interface management. The addition of the importance of communication came from the audience via the chat facility. The railways are not risk free but the situation has been improving not least because this makes good business sense. Cliff used a number of graphs and diagrams as illustration and of particular interest with current discussions on climate change, how this can affect railway earthworks with more severe stormy weather causing failures in infrastructure for example. He also showed how a number of risk factors that individually might not seem too serious, can result in an accident when they all line up at once.

Details were provided of modern digital technology helping to make improvements in track safety, for example the Vampire system with improved modelling to enable better pinpointing of track wear issues so that these can be dealt with before they fail. Modern digital technology can also be key to working out why an accident occurred so that it can be prevented in future and some interesting examples were provided as illustration. Another technological advance included at this point was the Network Rail track measurement train and its major value as an investment in improving safety on the railways – again making good business sense.

Rolling stock too is important and there have been major advances with regards to crashworthiness, doors, secondary safety measures (eg laminated windows etc) and sanding – which sounds simple but can make a considerable difference.

The next subject was people and competence management, taking in the most common causes and areas of accidents on the railway network. Concentrating on staff, the culture is important instilling safety and good practice and ensuring that proper training is provided, for example using simulators. Improvements can also be made by studying near misses – an important tool to learn from in helping to prevent accidents. At this point we were shown some short video clips of near misses and what lessons were taken from them.

Organisational processes are important to ensure that everyone is clear about who is responsible for what eg the ORR, RAIB, ensuring that all parties work on risk-based mitigation. There has been a great deal more cooperation since privatisation with the obligatory sharing of incident reports so that ALL operators can benefit from lessons learned. The compensation regime too encourages operators and infrastructure to avoid being responsible for incidents, resulting in improvements to their individual operations and safety measures. Further case studies showed what can go wrong when operations are run on a shoestring with a poor safety culture resulting in an outcome far more costly than sorting out the original problem.

There are some things to keep such as ‘good safety is good business’, everyone trying to improve the railways, investment, small is beautiful, compensation regime to improve performance, cooperation that can be enforced, and the best quality staff. Which led Cliff back to summarise what has made the difference ie that the UK model is safer than comparable state railways; improved planning; the three key areas already mentioned (digital revolution, competence management, interface management); and sustained investment. He ended by noting that ‘tomorrow will be different’.

Rather than the usual Q&A session, there was a discussion between Cliff and recently retired train driver Alan Nichols on many aspects of rail safety in practice, what works and lessons learned using a number of examples of accidents, disasters and near misses. While human frailty can let the system down, much has been done to mitigate this which, together with the right technology and other safety measures, has led to a very safe system overall with well trained staff very much a part of getting it right. Alan showed the importance of communication and described how he had visited every signal box he used on the routes he worked to make personal contact with the signalling staff, greatly enhancing working together. Both were impressed by Andrew Haines at Network Rail who has clearly put safety at the heart, followed closely by passenger service. And reading RAIB reports was recommended to help gain an insight into rail safety today.

The vote of thanks highlighted both information and perceptions on safety, that the railways are a success and that we all hope the safety culture continues.

An excellent and informative evening.