6 May 2024 – Reminiscences and Thoughts of a Retired Railwayman by John Noorani
The meeting started with a minute’s silence in memory of our Fixtures Officer Tom, who sadly died on 23 April 2024.
Our original speaker withdrew at short notice –as an MP at the time of the meeting, party politics became a greater priority.
John kindly agreed to step in at short notice with no slides and just a few notes but what an interesting evening.
He started by introducing himself. He was a working railwayman for 40 years covering 8 Prime Ministers – 4 conservative and 4 labour, 27 Ministers of Transport some of whom stayed in post for just a few months while others continued for one, two or three years. He was always interested in trains helped by his junior school being located near a railway. At school he studied land use, geology and botany. Unfortunately, his father died and although John was encouraged to go on to higher education, he needed a job. He found one at Wimbledon Station and then had to make the decision to go to University, stay with British Railways or look elsewhere. Given the finances and rising unemployment, he decided to become a railwayman continuing at Wimbledon and supplementing his learning with evening classes which enabled him to move on to vacancy at Liverpool Street working on signalling and accidents, where he completed a second year operating course. It was a busier place where he developed an interest in electrics from third rail to overhead power supply.
As his career progressed, staff changed and John was beginning to feel restless wanting to be ‘hands on’ and more involved but he had been unsuccessful in finding another role. He had been writing accident reports when a senior manager called him. This worried him but the manager wanted to talk about his applications for other jobs asking if he had taken his Rules Exam. He hadn’t as he could not take it at that point. However, he was encouraged to apply and was offered the job at Claygate subject to passing the Rules Exam – he had one week to study and he passed! The promotion brought home to him that he was now responsible for other staff with Chris Green as his divisional manager.
John detailed a number of his experiences including incidents of train breakdowns, detraining the passengers safely, sorting out the damage. Another example concerned a visit by a political group with one particularly outspoken visitor commenting that the railways were very backward looking and should just be able to press a few buttons. The visitor was shown how to set up the signalling route but could not get it to work and actually set it up in a way that would have resulted in a crash. He had not grasped the highly technical nature of signalling systems and interlocking, and received a great lesson about rail safety and modern railway technology in the process.
John went on to talk about changes on the railways with apparently simple jobs taking far too long. Interlaced were fond reminiscences of Wimbledon tennis days where he worked in the Travel Centre helping visitors to plan their leisure travel in between the tennis and where he gained an excellent reputation that his travel plans ensured that they saw as much as possible. Some requests were not reasonable like the query about going to Cardiff and back in one day and then wanting to add on one more place after another. John never found out whether the gentleman actually completed that journey!
His next major move was to Clapham Junction as Station Manager with one of the first projects to utilise some derelict land ready for development, so John was involved in the project to provide a new station entrance. This was at a time when you used your funding allocation or you would lose it. Another example was the decision to replace the strip of asphalt on the bridge deck with terrazzo tiling. Unfortunately, or fortunately perhaps, when the work started, someone noticed that they could see a train below them so the bridge had to be closed and a temporary deck built until major repairs could be completed. It seems that the original materials had been poor quality resulting in excessive corrosion.
It was while he was in charge at Clapham Junction that he came into work in December 1988 to be told that there had been an accident. This was not a good day and John had to give evidence at the enquiry. It was made very clear that the accident was not his fault. This sends shivers down one’s back as John described one gentleman who walked away from the accident without a scratch but was later killed in the Lockerbie air crash.
There were other incidents as well as routine work and cultural change to manage too. This had to be done and care taken to make sure that everyone understood the need for it. It helped lead to improvements.
After privatisation John stayed with South West Trains (SWT) where his experience led to him being asked to set up safety processes, investigating performance both of SWT and Railtrack at the same time as dealing with job uncertainty. There were also issues with delays, how to work out why, and one important aspect that was highlighted was the skill of the signallers and working well with them. Punctuality reached crisis level but then Railtrack was gone and Network Rail set up in its place. SWT worked with Network Rail to resolve the issues by going back to basics, looking at timetabling, with John involved in the work to improve efficiency and effectiveness with a new timetable in 2004.
He commented that while safety is paramount, some officials could be over zealous by not taking local circumstances into account, trying to use a ‘one size fits all’ approach. John gave an example at Wimbledon Depot about speed restrictions that were just not appropriate in that setting. There are still speed signs there that are part of his legacy.
In 2012 after 40 years it was time to think about retirement and the decision to stay or leave. John decided to call it a day but was asked to remain for the 2012 Olympics where he wrote some of the contingency plans. All went well and there was almost no mention of any of this with the exception of the gentleman who was refused permission to take his sheep either on the train or the bus! That’s different!
His departure on Friday 26 October 2012 at Waterloo Joint Centre was notable where the departure screen displayed congratulations for 40 years of service. Tim Shoveller led him to the Class 450 on platform 14 where he was taken on a tour of all the stations where he had worked, with all the signals set to green for the whole trip. Did he make a good decision in 1972 to work on the railways? Yes, and he left a good legacy. Were the railways better under Labour or Conservative governments? John said it does not matter but what does matter is that the people who make the day to day decisions should be railway professionals and that government should not try to micro-manage but rather provide the broad brush strokes.
Questions and answers included Trades Unions and the part they can play; ticket office closures – the pros and cons; what improvements on the infrastructure might help SWR; further electrification; the effects of Covid; safety; the cost benefit of various other possibilities and many more. Discussion on rolling out further third rail electric included comments about being ‘ludicrously risk averse’ and how filling in parts of the network with third rail would be a much better option than running diesels in some instances. Overhead electrics are not always the best option for electrification but risk aversion plays its part.
The vote of thanks highlighted a great presentation given at short notice but very well put together – an excellent tale of John’s career followed by some very entertaining and enlightening discussion. A most enjoyable evening.