West Somerset Railway General Discussion

I agree with you, and would add:
1. Very few heritage railways have carried out a proper organisational task and structure review and then consciously designed a management structure to deliver what is required
2. Most heritage railways are under-managed, by which I mean there are things left without effective management (2 is largely a result of 1)
3. The SMS even if it is followed to the letter is not a substitute for item 1.
4. Board structure and / or the interaction of multiple boards and the interaction between the board(s) and the management of the railway are all critical issues that impact absolutely everything else. Reporting to one board can be time consuming. Some railways have 3 or more.
5. We train and nurture people over a very long time to become steam drivers, and rightly so. What training, nurturing or external experience is required prior to becoming a director? Sometimes nothing.
6. How are boards held to account? It is a problem in commercial organisations, but in traded shareholder companies they have to be effective or over the medium term they will be removed. If you really think about it, it is near impossible to hold an HR board to account, with the WSRA situation of a couple of years ago a rare exception to that generality. This means that there is a huge tendency toward the next point #7
7. HR boards and management and in fact organisations in their entirety, display a worrying amount of wilful blindness. There is a great tendency to think that "well we are jolly good chaps doing our best, therefore we must be doing the right things and our best must be good".

 

I don’t think the ex6+1 era has any relevance today. The future is the important thing. From what I have heard officially, and unofficially, what the WSR PLC urgently needs is a properly qualified Compliance and administration manager who is given sufficient authority to enforce the rules without interference from the management. It would not be popular with some senior staff but the right individual from outside is needed who has no preconceptions or hidden alliances. A quarterly safety report, warts and all, should be published for all to see. Everyone from the newest volunteer to the Chairman needs to be familiar with and respect the rule book. The rule book should be made available online in PDF format to anyone who wants to look at it not on the restricted list.

 

I'm guessing the second picture is BL Box , I'm not that familiar but what I am familiar with is most sets of levers facing the running line ? I maybe mistaken , it's not unknown , I'm sure there are plenty here to put me right .
Paul .K

 

That comfy chair of yours seems to have some very good links into the heart of WSR PLC, Peter. As a former Station Staff volunteer on the WSR at Crowcombe, and now, due to a house move, a volunteer in a similar position on the GWSR, I can compare the two. My training on the WSR, after a general volunteer induction, consisted of a minimum of 6 turns at the station, during which I was "shown the ropes" by the then SM, Tim Stanger, and other volunteers ( some of whom did things differently to others). After that, I was allowed to get on with it, becoming a Person in Charge of the Station on my duty days very quickly. I did take a PTS course at some point.

On expressing interest in a similar role at the GWSR I found that things were much more formal, with three grades for Station Staff, which normally need to be progressed through to get to the top, SM (the equivalent of PIC on the WSR). I was allowed to start at the middle grade of Booking Office Clerk in view of my WSR experience. My training has been far more formal, I did two turns at each of the four stations under the supervision of a qualified BOC, with a form completed at the end of the day by that person, and signed off by the duty SM,. all of which were returned to the training officer. I also had to read and follow quite a number of procedures, some of which seemed unecessarily detailed to me. At one point I did wonder if the GWSR was overly beauracratic compared to the WSR, but now I understand why! Having passed my training, my competence is recorded on the GWSR HOPS system, and is accessible for all authorised people to see in an instant.

To maintain my competence in the BOC grade I need to do a minimum of 12 turns a season. All my turns are recorded on HOPS. Should I wish to progress to the SM grade I will need to have done a minimum of 23 turns as a qualified BOC, and then go through a similar training process of two turns at each station under the supervision of a qualified SM. This is as well as reading and understanding another volume of procedures, and carrying with me on every duty a kit of bits including a full rule book and a Hi Viz vest - plus a large bunch of keys! It is only the SM who is authorised to dispatch trains, as a BOC my job is strictly to sell tickets, and hopefully balance the books at the end of the day, in conjunction with the SM.

So, in summary, things on the GWSR are run in a much more formal way to the WSR, at least as far as Station Staff are concerned. I can see that this may not go down well with some of my former fellow volunteers at Crowcombe, but recent events would seem to dictate that things must change.




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Very illuminating Roger. The comfy chair has some very advanced technology.

 

An excellently informative post! Your GWSR experience on the station is very similar to mine as a TTI, and I've no doubt is the same for all other operational departments on the railway.

 

As Roger, who is a friend, has posted my name on this forum, I felt I should respond although it is perhaps not right to go into fine detail on what is in the public domain.

Please bear in mind the points I am going to make are purely historical. I retired on health grounds 4 years ago, and I am sure that systems etc. have moved on since then and what follows probably bears no relation to present practices.

1. ALL station staff had to pass a PTS course including "the ladies in the kitchen". For platform staff I produced a guide which was both a hard copy and also available to all on the station laptop. This was signed off by the WSR training officer. Bear in mind each of the 10 stations on WSR have their own peculiarities - at CH although an quiet intermediate station in the middle of nowhere it is a passing point.
2. As SM I passed out volunteers as PIC's through observation, training and discussion.
3. NO staff dispatched trains. We were not "safety critical staff". Guards dispatched trains. Yes we helped of course with all safety matters and assisting visitors and passengers. Safety was a priority.
4. Records were maintained for PTS, PIC appointments and general staff matters.
5. Where these measure adequate for a lightly used station? I will leave others to judge that but I guess in the climate today more recording centrally, paperwork, monitoring etc. is required and will in all probability will become even more onerous. What I would say is that I am proud of what has been achieved at CH station over many years, by all the volunteers past and present including my short 5/6 years. A delightful, safe station to visit.

Tim

 

Sorry, Tim, in no way was I intending to be critical of the way you ran things at Crowcombe.

Perhaps the salient point is that you prepared your own training material, suitable for the circumstances there, and had it approved by the WSR Safety Management. Also, you kept your own records re competancy etc. Where I am now, there are mainly common training procedures for all of the stations - albeit there are only four of them - prepared and updated centrally, with all training details held centrally and these procedures, and competencies of any individual, are available at the touch of a button to anyone authorised to access the HOPS system, from the Chairman down. I believe that the WSR is putting its toe into the water with this software. In this tick box era, it may well be that this is the way the WSR will need to move.
The involvement of station staff in dispatching trains is no different on either railway, they are simply indicating to the guard that station duties are complete, and the guard has the full responsibility of giving the driver the " right away". Nevertheless, on the GWSR, the only member of staff who can do this is the duty SM, (PIC in WSR terms), and for stations where trains cross a bell is provided for the SM to indicate this to the guard on the far platform. It is regarded as a safety critical role.
Incidentally, the GWSR guards are much more careful to make sure they have had an indication from the SM before they give the right away, an issue that we used to have at Crowcombe on the odd occasion.


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It's obviously a well planned and documented regime.

However, I am friends with a number of (senior) volunteers on the GWSR - all of whom have commented to me recently that the railway is really struggling for volunteers - and that is the principal reason that they do not run 7 days per week - even in July and August.

There's a difficult balance to strike between having formal procedures which satisfy regulators - and so much beauracracy and examinations etc that it deters volunteers.

 

Michael, you are, of course right, a balance has to be struck. But, at the end of the day, if the regulator isn't happy, he can stop trains running. A lack of volunteers simply reduces the number of trains that can run. Its no doubt a difficult decision for the management in knowing where to draw the line, but as far as the ORR is concerned there is no difference between paid and volunteer staff.

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I wonder if railways like the GWSR have become too over reliant on the free labour of volunteers. Perhaps it is time for them to 'employ' a few more people if the extra revenue from running pays the wages of the staff. Is the reliance on volunteers doing everything actually holding them back ? Perhaps they could for example say to volunteers:- Okay we want to run 7 days a week in July and August so we will put you on a temporary contract for those months so you work say 3- 5 days paid. I am sure even some retired people may jump at working some extra days if they got some cash too and then go back to volunteer only in the quieter times of year.

When I worked for a short time at the Isle of Wight railway recently, some of their Carriage and Wagon staff say work 3 days a week paid and then 1 or 2 days as a volunteer and it varied for them but it meant they could get stuff done much quicker.

 

It may, but beware the perils of asking too much of people, whether paid or not. I’m glad it worked on the IOW, but that experience may not be replicable.


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For the avoidance of doubt, Train despatch is indeed a defined safety critical role under ROGS but it is wholly the responsibility of the Guard not the SM on both GWSR and WSR, and I would guess most HRs. Otherwise SMs would require medicals and rule book competence assessment if classed as a safety critical role. You also need to be able to despatch trains from unstaffed stations.

 

Maybe,

But another way of looking at it could be that there are let's just say 2000 people looking to visit 'A' railway in a week, you could run 7 days averaging roughly 285 passengers per day, or run 5, give staff/volunteers a bit of a break and carry circa 400 passengers per day with lower operating costs. Ok, there may be a few people who could only visit on one of the days they are not open but in general and with the age of the internet if visiting a particular area for a few days it's easy enough to plan for. On some of my visits to other railways that run 7 days a week I often notice they are towing around a lot of empty seats mid week, there might be room for a bit of compression on many lines.

 

Why?

If you do not go trackside then is PTS required.

 

Roger points out that all who work on the line are equal as far as the ORR is concerned. Everyone has to be made aware of the regulations and in particular those for safe working conditions. Not everyone needs to be trackside, neither should any one be or work in areas they unqualified to be in - without official invitation to be there. This is something, it appears that was not always so, but in the litigious arena of today it has to be maintained. With the financial conditions many lines find themselves in, a heavy court fine could cause serious implications for the lines finances. The recent SDR incident emphasises this. Supporters are generous usually, but the the donation/membership bowl is only so big.
The Dartmouth line uses a lot of radio contact between those on the footplate and those, such as TTI's who are in charge of the train. Maybe that is not seen as 'heritage' by many, but it should ensure smoother, safe working practices I am sure. I wonder what other lines use radios?

 

More to the point of course if you have an incident radio's mean that whoever is the first on the scene can contact the rest of the team rather than having to run up & down the train

 

Some confusion here. Everyone who needs a rule book is personally issued with a numbered rule book on all railways I am familiar with (including the WSR) as part of the training process. There are many dangers in allowing volunteers and a.n.other who don’t need to know the operational rule book to start going into it without the supporting training (and assessment to demonstrate they’ve understood it correctly) and coming up with their own interpretation. As often demonstrated on this forum, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.
Rule books are only one part of the safety management system alongside risk assessment, maintenance procedures, competence management systems etc. FWIW the WSR rule book - introduced 3 years ago - is a very good one.

 

I realise that this is something of an aside to the discussion, but I find this provision of a bell rather strange. How can someone know that station duties are complete if they cannot see the platform side of the train?