Jacobite 2023

You could do the same with old style window
bars though.
I was told the old style type could be considered a bit of a safety hazard themselves as you could get your head out but not in sharpish.
I believe they weren’t popular with those in charge of maintenance at the depots they were based at.

 

Yes similar although on the Statesman set they appeared to be brass.

 

Well if WCR weren't such cowboys and actually did what the ORR had been demanding from the start none of this would have happened!


https://orrprdpubreg1.blob.core.win...st-Railway-Company-Ltd-prohibition-notice.pdf

The Prohibition Notice issued by the ORR - which states

You are failing to ensure the health and safety of your passengers and crew, thus putting them at risk of serious personal injury, as you are not implementing the controls identified in your risk assessment for rolling stock fitted with secondary door locking, in that:

1) Passengers are being told by train crew to operate the secondary door locks

2) Stewards are not preventing passengers from operating the secondary door locks

3) Stewards are not preventing passengers from leaning on train doors or from leaning out of the open droplight windows in train doors of moving trains

4) Secondary door locks are not in the ‘locked’ position or are being opened by train crew before the train is stationary;

Therefore, creating a risk of persons falling from a train or being struck by infrastructure being passed by the moving train.


The background to this is in early June the ORR carried out an inspection and found serious deficiencies between the way WCR said they would be operating the trains and what they were actually doing in practice.

Having been given an enforcement notice to rectify the situation the ORR were not impressed to find that on a follow up inspection in early July the same deficiencies were occurring.

THAT is why the ORR stopped the Jacobite forthwith

 

West Coast Railways (the company) do not deserve ANY sympathy!

They KNEW the rules under which they would be allowed to operate this train.

They didn't abide by those rules

They got caught out during an inspection and PROMISED to rectify things

They made no attempt to improve things - meaning they lied to the ORR

The ORR found out they had been lied to so they stopped the operation.

Remember WCR is the company whose train was almost involved in a massive collision with a 125mph HST at Wootton Basset a few years ago because the crew went and isolated the TPWS! An ORR investigation at the time showed the company had a very cavalier attitude to safety regs and went around believing they did not apply to them.

 

Should Mark 1 still be permitted on the main line ? surely time is up.

 

The window bars may have been removed because the drop lights were restricted in how far down they can open.

The problem with this is that you cannot reach the external door handle and internal methods of opening the door have to be provided.

This obviously increases the risks of a door being opened while the train is on the move - maybe by an inquisitive child say so if a choice had to be made then window bars and an external handle only tended to be the preferred method.

However the ORR are now requiring opperators of charter trains to fit a form of central door locking under control of the guard to all slam door stock.

This in turn means its again safe to provide internal door release mechanisms while also making it feesable to restrict the amount of travel in the droplight window (thus making it harder to put your head / other part of your body outside the coach) which is another of the ORRs top concerns following the incident at Balham a few years ago.

 

I was just looking at the BBC's coverage of this - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-66271357

Rather fittingly, their cover photo for the article shows the train crossing Glenfinnan with a person leaning well out of the vestibule window to take a photo.

 

The ORR have made it clear that MK1s on the mainline are now running well beyond their 40 year old design life.

Although the nature of the Mk1 (separate lightweight bodyshell and separate strong under frame) means its relatively easy to weald in new metal to replace body corrosion - the load bearing underframes are rarely given much consideration.

You take a steel girder and plonk it outside - no matter how well you look after it eventually metal fatigue and corrosion will have its toll and it will fail.

Given the strength of the underframe is critical to the crashworthyness of the Mk1 design the loss of strength over the decades and the potential for it to catastrophically fail in a collision / derailment is causing real concern to the ORR.

 

Look Again carefully at that picture!

It looks very much like those doors have been fitted with a central door locking mechanism (much like BR did to its Mk3 fleet) and there is something creeping into the left of the shot that looks suspiciously like an emergency door release switch.

If the carriage has been fitted with central door locking then there will be no requirement for a Steward to open the doors - the passengers can do it themselves as the door won't open till the train is at a stand.

However I'm guessing that there is no way of opening said door from the inside - hence the rather odd bar design which has to permit a passengers arm so the can reach the external handle while discouraging people putting their heads out the window.

 

I've been on Mk1s with old fashioned window bars (so not the diagonals used by Saphos), and they required (and enabled) reaching over to release the handle. I also recall having to reach over and round when alighting CDL fitted HSTs, where the droplights were neither barred nor restricted in their opening.

Meanwhile, I note that ORR's June Prohibition Notice referred to stewarding issues, and (IMHO rightly) did not mention CDL. Whether or not CDL is necessary or proportionate for charter operations (opinions will vary!), ORR have maintained the existing status quo pending the hearing of a judicial review on the matter.

 

But if that is true, is it wise for the regulator to be asking operators to be putting money into CDL?

 

You're getting confused. The photo shows the Saphos set that I mentioned in my post, where you see the CDL fitment and the door bar. It's not a photo of the WCR coaches that are used on the Jacobite. Those have neither CDL nor windows bars.

 

It certainly begs questions about the quality of regulation if so.

 

Do you have a source for your assertion in your last paragraph? If ORR were really concerned surely they would not be requiring TOC's to fit CDL and retention toilets etc. I find it difficult to believe that LSL/Saphos would have invested so substantially in their Mk 1 set unless ORR had indicated that Mk 1's had a long term future. Ditto the soon to run restored 5-BEL Brighton Belle set, the Belmond Pullman set and others.

I can see that what you say re. construction etc. makes sense but given the miniscule mileage Mk 1's actually travel (compared with the many thousands of daily timetabled trains) I can't see how a total ban on Mk 1's could be regarded as proportionate and reasonable?

 

No because it’s down to the TOC to ensure that people don’t stick their heads out and get hurt. WCRC have a responsibility to stop people doing it

Otherwise everytime somebody has their head swiped off when leaning out of a HST, Network rail would be taking a bridge down!

 

Ultimately it doesn’t matter what any of us think is right and wrong here, because the ORR Inspector has decided that something/s is/are wrong. And it is they who are signing the certificate and they won’t sign their name to something they aren’t happy with. That’s standard in any safety industry.

Non of you would get a gas engineer to come round to your house, sign off a dodgy boiler and then not fire the blame their way when it blew up! Similarly the ORR inspector isn’t going to sign something off, and then be called in to question when there is an incident.

I say again, that Saphos lead the way currently in all things railtour. They’ve gone ahead of the game and their safety is top notch. Perhaps rather than fight the ORR, Carnforth could follow the same and get fitting CDL and Bars??

 

Excellent answer to a rather silly question!

 

If you read the RAIB report on the passenger killed near Bath with her head out, there were issues there with Network Rail management of vegetation, resulting in the tree fouling the loading gauge. Responsibility is with both operator and network provider.

 

But you generally concur that the TOC should be policing this better?