Jacobite 2024

What a load of BS.

 

Whilst this is all about CDL, the Jacobite and WCRC continuing to use their current fleet. There is a history of safety related incidents that people are quick to forget. Tangmere at Wooton Basset, 45231 at Doncaster, 61306 moving at Bath with doors open, plus others Im sure others are available. If a company has a reputation for a less than satisfactory safety record then they should expect their relevant governing body to go hard on them. If this none granting of exemption by our regulator is their way of saying we are throwing the book at you for this to make you comply. Then just do it and stop trying to play the victim.
The big railway is a very different place to 30 years ago.

 

WCRC must have some considerable influence in political circles, first an appearance on GB News, and now they have managed to get Boris Johnson's speech writer to cobble together their press release...!!!

 

The West Highland Line isn't though (apart from no 37s ).

 

Please correct me if I’m wrong my friend, but not so long ago on one the SVR threads you posted several times about a piece of machinery looking rather unsafe in the headshunt at Bridgnorth, (when I have the time I’m more than happy to dig out your posts)
You now seem to saying that H&S rules don’t need to apply in the West Highlands of Scotland.

To paraphrase slightly are you suggesting we go down the Orwellian route of some rules apply to some but not to others?

I’ll also ask are you still bitter about your booking being cancelled last year due to the ORR intervention?

 

That is exactly the situation as it is at the moment!

 

Is it?

 

Especially when that operator has had over 20 years to comply and apparently from what has been said is not short of money to get the job done.
Coaches could have been fitted with CDL on a rolling basis as and when they were in shop for refit / overhaul etc and they would not be in this situation.
WCRC has some good people working for them but they desperately need some new blood running the show.
When you're in a hole, stop digging!

 

Yeah I did raise that SVR equipment on the thread. Looked very unsafe to me.

Different areas of railways carry different risks.

Yes I will always be annoyed my trip last year was cancelled over something so silly as door hinges. What did I do instead? Travel on the Strathspey Railway and rode a carriage of the same type with the same doors.

 

But they didn't have 20 years. That is not the whole truth. The regulator never planned on enforcing the rules on heritage stock even 5 or 6 years ago, let alone 20.

 

You'll be known by the company you keep...

 

Pretty sure it was first brought up by the ORR in 2019 or 2018 which is 5 or 6 years ago!

Edit - If you read the findings of the judicial review it mentions that:

• The two fatal incidents led to the ORR re-evaluating the risks posed by the remaining hinged door rolling stock in operation on the mainline. In 2018, the ORR decided to focus on the hinged doors in use by heritage train companies. It made clear to operators that, from 2023, exemptions from the prohibition in Regulation 5 would only be issued in exceptional circumstances. 16.
• On 8 April 2019, the ORR published guidance on applications for exemptions from the Regulation 5 prohibition. Relevant extracts are set out above. On 9th May 2019, the ORR wrote to all heritage train operators explaining that the ORR would not be issuing any further exemptions from the prohibition in Regulation 5 after 31 March 2023.

So they were thinking about it 6 years ago and made it explicitly clear that it would be required just under 5 years ago.

 

Do you have some insider knowledge regarding the ORR's plans for how to handle this issue, or are you just surmising based on your own (apparently flawed) assumptions.

Chris

 

Precisely. This is not about the quality or need for the rules, but whether having implemented these rules WCRC have abided by them. There's lots of smoke and mirrors, obscuring that central point.

 

A good many years ago when I volunteered on MV Balmoral the Chief was very 'proactive' in looking at which way Regulations were going and attempting to ensure any work done on the ship was going to comply with any future requirements even if they had yet to be written.

I would suggest that it should have been obvious many years ago that CDL MIGHT be introduced and for operators of 'slam door' stock to have done some sort of basic scoping work many years ago, even if only because it would reduce stewarding.

 

So 7 years ago they weren't, let alone 20. That was the broad point I was making.

 

How dare you introduce facts into this circular argument and risk it coming to a long overdue conclusion!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I would be very interested to hear how you expect your last point to be accomplished?
We are not talking about some FTSE 250 company here where poor performance leads to the board replacing the man at the top.
I spent a lot of my working life dealing with companies whose direction was determined by the person (or family) who owned it. Those decisions were not always what may have happened in a listed company. Although of course as my career progressed from 1970 through to 2012 many of those ended up getting absorbed into listed companies. But equally even when I retired many were still around "doing their own thing"

 

Please explain.