In a further boost for the rail industry the new sleeper factory at Doncaster officially opened in time for the Christmas rush.

Work over the holiday season and beyond means relaying miles of track and using ever growing quantities of new sleepers. The factory at Ten Pound Walk in Doncaster is run by Trackwork Moll, a new company contracted to supply sleepers to Network Rail.

The factory employs upwards of 45 people and will supply around 400, 000 concrete sleepers for Network Rail to use around the network each year. Between 700,000 and 1,000,000 sleepers are needed each year to keep the railway running safely and reliably.

Trackwork Moll is jointly owned by Trackwork of Kirk Sandall, Doncaster and Leonhard Moll Betonwerke of Munich, Germany. Patrick McLoughlin, Secretary of State for Transport, has taken a keen interest in the new plant and plans to meet local staff and officially open it in December.

I did not expect to be writing about track staff being hit by trains again this month. Surely good management means doing the work that is required safely, on time and to the required standard?

To achieve that each manager and supervisor needs to know, listen to and understand the staff doing the work. Instructions by e- mail and management by checking computerised records is never enough!

Management is about people, their motivation and commitment. To manage well you must earn the trust of your staff. Not everyone can do this. Engineering expertise can never compensate for a lack of ability to manage.

I wonder how many rail track managers are now employed elsewhere having failed to ensure that their staff work safely?

Walking alone

The Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) has published its report on an accident when a team leader signalling technician was struck by a train near Poole in Dorset on 12th July this year.

He was incredibly lucky to be only slightly hurt when the train stuck him a glancing blow. He was walking along the cess of a bi-directional line when a train came up behind him travelling at an estimated 15 mph.

Where he was working is double track, third rail electrified and with a crossover that results in a section of bi-directional signalled working. The work in hand was re-signalling between Poole and Weymouth.

Briefings had been given including specific references to the bi-directional working, but although he had been working in the area for the previous fortnight he had only worked east of Poole Level Crossing for half an hour in total.

At the time of the accident he was walking alone from the site along the Up Cess towards the Level Crossing. The train that hit him stopped at a signal for a minute and a half and then crossed over from Down to Up line.

As can be seen in the picture the cess is overgrown in places which resulted in his moving foul of the track so as to pass. The report suggests that having not seen trains running in both directions on the Up line he may have instinctively thought he was facing traffic as he walked.

Almost 400,000 viewers tuned in to watch East Coast rail staff making their small screen debut on Sky 1 HD’s new series All Aboard: East Coast Trains.

The 10-part documentary series looks set to prove a surprise hit this Christmas. East Coast says it allowed Sky cameras unprecedented access to its trains, stations and depots. Viewers watching the opening episode saw East Coast Chef Mark Mclean, who lives in Newcastle with his wife and daughter.

Mark has been working for East Coast for 15 years, and was seen cooking breakfast on a London- bound service. He was filmed with On-Board Customer Services Assistant Karen Kerrison, also from Newcastle, and captured the great banter between the duo.

Darren ‘Daz’ Harrison, an information controller at Newcastle was seen dealing with raucous stag and hen parities on a busy Friday night.

Coffee giant, Starbucks, now has its own carriage on selected Swiss Federal Railways trains.

The double decker car sports the distinctive logo on the side and a plush coffee bar decor inside. The first outing for the train took place on the Geneva Airport to St.Gallen run. On-board baristas brew the coffee.

Says Jeannine Pilloud, director of SBB, ‘We are very happy to unveil this exciting new on-board experience for our customers. We continuously work to enhance our on-board services through innovations to ensure travellers enjoy a pleasant journey and this project is an evolution of our catering concept. We want our customers to feel at home while travelling with us.’

This year, 25 years after the Clapham disaster, the conference’s main theme was fatigue, one of the significant factors identified by Lord Hidden QC’s report into the crash.

To emphasise the importance of this issue the conference included a Fatigue Management Award which was won by Volker Fitzpatrick.

Keynote speaker, Kelvin Hopkins (pictured below), MP, vice chair of the UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Rail Group acknowledged that the UK had one of the safest railways in Europe but was concerned that “we must recognise that fatigue causes injuries and deaths to workers and passengers on our railways”.

He knew that the rail unions felt that industry was not doing enough to manage fatigue but did acknowledge there was some good practice such as First ScotRail’s appointment of Fatigue Manager.

Not surprisingly, Mike Barraclough of the QBE Insurance Group considered fatigue from an insurer’s perspective. He also stressed the need to manage fatigue for which companies need specific arrangements and referred the conference to published ORR guidance available on the subject.

The aviation industry provided a case study on fatigue management as Easyjet’s Phil Barton described its Fatigue Risk Management System (FRMS). Phil advised that in aviation, fatigue is generally controlled by prescriptive rules (CAP371).

However, in 2003 Easyjet found that, despite being compliant with CAP371, it had operational risks from fatigue. This led to a fundamental review of rostering and the creation of its FRMS which the Civil Aviation Authority then agreed could be used to manage crew rostering.

Phil explained how Easyjet’s FRMS adopts a more scientific approach to rostering which takes account of, for example, fleet base and schedule. It is backed up by Fatigue Awareness and Countermeasures Training and analysis of thousands of reports each year from crew who feel fatigued. Phil noted that although fatigue management is a complex soft issue requiring highly skilled support staff, its benefits are both reduced risk and increased operational flexibility.

Other presentations included those from Richard Price, ORR’s Chief Executive; Jill Collis, TfL (Transport for London’s) Director Health, Safety and Environment and Dr Pete Waterman.

Richard Price acknowledged the “enormous strides made by rail over the last 10 years” with the last fatal train accident being six years ago and noted that now the biggest risk to passengers was getting on and off trains.

He warned of the dangers of complacency and noted that track worker safety was still a big issue. He was convinced of the benefits of the ORR being both the economic and safety regulator and cited level crossing funding as an example.

Having listened to Network Rail’s proposals, the ORR has increased funds available for level crossing safety improvements. Richard noted this showed efficiency did not always mean spending less.

Jill Collis described the challenges of managing safety in an organisation faced by Londoner’s insatiable demand for tube travel. She described how TfL had streamlined its procedures and processes to make safety more intuitive and TfL’s focus on safety leadership.

Pete Waterman treated the conference to an inspiring presentation on HS2 and described his new role as part of a Government task force as: Seeing that every penny spent on HS2 gives us more value than we previously thought possible.

In his vision for HS2 Pete Waterman said, ‘It will suddenly change the map to give a railway that is interconnected in a way that our Victorian ancestors could never have imagined. The old railway companies did not want connectivity; they wanted people to travel on their lines. Well the map is to be changed to suit the population, not the railways.”

No doubt Pete’s task force will include the safety, environmental and reliability benefits from HS2’s 21st century infrastructure in their report.