Network Rail has concluded a £2.9 million 12-week scheme to stabilise half a mile of subsiding embankment beneath the Chiltern main line in Buckinghamshire.
Using a Giken silent piling machine from Japan, engineers drove 865 six metre-long steel sheer piles into the earth to form rows either side of the railway.
These piles formed solid barriers behind which engineers packed 27,000 tonnes of stone topped off with soil seeded with grass.
Left unchecked subsidence of ground beneath tracks can lead to trains derailing.
Until this permanent solution took place Network Rail engineers had to make ongoing temporary repairs to dips in the tracks causing bumpy rides for Chiltern Railways customers.
Mark Evans is works delivery programme manager on Network Rail’s London North Western route. He said, ‘By using this innovative Japanese piling method we got the job done quicker and cheaper than traditional kit would have allowed.
‘The Giken machine grips the neighbouring steel sheet pile and silently uses it to lever in the next one, and so on. It’s simple, safe and saves taxpayers’ cash – exactly how we like it.’
The three-month scheme took place from May to August.
Watch engineers complete the work in a timelapse video below:
The Department for Transport (DfT) has launched ‘The First of a Kind’ (FOAK) competition to fund the transfer of existing innovations that are in use outside of rail – and which could benefit passengers – into the industry.
For example, the innovation could relate to creating more space in carriages or providing improved assistance to passengers with a diverse range of needs.
Run by the public body Innovate UK, the scheme is part of the DfT’s Accelerating Innovation in Rail programme and could see ideas to transform rail travel benefit from a £3.5 million government fund.
The first FOAK competition will focus on rolling stock.
Rail Supply Group chairman Gordon Wakeford said, ‘The rail supply sector is continually seeking to improve the passenger experience by developer new and better products and solutions.
‘This competition will provide a stimulus for the many innovative companies in our sector to develop new and ground-breaking ways to enhance rail journeys.
‘I am confident that the rail industry will rise to this challenge with commitment and creativity.’
An alliance between Network Rail, Amey, BAM Nuttall and Arup has been awarded a contract to design infrastructure options for the Transpennine Route between York and Manchester.
The alliance’s contract covers upgrades to civils, track, railway systems and electrification West of Leeds to deliver faster, longer, more frequent and more reliable services across the north of England.
Network Rail and the Alliance will work collaboratively from the earliest stages on the development of potential infrastructure options for the route upgrade and will submit these options to the Department for Transport for consideration in December.
In October 2014, an alliance of Network Rail, VolkerRail, J. Murphy and Sons and Siemens were awarded a contract for rail enhancements on the East of Leeds part of the Transpennine Route between York and Leeds.
The East of Leeds’ alliance manager Neil Lindley said, ‘This is a key milestone for transportation development in the North of England.
‘Complex multi-disciplinary projects such as this require the knowledge and diverse skillset brought through alliancing, especially in the early stages of design development.
‘We look forward to working alongside the West of Leeds Alliance, TOCs, FOCs and other major stakeholders to improve transport links and provide local communities with faster and more frequent rail services; transforming the north for years to come.’
Network Rail has revealed which bridge has been bashed by lorries more than any other – and it’s been hit 113 times since 2009.
Stuntney Road bridge in Ely, Cambridgeshire, claims the unfortunate title for having the most bridge strikes in the UK, followed by Kenworthy Road bridge in Homerton with 99 strikes and Thurlow Park Road in Tulse Hill which was also been struck 92 times.
Network Rail chairman Sir Peter Hendy said it is only a matter of time before someone is killed as a result and called on HGV drivers and their operators to get behind its campaign to put a stop to bridge strikes.
The railways suffer almost 2,000 bridge strikes every year, costing £23 million in damages and delays. On average each bridge strike costs £13,500 and causes two hours of delays to train services.
Around five bridge strikes happen across the country each day but during the months of October and November the number of incidents peak to 10 every day. This is believed to be caused in part by an increase in deliveries in the run up to Christmas.
Network Rail’s campaign to reduce the number of incidents will see it:
Engage with haulage and public transport bodies
Fit steel beams on rail bridges where there are a large number of strikes to reduce the impact
Work with local authorities to ensure road signs display correct bridge heights
Call for stricter enforcement of penalties for drivers when strikes do happen.
Sir Peter Hendy added, ‘Size does matter when you’re a professional driver in a heavy vehicle. Not knowing the size of your vehicle or load could lead to a serious accident, and the loss of your licence.
‘Every incident creates potential delay for tens of thousands of passengers and potential costs for taxpayers, and this is happening multiple times a day.
‘It’s only a matter of time before road or rail users are killed as a result of this carelessness; we need professional HGV drivers and their operator employers to get behind and support this campaign to eradicate bridge bashing, which reaches epidemic levels at this time of year.’
The chief financial officer for HS2 Ltd has announced he is to leave the company at the end of this financial year.
In a statement issued on the government’s website, Steve Allen said that he has made the decision in light of ‘weaknesses’ highlighted by a National Audit Office (NAO) report in regards to critical approvals for redundancies.
He said, ‘The weaknesses highlighted by the NAO report resulted in both the HS2 Executive and Board being misinformed about the status of critical approvals for redundancies.
‘Those assurances were given by teams for which I was responsible and, obviously, I regret that.
‘So, whilst we are now putting in place the measures to strengthen financial governance systems and to provide robust financial stewardship for the company, I believe it will be appropriate for me to move on.’
HS2 CEO Mark Thurston, who joined the company in March, said that Steve had been ‘absolutely critical’ in identifying ways to rectify issues highlight by the NAO.
He added, ‘But, having done that, I respect Steve’s decision that now is the right time for him to move on.
‘I would like to thank him for all he has done for the company in this formative period.
‘His honourable decision will enable me to build the executive team for the next phase of the project.’
Abbey Wood station has now opened to Southeastern passengers.
Delivered by Network Rail as part of the Crossrail project, the station will become part of the Elizabeth line from December 2018 when passengers from Abbey Wood will be able to travel through to Paddington.
Work will continue to complete the station’s full facilities, including the commissioning of new lifts to the concourse and installation of systems required for the Elizabeth line.
The temporary station at Abbey Wood, opened in 2014 to keep passengers moving while work progressed on the new station building, will be removed and the car park reinstated.
Transport for London (TfL) has assumed responsibility for Abbey Wood station from Southeastern ahead of the launch of Elizabeth line services next year.
TfL’s operations director for the Elizabeth line Howard Smith said, ‘The opening of the new station building at Abbey Wood is an important milestone, bringing us one step closer to the introduction of Elizabeth line services next December.
‘Abbey Wood will be one of ten new Elizabeth line stations, providing passengers with a direct link through central London to new destinations. We look forward to step-free access to the station being completed as soon as possible.’
A 23-day transformation of Liverpool Lime Street has finished with the station now fully re-open to the public.
During the project engineers replaced almost 2,000m of track, redesigned and lengthened platforms and built two new ones: platforms 7 and 8.
A modern signalling system was also installed during the first nine days of the work, which allowed trains to run in and out of platforms 1 and 2 for the majority of the upgrade.
Phase 2 will take place over Christmas and summer 2018 and will include further signalling upgrades, widening, lengthening and remodelling of platform 6 and the installation of overhead line equipment.
From 2019 an extra three services per hour in and out of Lime Street station, including direct services to Scotland, will be able to run thanks to the project.
Watch a timelapse of the upgrade work at Liverpool Street Station:
Network Rail has sold its National Logistics Centre for £35 million – five years after spending £25 million to open it.
The site, in Ryton, Coventry, is now owned by the West Midlands Pension Fund who will lease it back to Network Rail for 15 years.
Network Rail said that the sale follows an external analysis which suggested introducing a new inventory and order system, meaning the site will eventually no longer be needed.
Funds generated from the sale will be reinvested into the railway to contribute to delivering the Railway Upgrade Plan.
Managing director of Network Rail property David Biggs said, ‘Network Rail has decided to raise funds from asset disposals to support our ongoing rail enhancement programme.
‘The sale of the National Logistics Centre in Ryton is part of this plan to build a bigger, better and more reliable railway which benefits all rail users, and delivers the best value for money for taxpayers.’
Siemens workers have completed the first five refurbishments of TransPennine Express’ (TPE) fleet of 51 three-carriage Class 185 trains.
Each train is having new seating, carpets, larger tables, LED lighting and refitted toilets as well as USB and plug sockets installed at every pair of seats.
Financed by rolling stock leaser Eversholt Rail, the work is being conducted in York with one train being upgraded each week.
Local suppliers have been involved in the overhaul. Huddersfield-based Camira Fabrics has made the standard class seat covers, Gateshead-based Petards the new CCTV and Rotherham-based Diamond Seating the seat covers.
The Class 185s are part of Siemens’ Desiro platform of trains.
Colin Johnson, managing director of DGauge, discusses his vision and aspirations for the company and the challenges that lie ahead
Britain’s rolling stock fleet has entered an era of rapid modernisation. Entire fleets are being replaced and older vehicles will be refurbished, re-engineered and cascaded to other parts of the network. The investment has been welcomed by the industry and passengers, but for the engineers tasked with making these new trains fit the network, the challenges are numerous.
To be able to maximise the space between vehicles and electrification infrastructure, and minimise the stepping distances for passengers, the engineers involved need to be able to access accurate gauging data.
‘As we embed ourselves in the digital age, then so we collect more data, require quicker answers and demand greater accuracy,’ says Colin Johnson, managing director of DGauge, one of the industry’s leading gauging specialists. ‘Our challenge is to create tools and services to meet these requirements.’
Electrification
DGauge develops digital gauging technology and software. In simple terms, systems that can be used to work out what trains can run where, or what needs to be done to the train or infrastructure to accommodate them.
Established in 2008, the company’s formative years were primarily spent undertaking and supporting research into pantograph gauging. The company is currently supporting the Great Western Electrification Programme and is engaging novel gauging techniques as part of the RSSB’s innovation programme ‘Avoidance of Bridge Reconstruction’.
Says Colin, ’Electrification programmes are required to squeeze more space out of tight infrastructure and accurate gauging tools and techniques can be used to understand the space.’
The company continues to invest in and support industry research to this day and is currently working with RSSB to improve understanding of freight wagons, which will lead to improved gauging assessments across the network. ‘As the complexity of freight wagons increases, we can apply some of the more complex tools that we previously reserved for passenger vehicles to unlock space on the network,’ said Colin.
Software to consultancy
DGauge is currently applying its expertise to the introduction of Hitachi’s Class 385s in Scotland on the newly electrified Edinburgh to Glasgow route, the development of Stadler’s Class 745/755 FLIRT units for Greater Anglia and the South Wales Metro proposals for Transport for Wales – to name but a few.
‘Whilst innovative software is at the heart of DGauge, what we saw was the real need to provide a consultancy service to support our customers in all aspects of gauging,’ said Colin, explaining how the volume and detail of information generated by gauging assessment can be difficult for those without specialist tools and knowledge to interpret.
‘If the output isn’t understood, or the wrong question is asked, an overly conservative approach could be taken to a vehicle’s design, or an inaccurate picture of infrastructure modification costs will be generated.’
RouteSpace
One of the latest solutions DGauge has developed, RouteSpace, is a cloud-based gauging portal that gives customers live access to the latest clearance and stepping information for any chosen route, asset, vehicle or franchise. It quickly and accurately highlights areas of risk or gauging concerns and is constantly updated to the latest infrastructure surveys and vehicle information.
‘We are currently supporting the Rail Delivery Group (RDG) by providing their members with nationwide stepping assessments for individual operators and their associated fleets. This allows them to understand their Passenger Train Interface (PTI) risks without the need to physically measure the infrastructure.’
RouteSpace is the first in a series of innovations that DGauge is rolling out to the industry. ‘The focus is to make gauging accessible, aligned to the latest data, and accurately, rapidly and reliably calculated,’ said Colin.
Derby move
To support its variety of customers and challenges, DGauge has assembled a hugely experienced and passionate engineering team. The company recently moved its offices to Pride Park in Derby to be closer to its customer base and a wider pool of rail engineering talent. The company has already forged a partnership with Derby College and currently employs two engineering apprentices.
DGauge strives to be the UK leader in gauging, said Colin, and David Johnson – previously the technical driving force behind the business – is responsible for nurturing new talent within the team. The company’s other experts are now being brought to the fore, demonstrating the wealth of experience that resides within the business.
‘The opportunity to expand is here,’ Colin believes. The company is looking to double its staff numbers over the next three to five years and add to its talented team of software developers and engineers.
‘Unprecedented amounts of new fleets are on their way and, as a result, many older fleets are being cascaded around the country. Combined with the disruption of infrastructure programme changes and franchising, the challenge will be meeting customer demand.’
‘The digital agenda’s with us, but we need to just go quicker in my view,’ said Shaun Jones, vice president of Thales UK’s Transport business.
As a forerunner in technological advances in the transportation sector, Thales is used to operators seeking solutions to their operational challenges.
In the 1980s, Thales developed communications-based train control (CBTC) – a system which is now used by metro networks around the world – and its ETCS signalling solutions have been controlling train traffic in Europe for decades.
Thales is continuing to lead in the next generation of signalling and traffic management technology for the railway and, with capacity demand ever higher, the outlook is positive.
‘The broad message is the business outlook for us is good because of the capacity challenge, and the fact that we’ve got solutions that can help to overcome it,’ said Shaun, who joined the company’s aerospace division in 2005 before coming down to earth to help lead the transport business last year.
Shaun started out as an MoD apprentice and spent the first 20 years of his career in the aerospace industry. He had been the vice president of Airbus prior to joining Thales – at a time when the company was looking to enhance the performance of its aerospace business. In his current role, one of his main priorities is to look at how the company can progress the digital agenda already underway and help its customers make the transition.
Delivering capacity
A flagship project for the company in the UK is the Four Lines Modernisation (4LM) project, which in essence involves resignalling London Underground’s sub-surface network: Circle, District, Metropolitan and Hammersmith & City lines.
Thales is replacing the existing fixed block signalling system with a moving block CBTC system, increasing capacity significantly across the entire 400km network (Circle 65 per cent, District 24 per cent, Hammersmith & City 65 per cent and Metropolitan 27 per cent).
4LM represents a continuation of a long-running relationship between Thales and Transport for London (TfL), which began back in the 1990s with the Jubilee line upgrade, developed further with the Northern line modernisation and 4LM; the company will be keen for it to continue with the Deep Tube programme in the coming years.
‘The biggest thing that we are proud about with the Northern line is it kind of went live with no one really noticing,’ said Shaun, who was keen to stress that lessons have been taken from each project coming into 4LM.
Significant progress has been made on 4LM since Thales took over the delivery in 2015. The company has reached a key milestone in demonstrating that the technology works, using radio communications instead of the existing inductive loop system, and train testing is now underway. ‘It’s a big, complex, challenging programme but again we’ve learnt lessons,’ said Shaun. ‘We’re off. There’ll be challenges en route but we’ve got a team with the expertise to work with them.’
Lessons have also been learnt from the collaborative approach applied during the London 2012 Olympic Games. Shaun described how the ‘Olympic mindset’ saw businesses showing a high level of commitment to project delivery above and beyond their contractual obligations.
Improving with predictive analytics
As well as delivering the next generation of signalling technology for London Underground, Thales is part of a consortium delivering an expansion of the Manchester Metrolink network and its engineers are also developing ETCS and traffic management solutions for the UK’s mainline rail network.
Thales is currently introducing traffic management at the Romford and Cardiff Rail Operating Centres (ROCs). A decision support system will go live around the turn of the year, advancing the industry’s ambition to create a truly intelligent rail network for Great Britain.
But for Shaun, some of the most interesting technological innovations are being pursued in other areas of the business.
‘We monitor about 48,000 assets for Network Rail, so we’re monitoring the condition and advising the operators,’ said Shaun, explaining the work Thales does around asset monitoring and maintenance.
Thales is working with customers around the world to advance a new data analytics tool. ‘We’re really looking at how we use predictive analytics so that we’re not just monitoring; we’re actually providing information that predicts failure points, so the operators can intervene before that.’
The technology is being trialled in other parts of the world but the company is hoping to bring it to the UK at some stage.
‘This is real, it’s not a powerpoint idea, it’s something we’ve proven over time,’ said Shaun.
High-performance individuals
Shaun said the aim of the company over the next few years is to take its work around the digital agenda to ‘another level’ – apprentices and graduates are key to achieving this, he believes.
Says Shaun, ‘At the heart of what I’m doing is trying to create a high-performance business that’s predictable and to create a high-performance business you need high-performance teams and individuals.’
He added, ‘I have to say, every time I meet our apprentices and graduates they just inspire me with their confidence, the freshness of their thinking, their ideas. In terms of serving our customers and meeting these capacity challenges that the industry faces, we’ve got to unlock their potential a lot better, not just in Thales but across the industry.’
Thales, which employs around 6,500 people in the UK, is working on ways to overcome the same demographic challenges that other large technology companies are having to confront. Retaining under 35s within the business and having processes in place to ensure proper knowledge transfer is equally as important as attracting new talent. The company is also looking to tap into new initiatives. It recently employed eight young people through a programme run by the Prince’s Trust.
Thales’ message to new candidates is ‘Great Journeys Start Here’. Shaun explained the importance of that line, ‘Great Journeys Start Here is relevant whether you’re coming up to retirement, whether you’re an apprentice or whether you’re a graduate… Ten per cent of our workforce are now graduates and apprentices, so we’re investing in the future skills of the railway, how we digitise the railway, how we change our skills.’
He went on, ‘How we get people to really believe in what they’re doing is so important to me because then they’ll do the best for themselves, their teams, ultimately the business and that serves the customer better.’
Amey’s innovation manager, Simon Grundy, explains how the company is using virtual reality to make its workforce safer
In 2015-16, there were zero workforce fatalities for the first time since the ORR Rail Safety Statistics series began. There were, however, 6,597 workforce injuries on the mainline – 157 of those being major accidents.
It is also well documented that people who have been involved in a near miss or who have experienced an incident often have much better safety behaviours than people who behave unsafely because they’ve never been hurt before whilst working in an unsafe way.
einrich’s triangle, for example, suggests that for every 330 unsafe acts, 29 will result in minor injuries and one in a major or lost-time incident. But why does it take an incident for an individual to change how they act?
We’re born into this world with limited knowledge and rapidly develop an understanding of the environment we now and live through interaction and our experiences. In school, we’re taught that we have five senses: taste, touch, smell, sight and hearing. In reality, humans have many more senses than this. No, I’m not referring to the sixth sense some of us believe to possess; I’m referring to senses such as a sense of balance. These sensory inputs, processed by our brain, ensure that we gain a continuous flow of critical information from the environment. From this, we are then able to make cognitive decisions about how to react to situations whether something is safe or not, for example.
Everything that we know about our reality comes by way of our senses. The truth is we often don’t perceive risk to ourselves and therefore end up learning from our mistakes. In high risk working environments such as a live rail line, or working at height, there can be potentially fatal consequences if you act unsafely.
Investing in technology
For us, the safety of our employees is of paramount importance, injuries aren’t inevitable. So how can we eliminate risk to our people and improve safety behaviours. The answer lies in technology and especially the learning we can take from the gaming and entertainment industry, which is why we’re investing in disruptive technology.
The increasing demands placed on the ageing network mean that inspections of railway assets, such as bridges, may need to be carried out more regularly. This can often mean our employees are required to work at height or in confined spaces which subsequently presents a safety risk.
Together with a world-leading technology firm, VTOL, we’re developing a unique flying wing drone, which will change the way assets are inspected and reduce the requirement for inspectors to have to work at height. Drone technology complements hands-on inspection techniques and also enables examinations of areas that have previously been inaccessible.
This was the case recently when Amey was involved in inspection works to the Britannia Bridge in Anglesey. By using drones, we were able to keep the bridge open, prevent disruption to travellers as well as removing risk to those carrying out inspections at height.
A safety game changer
The safety of our people is not a game, but with the advancement in game graphics, screen technology and more affordable portable hardware, virtual reality offers our industry a way to remove risk whether something is thought to be too dangerous, expensive or impractical, by simulating an activity before it is conducted.
In simple terms, virtual reality fundamentally means ‘nearly reality’ and is the creation of a virtual environment presented to our senses in such a way that we experience it as if it was real. It’s critical to note, that the more senses that we can present with false data, aligned to the other sensory experiences, the more immersive and real the situation becomes.
At Amey, along with most other organisations in the rail industry, we take a zero tolerance to the statement ‘Accidents can happen and there is nothing we can do about it’. Our campaign ‘Target Zero’ has been extremely successful and places accountability on everyone to raise close calls throughout the business no matter how small. Target zero is a way of life, encouraging people to take the attitude home with them.
Targeting zero accidents from dusk till dawn
With around 10 per cent of our employees working night shifts, our approach to safety doesn’t just stop at the end of a shift. The Government’s Road Safety Strategy, ‘Tomorrow’s Roads: Safer for Everyone’ identifies driver fatigue as one of the main areas of driver behaviour that needs to be addressed, with shift workers six times more likely to be in a fatigue-related crash, whether that be at work (operating machinery or vehicles) or commuting.
By trialling wearable technology and using virtual reality, we have taken steps to address this and remove fatigue-related incidents by ensuring our employees are safe from when they get up in the morning to when they return home at night.
Through our membership with the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC), we’ve worked with Holovis – a company that primarily creates immersive and mixed reality solutions for theme park attractions – and, together with one of our rail suppliers, Keltbray, we’ve created a driver simulator.
The simulator uses virtual reality technology to emphasise the consequences of driver fatigue and helps users understand the catastrophic incidents that can result from making the decision to get behind a wheel when fatigued.
The use of basic applied intelligence and tracking enables the computer to generate varied scenarios based on the user’s interaction, making the situation unpredictable and more realistic. The device continually analyses the user interaction and generates different hazardous events for the user to experience. This provides a behavioural shock, with the aim of stimulating safe behaviours in the real work environment.
Due to the versatility of virtual reality technology, we can also use it for a variety of different types of beneficial activity. Although the focus is currently on safety, we can also use the equipment for task rehearsal activities, enabling users to gain experience in a safe environment away from unnecessary exposure to risk. It also allows us to create more immersive operational briefings, which were previously carried out verbally with site diagrams and drawings, allowing us to identify and review site hazards in advance.
In essence, virtual reality technology is helping us deliver training in a stimulating way that ensures our people learn in a safe and controlled environment.
In an environment where our employees are exposed to high risks every day, maintaining the rail network to help keep the UK moving, virtual reality technology can help us to minimise unnecessary risk to our teams, clients and the people around us, targeting zero accidents. Imagine experiencing the everyday dangers our employees face such as working next to a high-speed live rail line from the comfort of your office chair.
It’s impossible to say when exactly virtual reality in our industry will become the norm but, with the associated safety benefits that it brings, it’s only a matter of time before it does.
The National College for High Speed Rail has officially opened its doors following ceremonies at its Doncaster and Birmingham campuses.
Yesterday two of HS2’s greatest cheerleaders rail minister Paul Maynard and West Midlands mayor Andy Street spoke of the impact the college will have at the Birmingham site’s opening, a week after the Doncaster site.
The new college will welcome 150 students across both sites in the 2017-18 academic year as part of a soft launch with 1,200 students expected to enrol once it reaches maximum capacity.
Equipped with the very latest in cutting-edge technology – including virtual reality training on board a Eurostar power car, an augmented reality classroom, and a dedicated BIM cave – the college will play a key role in training the workforce of the future.
College CEO Clair Mowbray said, ‘We are proud of having created this world-class rail skills centre in Birmingham and look forward to being the gateway for hugely exciting and rewarding careers building Europe’s largest infrastructure project.’
The National Railway Museum (NRM) will once again host the Future Engineers event to encourage youngsters into a career in engineering.
Supported by the likes of Angel Trains, Eversholt Rail and Porterbrook, Future Engineers is NRM’s biggest annual event bringing together more than 90 rail industry figures and engineers from all over the country to give young people an idea of what the career involves. Last year around 30,000 visited the museum for the event.
The UK workforce faces a shortage of skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics and NRM said this programme has been developed to help address this issue.
NRM’s head of learning and events Lynne Minett said, ‘Teachers, parents and children will enjoy learning about today’s railways and finding out how engineers are using technology to push the boundaries of what’s possible in tunnels, track and train design.
‘This programme is designed to be great fun but also to help inspire young people to develop an interest in engineering and to hopefully inspire the next generation of railway engineers.’
NRM’s Future Engineers event will take place between October 21 and November 5.
After overcoming two broken ribs, four falls and a 969-mile bike ride, colleagues from Balfour Beatty Rail have raised more than £32,000 for charity.
Cycling from Land’s End to John O’Groats on the Deloitte Ride Across Britain (RAB) cycle ride, the team were battered by heavy winds and burnt up to 4,000 calories a day but finished the course in nine days.
The money raised will go to Cancer Research UK, Unicef and Railway Children.
Balfour Beatty Rail managing director Mark Bullock, who led the team, said, ‘Balfour Beatty’s thanks go to the RAB organisers and all those who donated so generously to the variety of charitable causes that are benefitting from our efforts.
‘The 2017 RAB was truly an epic experience; and it is not over yet as the Balfour Beatty team are still accepting donations.’
Amy Pressland, who works for DB Cargo UK, successfully represented Team GB in the Age Group World Triathlon Championships in Rotterdam.
Dr Amy Pressland, 32, from York, is International HR projects manager at DB Cargo UK, but is currently seconded to group partner Euro Cargo Rail SAS based in Paris, France.
Amy took part in the four-day event in Rotterdam in September. She achieved 27th place in her category – the 30-34 AG Female Sprint – and competed against 56 other women. Amy completed a 750m swim, a 20km bike race and a 5km run. There were over 20 nationalities taking part in the competition.
During the swim, the water temperature was 16 degrees Celsius but that didn’t deter her. Says Amy, ‘The swim was quite choppy but it’s my favourite discipline, so I didn’t mind too much.’
Amy qualified for Team GB at an event in Redcar in July of this year. She came third in her category which gave her automatic qualification to the Age Group World Triathlon Championships.
She already has her sights firmly on the next competition. ‘I wanted to come in the top 30 at the World Championships; I came out of the water in 16th place, swimming is my strongest discipline, and finished the race in 27th overall.
‘As it was my first World Championships, I wanted to finish in the top half and was really pleased with my result. It was a tough race but I loved representing Team GB.’
Amy’s been competing in Triathlons for seven years and has a gruelling training regime. She trains between 10-12 hours a week
‘I’m competing in the European Age Group Triathlon Championships next August in Strathclyde and my aim is to finish in the top 20. The standard of the other competitors at the World Championships was really high and it was a lot to take in, but I’ll be better prepared when I put on my Team GB triathlon suit again next year.’
Says Sandra Buchser, head of HR at DB Cargo UK, ‘This is an outstanding achievement for Amy and we as an organisation are proud to have her as part of our team. She is passionate about her sport and that dedication and commitment carries through to the role she has at DB Cargo UK.
‘As an employer, we encourage people to take part in activities outside of work as that’s what makes them unique and therefore an asset to our business and an inspiration to others.’
Greater Anglia’s new Aventra is a train built with capacity in mind. Bombardier is manufacturing four variations of the electric multiple unit (EMU) platform for four different customers but, according to project director Alan Fravolini, the Class 720 is one of the most densely populated vehicles they have designed.
The 665 carriages – 89 five-carriage and 22 10-carriage trains – are designed to carry as many people as possible, which was at the core of parent company Abellio’s bid to retain the East Anglia franchise from 2016 to 2025, and is in anticipation of the franchise’s future passenger demands. The Aventra trains will individually carry between 22 and 45 pre cent more than the current fleet.
Leased by Angel Trains – which partnered with Bank of Australia to finance the order – the £900 million Bombardier Aventras are not the only new train class joining Greater Anglia’s (GA) fleet. The operator has ordered 383 bi-mode carriages from Stadler to run on its intercity, Stansted Express and regional services, completing the replacement of its entire fleet in the New East Anglia Trains (NEAT) programme. The Aventras – which are replacing the Class 317, 321, 360 and 379s – and the Stadler Flirts will be in service by 2020.
BOOSTING CAPACITY
In September, Bombardier gave media representatives the first chance to inspect and interrogate a life-size, plywood mock-up of a Class 720 interior.
The walkthrough Aventra carriages will have 3+2 and 2+2 seating configurations, as well as fold down chairs and areas for wheelchair users. A five-car Class 720/5 will have a total capacity of 540, compared to 1,146 in the 10-car Class 720/1 – the latter will shuttle large groups of commuters during peak hours.
GA will be able to increase capacity while reducing the number of cars per train. The Aventra carriages are slightly longer than the current fleet – 24m instead of 20m – making the 10-car variant comparable in size to a 12-car Class 321.
Innovative passenger information systems will display graphical data which will show where space is available within a train in addition to whether toilets are available, route progression and related updates.
Using a cantilever seat design, Bombardier has created more space for baggage and installed under floor heating to remove the need for intrusive wall-hugging heaters. One radical move, for which GA is still considering alternative options, is the removal of first class seating, but modern train design – and the need to add capacity – is about compromise, explains Greater Anglia’s vice managing director, Mike Kean. ‘The real heart of our franchise was providing enough capacity for the full nine years that we operate it, and also maximising the efficiency of that operation. And we do that really through the Bombardier fleet,’ said Mike, who is also the train operating company’s franchise and programmes director. ‘The Bombardier train really forms the backbone of the franchise, it provides the main commuting stock and it carries the most amount of people in our franchise.’
ALTERNATIVE AVENTRAS
But the Aventra trains are not all about capacity. The carriages will be air conditioned, they will have dual USB ports and plug sockets between seats, and passengers will be able to enjoy improved, free Wi-Fi connectivity thanks to GA’s work with BT to improve the trackside and on-train infrastructure.
They will also feature at least one standard and one disabled toilet on each train and four cycle spaces. The trains’ new Flexx Eco bogies provide a 30 per cent reduction in bogie mass and, as a result, consume less energy.
Bombardier’s first Aventra, for flagship customer TfL Rail, entered passenger operation in June this year and will become part of the Elizabeth line fleet. It forms part of a 630-carriage contract for the route.
The rolling stock manufacturer is also making 180 Aventra vehicles for London Overground and 750 for South Western Railway, in addition to the order with GA.
It also has an order with Great Western Railway for Electrostar trains, all of which will come out of its Derby site. That’s 2,225 vehicles in total from the Aventra family, a brand that Bombardier anticipates will become a mainstay of the UK’s regional fleet for the next 20 years.
CUTTING METAL
GA’s new fleet is reaching the beginning of the end of its design stage, with Bombardier soon to start cutting metal.
In November 2017, Bombardier will reach the ‘design freeze’ stage and from February 2019 the five-car trains will begin to enter service. From December 2019, the 10-car units will enter service with GA Aventras running between Liverpool Street and Cambridge, Hertford East, Southend Victoria, Southminster, Braintree, Colchester, Clacton, Walton and Ipswich. Bombardier will then provide ongoing maintenance support to the fleet from Ilford and a new depot near to Manningtree.
Kean says that Bombardier succeeded in the bid process because of its strength throughout and flexibility on vehicle length. Talking about the train’s benefits, he continues, ‘[Bombardier] are still designing it, so you cannot get any more modern than that,’ describing the new train’s layout as modern and sleek. ‘I think Anglia has an average fleet age of around 20 years and when these trains are introduced it will absolutely be at the top of the leaderboard for UK franchises.’
More visitors than ever attended this year’s RVE (Rail Vehicles and Enhancements) exhibition which was held recently in Derby.
An annual one-day exhibition for the rolling-stock supply industry, RVE has been steadily growing in size over the last few years.
For 2017, RVE moved to Derby Arena, the purpose-built velodrome that was opened in 2015. The track’s infield easily gave room for the 88 exhibitor stands, with space for more as the event expands further in future years.
Opened by Derby mayor councillor John Whitby, more than 1,100 visitors attended this year, up from under 700 in 2016. They were drawn to the event by the chance to see suppliers who don’t normally appear at the more ‘general’ railway exhibitions.
The range of products and services on show was staggering. Everything from lighting to lubricants, connectors to couplers, and testing services to communications systems were there to be looked at, picked up and enquired about.
All of the stands had experts on hand to answer those questions, and many of the visitors took all day to go around all of the exhibits. Malcolm Dobell, former head of rolling stock for London Underground and now a writer for sister magazine Rail Engineer, was one of them.
‘There are so many interesting things here,’ he said. Highlights for him? A demonstration of self locking nuts showing how some types come loose when others don’t, and a hand-held bolt tightening system that can ‘apply 500Nm of torque without taking your arm off!’
In addition to the serried rows of stands, there were other activities to keep visitors occupied. At one end of the hall, an amphitheatre-style conference area, hosted by industry observer Ian Walmsley, featured speakers on such diverse subjects as communications networks, electromagnetic compatibility risk management, train refurbishment, well-managed supply chains and innovation.
The Department for International Trade staged a meet-the-buyer event that was extremely popular. Fully booked weeks in advance, UK suppliers could sit down with buyers from Alstom, Eurostar, Hitachi, MTR Tech (Sweden), SBB (Swiss national railways), Siemens, ÖBB (Austrian state railways) and CAF (Spain). 114 companies successfully registered to meet these buyers, and so many more applied that ‘we had to beat them off with a stick’, as show organiser Kevin Lane eloquently put it.
All-in-all it was a great show. Plans are already afoot for next year, and there is space for another 20 stands or so, so it should be another good one. Watch out for it.
A booklet entitled ‘The Safety Movement’ was handed out to Great Western Railway employees in 1913 to try to encourage its workforce to adopt safer working practices. It came too late for the 30,000 rail workers who were either killed or injured in that year alone.
This chapter from the rail safety history books was one of several case studies unearthed by RSSB for its Rail Safety Week communications activities. Another explained the first rudimentary method of railway signalling, which involved a policeman flagging off trains from the station platform every few minutes. This system was eventually refined, adding a second policeman at the next station to signal that the first train had departed and the line was clear – the earliest example of a fixed-block signalling system.
They highlight how much – and in some cases how little – things have changed over the centuries and decades. Rail Safety Week returned for its second year between 25 September and 1 October, coinciding by chance with the USA’s annual Rail Safety Week campaign. The event, which this year was backed by more than 120 companies, is an opportunity for businesses to promote good safety practices within the industry as well as to passengers and the general public.
‘It’s promoting rail safety but it’s also celebrating what people do well,’ said Rail Safety Week organiser Alan Tarrant. The week-long awareness event was launched at Liverpool Lime Street – a station which is about to undergo a significant remodelling programme. The underlying message has emanated around the country, with school visits, stand-down days and site briefs held in support across the network.
JUST A FEW EXAMPLES
Alan, a director at Fission Recruitment Services, said the aim of the event was to try and get everybody involved to pass on at least one safety message to their family, friends and colleagues.
Numerous topics were covered throughout the week, including level crossing risk, trespassing and mental health. The safety message was aimed not just at those who work in the industry but to anyone who lives or works near the railway. ‘We want you involved,’ said Alan.
Recruiter Randstad published a report having surveyed more than 3,000 construction workers to highlight how widespread mental health issues are across the workforce. In the report, it indicated that 34 per cent of respondents had experienced a mental health condition in the last 12 months and that 73 per cent didn’t feel that their employers recognised the early signs of mental health problems.
PUBLIC AWARENESS
Much of the activity around Rail Safety Week was aimed squarely at the public. Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) and operator KeolisAmey Metrolink took a tram simulator to Manchester Piccadilly to give the public the chance to experience what it’s like to be a driver and better understand how their actions can sometimes make the driver’s job more difficult.
The dangers of trespassing on the railway were also restated. Last year, BTP caught 555 children trespassing on lines around the country. The ScotRail Alliance’s Rail Safety Week event focussed on this risk and the partnership held interactive workshops to demonstrate the consequences of misuse.
HUMAN FACTORS AND BEHAVIOURS
According to the ORR, there was one workforce fatality in 2016/17 – compared to zero in the previous year – and a slight increase in workforce injuries (6,713). Some of those were life changing for the victims.
Staff injuries were down on the London Underground. However, there was a rise in the number of workforce injuries on Britain’s other tram and metro networks. There were 308 workforce injuries in 2016-17 compared to 247 the year before and 68 in 2008-09.
Alan said it was important to get the message across to everyone – even the most experienced staff members. ‘It’s sometimes those type of people that are their own worst enemy… It’s highlighting it to them as well… It’s still an extremely dangerous place to work.’
One of RSSB’s other safety case studies looked at the rise of human factors and the way this area has affected how equipment is designed and how people are trained.
VolkerRail and Amey are working with the School of Social Sciences at Leeds Beckett University to analyse and attempt to influence the behaviours of their employees in the hope it will reduce accident risk. Announcing the partnership, Stuart Webster-Spriggs, HSQE director for VolkerRail, said it is allowing the company to ‘react to what really drives [the workforce] to make further improvements’.
PROGRESS
Within a lot of organisations Rail Safety Week was an opportunity to further embed and reaffirm good safety practice. AECOM, for example, encouraged everyone in its rail offices to get on social media and spread the Rail Safety Week message.
The activities around Rail Safety Week clearly demonstrate progress. We have gone from an industry that sought to address the deaths of tens of thousands of colleagues by printing a booklet to an industry that, although not perfect, constantly strives to do the right thing.
With appearances from Madonna and Michael Jackson, a retro funfair and its own Club Topicana, the RailStaff Awards celebrated the industry’s unsung heroes with a party like no other.
Hundreds dressed in their finest – or in 1980s fancy dress – to celebrate the industry’s very best, from relative industry newcomers to experienced heads, signallers, station staff and those whose work has been affected by the tragedies of Grenfell Tower, the Manchester Arena bombing and the London bridge terror attack.
Congratulations to all category winners and thanks to our sponsors for their support.
The full list of winners is as follows:
Award category
Category sponsor
Name of winner
Company
Apprentice of the Year
AECOM
Rebecca Munro
Mott MacDonald
Depot Staff of the Year
Land Sheriffs
Kai Gohegan
Southern
Graduate of the Year
GTR
Conor Maton
telent
Infrastructure or Plant Person or Team of the Year
SPX Flow
Positive Intervention to Control Exposure to Ballast Dust
VolkerRail
Lifetime Achievement Award
Costain
Scott Harrison
SPX Flow
Marketing and Communications Person or Team of the Year
Keltbray
Marketing and Customer Relations Team
Merseyrail
Outstanding Customer Service Award
telent Technology services
Nicola May
TransPennine Express
Project Manager of the Year
Network Certification Body
Amritpal Brom
CrossCountry
Rail Engineer of the Year
Primat Recruitment
Ana Walpole
AECOM
Rail Manager of the Year
ARM
Nick Chadwick
Virgin Trains
Rail Person of the Year
Balfour Beatty
Arron Raimbault
Network Rail
Rail Safety Person of the Year
RSSB
Adrian Pattison and Mark Neal
Freightliner
Rail Team of the Year
Total Rail Solutions
Disaster Victim Identification
BTP
RBF ‘Heart of Gold’ Award for Charity
RBF
Paula Hilliard
GTR
Recruiter / HR Person of the Year
RailSport
Danielle Peach
Ford & Stanley
Samaritans Lifesaver Award
Samaritans
Tek Malla and Purna Gurung
Land Sheriffs
Signalling & Telecommunications Person or Team of the Year
Westermo
IP Signalling Northern LNE Construction Team
Network Rail
Station Staff of the Year
Transport Benevolent Fund
Adrian Suter and London Bridge Team
Network Rail
Train Driver of the Year
London Midland
Colin Newton
Northern
Trainer or Training Team of the Year
Seaton Rail
Learning and Development Team
Greater Anglia
Watch this space for details of the RailStaff Awards 2018!
Railway football hero Gavin Johnson has swapped his boots for racing colours as he pushes ahead with motor racing plans in a Porsche 924.
Motor racing offers him a powerful opportunity to raise money for children’s charity Zoe’s Place.
Gavin, 36, who works as a project manager for Siemens on the Liverpool Lime Street resignalling programme, has represented RailSport GB as a striker on several European football tours and has been on the railway for 17 years.
Gavin said, ‘This year I have secured sponsorship to race in the BRSCC Toyo Tires Porsche Championship in a Porsche 924, and as I speak I sit second in the championship behind my PDC Racing teammate going into the final round at Brands Hatch. In my last outing at Rockingham, I secured my first pole position, fastest lap, lap record and race win.’
Gavin receives some sponsorship from Orion Rail Group but needs more.
‘For Gavin Revs up for Zoe’s Place every point I earn – since the Anglesey round-island race – I am personally donating £1 to the Lime Street project charity Zoe’s Place. This is an independent registered charity providing palliative, respite and end-of-life care to babies and infants aged from birth to five years.
‘As a team, we also visit local primary schools to talk to children about the importance of teamwork, friendship, wellbeing and aspiration.’
The offices of solicitors Eversheds Sutherland near St Paul’s Cathedral in the heart of London was the venue this year. It was my pleasure to introduce Rail Minister Paul Maynard MP – more correctly described as the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Rail, Accessibility and HS2.
He is MP for Blackpool North and Cleveleys and has a degree in history from Oxford as well as having been educated at St Ambrose College Altrincham in Cheshire.
Rail Minister’s concerns
Understandably, he referred to fatigue as the late night Brexit Bill vote had caused him to lose sleep! He said we have the safest railway in Europe and welcomed the RSSB’s clarification of the Rule Book requirements for despatching trains. He highlighted areas of concern about the platform edge, bank slips and the attitudes and culture of some workers. He repeated Network Rail’s mantra about staff getting home safely.
Referring to the Office of Rail and Road’s (ORR) annual report, he stressed the importance of heritage railways and the need for improvements to be made due to the worrying number of incidents involving their operations. Acknowledging that railway suicides are not within anyone’s direct control, he told us that one in 20 of the 200 or more suicides a year take place on the railway. Franchising agreements now include provisions for vulnerable people and suicides.
Credit: HighVizMedia and @LaurentCphoto.
Five billion pounds a year spending
Our second keynote speaker was Francis Paonessa, managing director of Infrastructure Projects, Network Rail. A chartered engineer, Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, with a degree in aeronautical engineering from Manchester, his previous employment has included work as a mechanical designer.
His organisation employs 4,300 people, 3,000 suppliers and spends £130 million in an average week. Crossrail, Thameslink and London Bridge were all mentioned. Although his organisation has seen a reduction in lost-time accidents, people are still suffering life-changing injuries. He commented on the improvement in safety culture immediately following a trench collapse incident, adding that road traffic accidents are now the largest cause of injuries.
He expects digital railway train control systems to provide risk reducing opportunities and drones will soon be in use for surveying sites (due to their improving accuracy). Infrastructure Projects use 40,000 possessions each year and overrun delay minutes have halved over the last two years. He was pleased in August when, during their largest-ever job, staff stopped the job after deeming it to be unsafe. He said this received the right degree of empowerment. Answering a delegate’s question, he commented that two thirds of their possessions are for less than eight hours, and on the current 14 hours door-to-door rule for workers.
Tolerability of Risk – fish and lettuce
Nicola Uijen is a chartered safety professional with over 20 years rail experience, now working for Costain Rail. Following work with Network Rail and automatic track warning systems, she spent time with Costain Highways before returning to rail. She is deputy chair of the Safety Leadership Group and has worked with the RSSB. She highlighted the increase rail has experienced in significant injury accidents, before referring to risk tolerability where she compared rail to North Sea fishing and the risk from eating bagged lettuce! She explained Costain’s decision to change their focus from ‘zero accidents’ to ‘halving harm’. She also commented on the adoption of a positive approach to safety, with the use of PPE always being the last resort.
“Don’t chase the glitter ball”
She described events on Crossrail leading up to the site visit by Her Majesty the Queen. Towards the end of 2015, a spate of non-conformances were put down to ‘a bad day before Christmas’. Then three serious RIDDOR accidents happened in January in the week before the Royal Visit.
For the visit, there was no written Safe System of Work and no briefing was given. Back to basics was the aim; forget time and performance just get it right. This continued afterwards with supervisors starting each task on site. Subsequently communications improved, the result is that there hasn’t been a RIDDOR since January last year. She said time constraints are a danger. Short possessions increase risks, safety should be a valued necessity rather than a priority and in matters of safety ‘Don’t chase the glitter ball’.
Credit: HighVizMedia and @LaurentCphoto.
Repeated mistakes, pockets of excellence and mental health
Ian Prosser is Chief Inspector of Railways for the ORR, as well as being board member. He is an engineer with a chemical engineering first degree from Imperial College London and a Masters from Cambridge. He worked in chemical, pharmaceutical and automotive industries before coming to rail.
He stressed the importance of ORR’s actions being proportionate and consistent. Good safety he opined is good business, but he asked why it is that the industry continues to make the same mistakes? He added that whilst there are now ‘pockets of excellence’ in the industry, there are still many who may be described as merely ‘middle of the road’. Consequently enforcement still has to be used.
Referring to target zero, he suggested that everyone should now strive to achieve a year without a single improvement notice. Safety by design without gold plating was a second theme of his presentation.
He stressed the importance of talking to people face to face and his concerns over the increasing number of assaults on rail staff . He said that communication to ground level needs to improve. Early next year, he expects Network Rail’s chief executive to launch a safety campaign involving the Samaritans organisation focussing on mental health awareness.
Psychological factors in developing a safety culture
Mandy Geal is the founder of Learning Partners. She aims to emphasise the ‘personal’ aspect of personal safety. She stressed the psychological factors that affect behaviours. People’s reactions when threatened and concerns for their own safety may include the wish to fight or take flight; become aggressive, freeze, or take action to avoid the situation.
She went on to explain how removing fears and being rewarded affects motivation and conscious awareness. Workforce culture and the need for individual engagement and involvement, as well as developing a balanced view of risk and safety, should always be taken into account.
A psychological trust in safety matters and the performance of colleagues plus the open admission of mistakes and the outlawing of a culture of blame are all needed for a good safety performance.
Listening and being seen
Emma Head was appointed corporate safety director HS2 in August 2015, having previously been director of safety strategy at Network Rail. Safety culture and responsibility were her themes.
She spoke of the importance of caring for the workforce, designing for safety, construction, operations and maintenance. Listening to people, being seen and approachable were all necessary if confidence and a good safety culture is to be achieved. HS2 has started from first principles. Emma said they had produced projections based on HS1’s construction.
They found that if they didn’t do anything differently, HS2 would suffer three fatalities and 713 non-fatal accidents. Their holistic health strategy aims to ‘put safety at the heart of all they do’; and prevention rather than mitigation is the aim.
A Smart T-COD
Lex Van der Poel is chief executive officer of Dual Inventive and an adviser to the European Committee for Railway Standardisation.
His interest in the Internet of Things resulted in the development of the MTinfo 3000 cloud platform. ZKL 3000 is the name given to their remotely activated/controlled track circuit operating device which has Network Rail approval at SIL 4 level. It can be used as a semi- permanent installation in the four- foot and or may be installed at any convenient time before a single or series of possessions. It can be activated by a smart phone.
In Amsterdam they have been fitted to 205 sets of points. The speaker described their use to the growing interest of all.
Avoiding 157 annual close calls!
David Underwood a civil engineer project manager Track Renewals with Network Rail had previous experience with London Underground. He described the use they have made of the ZKL 3000 system in West Yorkshire. Their organisation has two high output track relaying systems and five ballast cleaning ones. The former undertake some 70 per cent of the track renewals carried out by Network Rail each year. For track renewals on average there are 12 line blockages taken every night with for ballast cleaning.
During 2016/17, the placing or misplacing of possession protection resulted in 157 close calls. The use of ZKL 3000 has used a dispensation from the putting out of detonators etc, resulting in fewer people at risk on track and considerable time
saving.
Further developments currently being trialled include an in cab ‘flexible train arrival point’ system and personal warning systems together with remote temporary speed restriction boards. The question and answer session included the comment from the ORR that the current CP6 submission should include ZKL 3000 system introduction.
Credit: HighVizMedia and @LaurentCphoto for Rail Media @rail_media
Freight wagon maintenance
James Collinson is the managing director of the Network Certification Body (NCB) and a chartered mechanical engineer. His focus was on freight wagon maintenance and loading. He began by explaining the task operators faced following rail privatisation.
Over 3,000 vehicles both two axle, with bogies and specialist types were privatised to the freight operating companies but without clear responsibilities for their maintenance. The problems were recognised by the ORR and after twenty years in CP5 by a legislation change identifying capability and responsibility.
Asymmetric loading data analysis from 183,000 wagon recordings revealed only 380 were outside the set limits. Further condition monitoring at specific places is being carried out using a vehicle identity recognition system.
Safety incident legal expectations
Tim Hill, partner of Eversheds Sutherland is a solicitor advocate, specialising in criminal regulatory matters including fatalities, corporate manslaughter and health and safety.
He was involved in the Ladbroke Grove Inquiry and more recently on industrial relations issues of Driver Only Operation. Delegates were reminded of the new guidelines that have been in place since 1 February last year in respect of corporate manslaughter and health and safety offences.
Sentencing guidelines take into account continuous improvement and ALARP initiatives but company turnover (especially £50 million or more) now influences fine levels, although one third discounts are awarded for early guilty pleas.
Investigation techniques
Simon French is the Chief Inspector of the Rail Accident Investigation Branch. Railway risk and its management are central to their investigations. He spoke of his concern at the number of trackworker accidents in particular. He said that their investigations look for gaps in safety defences and their purpose is to capture lessons learnt and recommend improvements.
Amongst current concerns he cited Cardiff where an investigation had uncovered rostering of 10 successive 12-hour shifts without a day off; and on South Devon Railway a toilet available for travellers with a large hole to the track in its floor – he showed the picture with the toilet roll still in place. Drilling down to ‘shop floor’ level is their aim, as is the uncovering of hidden relationships. He concluded by referring to their class investigation into workers on track whilst trains run, and said that he was looking forward to the end of red zone working.
Cost, learning and incidents
Simon Grundy, innovation manager at Amey, has worked in the rail industry for just two years. Acknowledging the zero fatalities achievement of 2015/16, he reminded everyone of the 6,597 workforce injuries and 157 life-changing injuries that occurred at that time. He spoke with passion about the electrification project worker who was killed when a driver using a mobile phone crossed the central reservation and collided with him head on.
He stressed the importance of self-accountability, correct behaviours and risk perception as well as the danger of complacency. Incidents he said were not inevitable. He described the use of task rehearsals, site familiarisation and operational briefings, before advocating the use of virtual reality equipment to simulate near misses, and drones to assist with inspections.
Stressful situations, a new way – Havening
Mark Wingfield from Max Training spoke about the work he has done to help individuals suffering trauma following train assaults. He described the process of Havening which can be effective in reducing fears and stresses following incidents. It is a psycho-physical process which he explained uses delta waves in the brain.
In a first for the Rail Safety Summit, he demonstrated the technique to all present by encouraging the audience to stimulate delta waves by crossing arms and stroking heads and sides of chins before almost rubbing noses with the delegate sitting alongside. Participation levels were high.
Credit: HighVizMedia and @LaurentCphoto.
Improving track safety without lineside signals
This was a joint presentation from Pat McFadden of Network Rail and Tom Lee Director of Standards at the Rail Safety and Standards Board. They explained that the Digital Railway incorporates rail traffic management, automatic train operation, telecommunications, European Train Control Systems and connected driver advisory
systems.
The overall aim is to reduce cost, reduce carbon emissions and increase capacity. Whilst the individual elements referred to are known, the collaboration between the two organisations aims to knot the elements together so as to achieve maximum benefit.
Diesel fumes, ballast dust and other risks
The final speaker of the day was Matt Coldwell an occupational hygienist with the Health and Safety Laboratory who spoke of managing health for the future. He began by telling us that currently 1.3 million people are suffering from work-related illness. He said that this was being addressed by the ORR’s 2014/19 Occupational Health Programme.
His involvement covers mental health, lifestyle choices and health risks. He gave illustrated rail site examples including diesel fumes, ballast handling and dust. He acknowledged RSSB’s initiatives which have led to exposure controls including the use of water suppression to reduce ballast dust.
He criticised inadequate training and risk assessments, the lack of occupational health expertise and a general over-reliance on the use of PPE.
Thank you all
I had the pleasure of thanking both our hosts at Eversheds Sutherland and the speakers who had ably answered delegates’ questions throughout the day when I drew the proceedings to a close. I concluded by offering a huge thank you to Tom O’Connor and all the Rail Media Team for making the arrangements, including the excellent buffet-style lunch, and ensuring that the day ran smoothly.
Thank you to this year’s sponsors: Amey, Bolle Safety, OnTrac, Rail Safety Solutions, RSSB and Stobart Rail.
Alstom said it is building a new generation of highly skilled rail engineers with the official launch of its academy in Widnes.
Over the course of the next five years the centre is expected to train 500 apprentices, starting with 20 this autumn.
Five of those apprentices will work in a 80-strong team, which is repainting 56 Pendolinos alongside the academy at Widnes.
The Alstom Academy for Rail will work with other education providers to deliver its apprenticeship programmes.
The training will include safety and maintenance of vehicles such as Alstom’s Pendolino trains, which are used on the West Coast Mainline, or the Citadis trams, which operate on Nottingham’s tram network.
Transport secretary Chris Grayling said, ‘Our rail network is growing and I have been clear we will need thousands more people working in the sector in the years ahead.
‘We are investing £13 billion in transport across the north and there are some great, rewarding careers working on our railways.’
