Ten minutes with RSSB’s principal rail operations specialist
I started at Normanton on 27 September 1965, 140 years after George Stephenson’s Locomotion No. 1 pulled the first steam-hauled, fare-paying passenger train over the Stockton & Darlington Railway. I was a Class 4 booking clerk but worked my way through a number of posts before being accepted as a management trainee, after which I eventually took on management roles.
At a very early stage, before I joined the railway, I was conscious of a fair amount of railway activity, including the significance of signalling. I’d read Red for Danger, but when I started work it was impressed upon me that familiarity with the rules and regulations would assist me in my future career. I took an active interest in improving my understanding from the outset.
That’s a good question. It would’ve been after I’d been a management trainee and became Assistant Area Manager at Cambridge. That was the first time anyone entrusted me with any direct safety-related responsibilities. I was on call every three weeks, so I had to go out if anything happened.
The first incident I attended was the demolition of a set of crossing gates. The gates had been opened to road traffic prematurely by the crossing keeper and a Class 31 on a King’s Lynn to Liverpool Street service ran through them. No one was hurt, fortunately.
I lived through the tail-end of steam traction in the late `60s and saw the introduction of the Total Operations Processing System in the `70s, which allowed British Rail to track rolling stock in real time. But one important thing is that there is so much more data and information readily available to us now, across all aspects of railway activity. The Railways Archive website has opened the past to us, and RAIB reports and the Rule Book are all readily available online. Once upon a time the Rule Book would have been a hard copy only and inscribed ‘private, not for publication’. Now, it’s in the public domain.
It’s also interesting to reflect that what concerned the railway 60 years ago is very different from what concerns it now. Workforce safety is a key example. Back then, incidents were always seen as tragic, but the railway tended to see them almost as a fact of life; it was somehow inevitable that we would kill perhaps 30 or 50 people a year. We take a much more enlightened view now, I’m very glad to say.
Main image: Freightliner
Well, it wouldn’t be fair to claim sole credit for anything, as the Rule Book is a team effort. But I am pleased to have been at least party to the development of the current layout, format, and structure. We first published it in 2003, and the format has survived intact until this day, which is longer than its three predecessors did.
I think you can’t undervalue what you can learn from talking to colleagues. Who else will explain to you why things are as they are? Learning from experience is very important. You won’t have any experience when you start on the railway, so you’ll need to learn from the experience of those around you. You can get a lot of information on how and why decisions were made in Right Track, too, of course. This magazine never shies away from giving the background. But we’re all learning; even after 60 years I learn something new every day. Working in our industry provides an endless source of interest and satisfaction.
