Railway culture

Braband, J., The importance of a safety culture in railway signaling, SIGNAL + DRAHT (96) 5/2004, p. 33-36. 

The second factor to be considered is the target attractiveness. Terrorists tend to consider national monuments, major cultural, political, and sporting events, and the financial sector to be particularly attractive, as an attack on such a target is viewed as an attack on their enemy s entire way of life. Likewise, key infrastructure components such as key bridges, tunnels, highways, and railways are more attractive. Finally, the public s fear of chemical and petroleum facilities may make these more attractive targets, more so if materials in the facility have potential off-site consequences if released. 

No nations on earth took to the machine with greater enthusiasm. They adopted railways and telephones more rapidly than any of their neighbors. Fascination with technology shaped national cultures and self-perception. In the United States, the belief in Yankee ingenuity took hold. One American novelist, awestruck at the machines on display at Philadelphia s Centennial Exhibition in 1876, wrote that it is still in these things of iron and steel that the national genius most freely speaks . . . the present America is voluble in the strong metals and their infinite uses. ... 

In order to pursue efforts to establish a single market for rail transport services, initiated by Council Directive 91/440/EEC of 29 July 1991 on the development of the Community s railways, it has been necessary to establish a common regulatory fi-amework for railway safely. Member States have developed their safety rules and standards mainly on national lines, based on national technical and operational concepts. Simultaneously, differences in principles, approach and culture have made it difficult to break through the technical barriers and estabhsh international transport operations. 

Farrington-Daiby, T, Pickup, L. and Wilson, J.R. 2005. Safety culture in railway maintenance. Safety Science, 43, 39-60. 

More broadly the report emphasized the crucial importance of safety on the railways and discussed the tensions between safety and funding. Pertinently, given this research, the report stresses the importance of safety being a constitutive part of railway life and culture ... 

King s Cross, as the first of these disasters, was seen to cause incredible public dismay, resentment, reaction and consequently political embarrassment (Railway Inspectorate). There was a feeling that these events moved the culture and made people safety aware. In particular it caused greater attention to be paid to management structures and control. This said, not all of the recommendations resulting from the subsequent inquiries were implemented in the long term. As we will go on to discuss in Chapter 11, there were other counter-pressures to the impetus provided by these accidents. 

The period of fieldwork for the BR study also witnessed the beginning of a period of institutional and cultural change for the Railway Inspectorate, changes which again progressed further during the rest of the 1990s. 

There are structural explanations for this approach to risk, centring on the broader employment market and also upon organizational explanations, most notably the culture of production which is crystallized in the so-called railway... 

Railways need to have a proactive search for safety enhancements that are rational, reflect known and identified risks and they need to develop a safety culture that delivers consistent implementation of the safety controls that maintain a safe system. Regulators need to ensure that railway companies fulfil these obligations and maintain their will to do this, despite all the resource and commercial pressures that might deflect their priorities. 

On the other hand, in 1954, 193,000 km (47.75 million acres) of land were flooded, and 18,884,000 people had to be evacuated from Wuhan (population 8 million people) and the surrounding area for more than three months. At least 33,169 people drowned and the Jingguang Railway was out of service for over 100 days (China Culture Mall Trading Group, Inc., 2007). 

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