Railway Inspectorate

Thanks must go to the numerous individuals within British Railways and also the Railway Inspectorate, who supported the research and gave up their time to be interviewed. Obviously this study could not have been undertaken without the co-operation of staff across British Railways, and it could not have proved such a rich source of data without the frankness and honesty with which they approached the interviews. The Directors of British Railways and the unions should also be thanked for exposing themselves to such scrutiny. I am very grateful to them and sincerely hope that this work has already helped to improve occupational health and safety on the railways and that it will contribute to future improvements in this and other industries. 

There were some attempts by the industry to consider the causes and circumstances of railways accidents. In 1841, for instance, they examined the causes and circumstances of accidents and proposed their own rules, regulation, and codes. It is unclear if the intention was to avert state regulation but historians imply that this was their main intention. Alderman (1973 45) notes that Brunei saw this as a propaganda exercise to placate the government, with a view to diverting the need for state regulation (see also Parris, 1965). This said, many of the measures which the railway inspectors advocated and which were eventually required in law were adopted voluntarily by many railway companies. For example, the block... 

Gourvish s (1986) official business history, for example, does not mention health and safety or the Railway Inspectorate in its index. The concern of Gourvish s history is economic, financial, social, and oiganizational matters. There are four references to accidents in the index, and discussion of these is related to the question of investment, in particular as evidence of a lack of investment. 

There were a variety of administrative changes during the course of the twentieth century. For instance, in 1919 the Ministry of Transport was formed and the Railway Inspectorate Department of the Board of Trade was transferred to it. In 1970 the Ministry of Transport was absorbed into the newly formed Department of the Environment. 

The responsibility for occupational health and safety at work and the associated recruitment of railway employment inspectors represented a major change to the Railway Inspectorate, perhaps the most dramatic this century. Its remit was greatly extended and its numbers doubled to cope with the extra work. The new inspectors were very different from the army officers who had traditionally been recruited into the Inspectorate (see Ch. 3) and increasingly the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) competed with the Department of Transport for responsibility for the Railway Inspectorate. Indeed the Railway Inspectorate worked for HSE on an agency basis until December 1990 when it became part of the Executive. 

At the time of this research the Railway Inspectorate was dealing with a monopoly employer, namely British Railways. Inspectors did spend time with other smaller railways, such as London Transport, Tyne and Wear, the Glasgow Underground, and the numerous minor railways, such as the Severn Valley Railway... 

The main phase of interviews was followed up in the mid-1990s with further interviews with members of the Railway Inspectorate and Railtrack. These findings are reported in Chapter 11. In addition to the interviews, documentary sources were consulted. These included official publications and internal company documents. Further details of the data collection can be found in the Appendices. 

A variety of sources of information about railway accidents in Britain is available. The statistics below are derived from two sources, namely Railway Inspectorate and HSE annual reports and BR data. The HSE data are probably the most accessible and simply presented data. This chapter provides a basic and summary picture of the official data. Its intention is to highlight the main... 

Table 3.2. Injuries to employees reported to the Railway Inspectorate April 1987-March 1993...

Table 3.3 details the type of accident which led to injury, using Railway Inspectorate categories of classification and data.The basic points to glean from these... 

These categories are the ones used by the Railway Inspectorate in their collection of accident statistics. There is an additional category, namely failures of rolling stock, track, and structures. These can cause train accidents or personal injury but do not necessarily do so (Department of Transport, 1987 5). 

A crane driver was crushed when he fell between the buffers of his own crane and its match wagon and another crane was used to shunt wagons onto them. (Railway Inspectorate Report)... 

During an unauthorised movement of a shunting locomotive along a siding at Y , it collided with the rear vehicle of a stationary train, killing two drivers who were in the cab and slightly injuring the Secondman. (Railway Inspectorate Report)... 

A man was struck when scrambling for the platform in response to a shout as the vehicles he was examining suddenly moved backwards under the impact of the attaching locomotive. The primary cause of the accident was the failure of the driver to properly control the movement of his locomotive as it set back onto the train. He was driving from the rear cab and could not see in the direction of travel due to the curvature of the line. (Railway Inspectorate Report)... 

A man driving a battery platform tractor lost control and drove over the edge of the platform. [He suffered a] fractured pelvis, two cracked vertebrae, bruised abdomen. (Railway Inspectorate Report)... 

An Overhead Lineman was electrocuted when attempting to attach an earth connection to the overhead line equipment... he failed to establish the correct overhead line to be earthed and attempted to attach an earth wire to a live wire energised at 25 kV. (Railway Inspectorate Report)... 

Lookout man at fault] A track machine man working with a tamper was struck by a train travelling on an adjacent line. An inexperienced lookout man failed to give warning of the oncoming train. (Railway Inspectorate Report)... 

A track patrolman was struck by a train from behind as he was walking alongside a bidirectional hne. The locomotive s warning hom had been sounded as the train approached and the patrolman had apparently acknowledged the warning. .. he appears to have been so preoccupied with his duties that he failed to assimilate the warning sounded from the train. He also failed to keep a good lookout or to keep himself in a place of safety. (Railway Inspectorate Report)... 

A driver and guard walking to Y station on an unauthorised route, were overtaken and killed by a train. Both men failed to exercise care for their own safety. (Railway Inspectorate Report)... 

Report criticized the relationship between the Railway Inspectorate and London Transport for being too informal (1988, 1.25). 

The King s Cross report made 157 recommendations and the Clapham Junction Inquiry resulted in 93 recommendations. These covered a wide range of issues such as those addressing the immediate cause of the accident recommendations to improve the response of the railway companies staff, training, communications, and management of safety and recommendations about the role of the Railway Inspectorate. I want to focus briefly on the Clapham recommendations as it is these which are most pertinent for this study. They are particularly interesting as they are another source of information about occupational health and safety on BR and one which was contemporaneous with this study. 

It also figured in my more recent interviews with railway inspectors and industry representatives. One railway inspector regarded the coincidence of King s Cross and Clapham as having ... 

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. 

Important administrative requirements have been developed by the Railway Inspectorate in the form of the Railway Construction and Operations Requirements. These have been produced since the nineteenth century and detail the Inspectorate s requirements for new works. The first Requirements were written in 1858 and since then they have been developed as railway practice has developed. Although they are not mandatory the Inspectorate may not pass new... 

BR must send the county and district local authorities concerned notice of their proposals. If they consider it necessary the Railway Inspectorate can then make recommendations to the Secretary of State. 

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