I'm afraid you do not appear to understand health and safety. There are several levels to it. There is no "leniency", and without getting bogged down in safety management, a key issue is the high level safety culture and processes. As we stand now, whatever the facts of the Reading incident, lets say we have 2 train operators who have identical incidents.
One of those is WCRC. A company who in the last 12 months are on record as having their Chairman state that the company refused to engage with NR over safety matters, couldn't actually confirm if their train crews were properly briefed during investigations into an incident that led to the closure of part of the ECML (IIRC), disengaged from a high level safety review from NR, bangs on about a paranoid conspiracy, and then has one of the worst SPAD's of the year that was seconds from a mass casualty collision, and had to be suspended from the network and investigated by the ORR.
The other is an established operator who has a generally constructive and compliant relationship with NR, is backed with demonstrably effective and appropriate safety processes and culture, and hasn't had a high score SPAD/near miss where their crews interacted inappropriately with safety equipment and failed to follow basic rail procedures.
It is entirely right that one of these is put under the a microscope for our hypothetical situation, and one is allowed to resolve it in other methods, since one of the outfits have proven incapable of managing safely competently and the other has proven satisfactory. NR has legal duties to protect the public and other operators, and most focus on those who pose the greatest risk overall. I have little doubt NR also had a big scare after Wotton, as ambulance chasing lawyers as well as the ORR and Coroners would have wanted NR to explain, given WCRC's recent safety record, why they had not been suspended prior to this. It would have been hellish for NR, as they would be blamed (and probably sued) for allowing steam trains on a modern network.
The other unrelated point, is that NR are late into the public sector cost cutting/austerity process. I work in the non-railway public sector and the cuts are so severe in many areas that anything "non-essential" is cut. Steam trains are entirely non-essential to the operation of a costly and heavily indebted NR. The utter stupidity of WCRC's management is that if austerity bites NR hard, it will be nigh on impossible to convince a minister or the Treasury that steam services are not a huge burden on NR running costs. If someone totals up what WCRC have cost NR in avoidabel and unnecessary management time and money from closures and incidents etc, it will be game over. WCRC even tried to claim compensation from NR following a temporary steam ban on one stretch of line, despite the fact that the ban arose from a safety incident and fire caused by WCRC!
Thanks for your response - might I reply point-by-point?
- I'm baffled by the idea that different TOCs are held to different standards depending on the quality of their management response to regulators and their recent (lack of) incidents. Imagine a situation in which DBS gains new senior management in their British TOC business, and that these managers erode the good practice and trustworthy systems that NR uses as a reason to adopt a "soft-touch" policy towards them. At some stage, this new, lax culture leads to a potentially serious incident occurring, but, as DBS are seen as 'model pupils', NR fails to apply the same scrutiny to the circumstances of the incident as they did to the WCR SPAD; after a cursory internal investigation, DBS changes nothing. Subsequently, this lax attitude leads to a major accident involving DBS including significant loss of life. How does NR then explain to the families of those killed that they failed to prevent the newly-careless TOC from causing the accident as they'd previously been of no concern, by ceasing to regulate them as stringently as other operators?
- Despite what I've said above, I'm not arguing against holding WCR to an unusually-high level of oversight until they satisfy regulators with management and procedural improvements, though there may be a fine line between that and finding any excuse to banish them from the network. My argument is that it shouldn't be a zero-sum game; extra oversight for one operator shouldn't be paired with a
laissez-faire approach to others on the basis that they are seen as being a safer pair of hands. I'd like, if I may, to clarify whether or not this is indeed the case - would any other operator with a good safety record be treated similarly to DBS, or would a middle-ground approach be used?
- Glad to see that we appear to be in agreement on the excesses of the current austerity fetish. If NR budget is cut to the point of losing main line steam, could the heritage operators, and the groups constructing new-build locos from extinct classes for main line use not sue for restriction of trade? It would be a terrible pity, but austerity has had many more wide-ranging and damaging effects IMO than the loss of main line steam, so, if it happens, we shall just have to accept that the "anti-heritage" mindset will have won the day.
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These incidents did not take place in a vacuum, and the wider safety performance of the companies involved must also be considered. I acknowledge that WCR acted promptly in caping their charter, but I still have concerns that lax/ inappropriate methods of working may have caused the issue in the first place. Eastern loco footplates are particularly noisy; radios have too much chance of being miss - heard, as seems to have happened.
Looking at it as a driver, WCR does not seem to operate on a level playing field with the rest of us. If I'd been involved in either incident, I would be thinking "Bye bye job, bye bye house, bye bye pension."
That WCR driver can just walk away. The fireman will have a regular job somewhere else, that will be totally unaffected. They are not under the same cosh as the rest of us. That is what frightens me.
I get what you're saying about incidents not taking-place in a vacuum, but, on the other hand, our legal system, IIRC, does not allow disclosure of previous convictions of the accused to the jury lest it sway their judgement in the case at hand, implying that judging new cases on the basis of past behaviour isn't universally accepted as correct. I'm not concerned by WCR being placed under greater scrutiny than other operators; what concerns me is the implication that I've picked-up from this thread that operators such as DBS who are seen as scrupulous are effectively being permitted to self-regulate, or at least are being given greater leeway than normal on the basis of their "good behaviour". I find that as concerning as WCR's recent past - possibly more so in the light of how many of each TOC's trains are running on the network during the average week.
Also, just one final thought - I appreciate it's unlikely, but is there not a chance that the DBS incident was underlain by inappropriate working methods as well, just not as obviously as the WCR case? Is the jump to the conclusion that the DBS driver made a simple mistake that was not influenced by any procedural failing a touch premature, or at least unfair to WCR, in whose case many are gleefully pointing the finger?