Oops!
There’s an emphasis on extreme caution around crew make inspections during a suspected dewirement. A driver was critically injured by being electrocuted by downed wires on the WCML a few years back. AC can jump, and damaged wires won’t immediately discharge even when the power is switched off.
Indeed, there was even a RED film made about it. One of the important learning points being that in some weather conditions- especially the sort of grey, flat overcast type weather like today- it can be VERY difficult to see a piece of downed live OLE as it just doesn't stand out against the background, so if a Driver goes out inspecting their train they may not see it (no matter how careful they are) because it's effectively invisible.......
Driver absolutely did the right thing, and so did NR in terms of how they went and checked it out safely- quite quickly too.
It certainly does feel like these issues are happening more and more often, particularly when we get slightly unusual - but far from extreme - weather. That's just a subjective opinion - I've no objective data - but it does feel like things have got a lot more likely to fall apart over the last few years, for whatever reason.
I tend to agree. I recall it happening before when Network Rail maintenance spend was cut. We had Phase 2B/C and we though it couldn't get worse....... but we were wrong. The maintenance capacity has been cut year on year since then. And now most maintenance staff on night shift which reduces the maximum possible human reliability limit (= building in more errors in maintenance, I can take you for a trot through the concept of quantitative human factors analysis and the measurable impact of "conditions" on human performance if you want
).
You can save a few quid by flogging the assets for a while but eventually they start to fall over- usually in many places at once. I'd say where we are now feels like the consequences of doing just that for too long.
It's the dilemma of maintenance: if you do it well, you result is... nothing. No failures. That's a
really difficult concept to explain to a bean-counter. They see something they are paying for but get "nothing" in return, in their eyes if it doesn't break, why do we need so many maintainers......? So the maintenance budget is cut, and for a while, it's OK. Then things reach a level of degradation and the failures start, by which time it's too late and it's a heck of a job to get back to reliability. It's a bit of a sine wave in resource when you have maintenance driven by bean-counters.
And when they go on a course on "lean"- oh, no, that's far worse. They just cannot get the concept that "lean" requires control of all inputs, which you NEVER have on the railway (weather and passengers being critical uncontrollable inputs). The importance of resilience is also underestimated and not valued because it costs and when it works you get..... nothing: no failures, no loss of service.
TBH, the motorways are in a similar boat, there's roadworks all over and the carriageway is getting really lumpy in some places.
I guess we'll find out the hard way whether the electricity grid is in similar shape over the next few years.
TPO