Britain's Disgusting Railways

[Dean_Forest]

Poor delivery of safety briefings is quite a common problem in many industries. The tendency is often for someone with little practical experience in the field to just read from the sheet with no attempt to engage the audience. This method is very counter-productive. Better methods are to use videos/reconstructions of actual incidents, play out scenarios etc. it brings it home better. When preparing briefings for teenagers on fire safety for example, I include footage from the Bradford fire. Seeing people collapse from heat exhaustion quickly stopped them messing around. Likewise, a tabletop exercise for TOC control staff that included a mock trial brought a few things home.

 

[wholbr]

Hi cybordongreen (Dave), Dean and everybody
Dean, Dave there is much I can agree with in your postings at #100 and 101 of this thread. I would first of all agree that presentation at H&S briefings can often leave much to be desired. However, as usual there is always two sides to every story. The bain of Health & Safety in all fields (not just industrial) would be the compensation culture that has developed over the last twenty years in many developed countries.

In the above, that claims culture now costs each and everyone of us added cost to virtually everything we purchase. By example to the foregoing, twenty years ago writing up a risk assessment in the road transport industry would on average for a three section numeric risk assessment take up between six to eight pages of calculations and typing. Today that same risk assessment will on average take up on between nine and twelve pages of calculations and typing.

Many would ask in the above, “what takes up all those extra pages”, simple answer, stating the bloody obvious. In that, if the obvious is not included in any situational or operational risk assessment then the boys in whigs and silks will will point to the fact that (by example) we did not inform someone that they should not stand upright on a caster base office chair and that was the base cause of the accident which then did their client injury

Of course workplace operational situations in any company constantly change. New equipment comes in, the way tasks are carried out are revised and outside factors such as changes to industrial legislation or court landmark rulings can mean that the overall safety regime and encompassed risk assessments in any workplace have to be rewritten.

When any of the above takes place, under legislation it has to be brought to the attention of any workforce by way of ether document circulation in small companies, or safety briefings in larger ones and pretty boring reading or listening to it can doubtedly make. However, much of the bloody obvious matters the safety rep describes to those attending the briefings has to be in the presentation due to our friends in the worldwide compensation industry.

Of course those briefings can be made interesting. In my own case I came up from the shop floor as an HGV driver before being elected as union safety rep for the workforce. I then progressed to senior safety officer for eight large distribution depots within the company. The foregoing proved to be a great asset as many of the people I gave briefing to remembered me as the driver they worked alongside and elected.

In those early career briefings I always opened the meetings by finding out what in their everyday work duties concerned them and find out if I could help. Only then do I move on to what has to be briefed on and in doing so inject as much humour as I can (make em laugh and they will listen).

I started my own industrial safety company in 2003 and we now act as consultants for three large London based insurance companies. In that we carry out independent safety audits and incident investigation etc. However life is never soft. Even though i am supposed to be semi retired, for the last week I have been engaged in a safety audit in a huge North Bristol based sewage works.

It is the third time I have been called to the sewage plant. However the workforce there are a great group of people both male and female. The on-site union trained safety reps are “top notch” in their knowledge, but the site will always be full of very real hazards and dangers. Flow channels, screens, filters and pumps will always get blocked and often that the only way to clear that is to get down in those channels and clear that with shovels and pressure jets. It is then when you see those workers really looking out for one another and feel it a privilege to be on-site.

I tell the above as the management and workforce really get on well together. In that the plant director yesterday put up a lovely Christmas tree outside the joint offices and control room. Today the manual workforce put up one of their own as competition outside the methane plant (LOL). They had found an old Christmas tree on the adjoining recycling plant and an old plastic Father Christmas they found last year floating in one of the flow channels was placed on top. An electrician from the methane plant put a few lights on it and i will not state what else they decorated it with, but everybody agreed at the end including me that it looked just great.

It is far better than the expensive one outside the plant director's office which on sight he agreed with.


Bill

 

[BLACKWATCH]

Many would ask in the above, “what takes up all those extra pages”, simple answer, stating the bloody obvious. In that, if the obvious is not included in any situational or operational risk assessment then the boys in whigs and silks will will point to the fact that (by example) we did not inform someone that they should not stand upright on a caster base office chair and that was the base cause of the accident which then did their client injury
Bill

What the hell is wrong with people these days?
If I was a judge, I'd be giving those whigs & silks the big heave ho out of my courtroom & telling the complainant to give their 'common sense' some exercise.

Whatever happened to 'thinking'?, has some addative been put in the water to make us all brainless zombies?

If the example above is to be followed, then the person who conducted the 'risk assessment' for the Department of Transport, should be sacked on the spot, for not pointing out that there should be a large sign every 10 metres along the sides of the entire length of every motorway, saying 'Pedestrians must not cross this road, it can result in death from vehicular impact'.

 

[wholbr]

What the hell is wrong with people these days?

If I was a judge, I'd be giving those whigs & silks the big heave ho out of my courtroom & telling the complainant to give their 'common sense' some exercise.

Whatever happened to 'thinking'?, has some addative been put in the water to make us all brainless zombies?

If the example above is to be followed, then the person who conducted the 'risk assessment' for the Department of Transport, should be sacked on the spot, for not pointing out that there should be a large sign every 10 metres along the sides of the entire length of every motorway, saying 'Pedestrians must not cross this road, it can result in death from vehicular impact'.

Hi Blackwatch and everybody.
Blackwatch,I could not agree with your above sentiments more. The above incident did actually happen and a women employee called a risk assessment I had written into question at an industrial court hearing. It all came down to what is known as “Precedence” which is a large component in the “Fairness at Work Act 1999” now encompassed under the “Equalities Act 2010”

The core of the above act as the name suggests is to ensure that all persons are treated equally in any workplace (noble attributes). In the case in question, a young women working in the traffic office of a large distribution centre had the lighting tube above her desk keep flashing so she decided not to wait for maintainence and to change it herself.

She got a new tube from the store came back asked a work college to hold the back of the office chair to stop it swiveling round and promptly stood up on the seat. However, as she reached up and pulled at the diffuser the roller casters on the bottom of legs took up the thrust that created, the chair “shot away” and she crashed down on corner of the desk then floor. In creating the foregoing gymnastic masterpiece she fractured her arm and cracked her skull.

To cut a long story short, she informed a claims solicitor that she had previously seen another member of staff stand on a similar chair assisted by the office supervisor. The solicitor then claimed the previous event had set the “precedence” that any member of staff could stand on an office chair if they felt it necessary.

The solicitor then claimed to the court that added favourable evidence was given to her case as the generic risk assessment I had provided covering all hazards in the office did not state that employees should not stand on office chairs. The truth was that the dangers of standing office chairs seemed so obvious that I had not even considered placing it in any risk assessment.

However she would have undoubtedly won the compensation case had not been for the fact that it was judged she was interfering with the electronic equipment of the office which the safe working practise section of the risk assessment stated she must not do. The tribunal chairman in serving judgment verbally ripped into her on the dangers she had created in the office not only to herself but others working around the area of the accident. However he did concede that had it not been for her messing about with the electric tube, she may have had case under “precedence” in regard to standing on the chair.

The ruling allowed her employer to dismiss her from employment immediately following the hearing, and to all of us involved in handling the matter just to bring the case to a tribunal seemed ridiculous. However on witnessing how near her silk came to winning the case “shook us all up, most of all me”.

As stated, I Agree with Blackwatch that cases such as the above do no credit to industrial relations or safety. All it means is that ridiculously long risk assessments are written which have to be briefed out at safety meetings making the whole thing totally boring to all attending as safety reps trot out what is “bloody obvious” to almost everyone listening.

The above has been brought about by compensation culture run by sharks that always get far more out of it than their clients ever do.
Bill

 

[rjhowie]

I will whisper it BLACKWATCH. I w-a-s a j-u-d-g-e f-o-r 12 y-e-a-r-s but thankfully only at District level (phew!). :hehe:

 

[Dean_Forest]

It's amazing that we once got away with stopping 8-coach trains at 3-coach platforms with no more protection than 'Do Not Alight Here' signs. It's the threat of litigation that has turned the drivers against DOO-P (previously they just took the money).

For those unfamiliar with the James Street incident, a 16 year old girl, under the influence of both mephedrone and a large amount of alcohol (for the benefit of non-UK readers, the legal drinking age is 18 and mephedrone is banned) fell between the train and platform edge as the train moved off and she died. The guard was convicted of manslaughter. Small wonder that drivers aren't keen on taking on the operation of doors.

 

[wholbr]

Hi everybody.
And so the farce will continue. Southern Rail and the workforce union(s) cannot agree on who shuts a train's doors and acting in the negotiations that failed today reminiscent to a couple of five year old children squabbling in the local park. In the meantime by tomorrow evening over one million commuters will have had their lives totally disrupted by way of being unable to get to work or spending very long hours finding an alternative to their usual commute in a gridlocked Southern England.

In the above, anyone who visits any of the major social media sites will realize that the anger of many regular rail users has grown enormously as the dispute has dragged on. As any number of postings and tweets have stated, even if the dispute was settled tomorrow rail travelers would still have to contend with the huge levels of staff sickness and absenteeism that grossly disrupts what the rail authorities try to pass off as a “normal day”.

All the main bodies that are involved in safety in the rail industry have advised that the proposed driver door operating procedure is safe to bring into practise. The drivers union will not accept that which in some of their argument is understandable. However, if they are so convinced of their case, why not request IOSH ( the Institute for Occupational Safety & Health) to look at all the risk assessment's and other evidence and pass an independent judgment on the matter. To be an executive member of IOSH you must possess the highest qualifications in occupational safety and practised those in industry for a minimum of three years. What better body to give judgment in this dispute?

In addition to the above, the nationalized side of Britain's rail network namely Network Rail where yesterday back in front of the House of Commons public expenditure committee. Their Chief Executive Mark Carne tried to explain the debacle of nearly six billion pounds now being required from taxpayers to complete the electrification of the Great Western Mainline. Mr Carne could not even state exactly what the full benefits of the project will be (by example, how many extra trains per hour will run between Bristol and London) even if all the money he is requesting is handed over (very unlikely now). A cross party group of west country MPs are now requesting a full government inquiry into the running of Network Rail be carried out.

In all the above is it any wonder that many in the media are demanding that drastic action is now taken in regard to Britain's Railways and management. Along with the foregoing the roads lobby are demanding that any further investment in rail should be suspended and placed into the roads infrastructure.

Those demands we have not seen in the UK since the early nineteen sixties, and we all know what happened then.

Bill

 

[rjhowie]

Must admit and to put it rather simply that I have noted the safety experts saying the driver and doors is perfectly safe. What is generally - around 30% of trains operate under that system. My suburban network is almost totally made up of drivers doing the doors and there is a conductor on the train as well. The line that stood out as different was a short DMU train on the Queen Street - Anniesland line here in Glasgow where I found the conductor did the doors so every couple of minutes had to be ready for doing the opening and shutting due to the closeness of stations. But as I indicate most of the trains I see are driver controlled and conductors there and everything works fine. So the point is that hundreds of trains are driver controlled re the doors and another staff person onb board and thing are fine for thousands and thousands of p-people.

 

[Billythekid01]

While the US is frequently rated as the No 1 in worlds best freight rail practices (even Warren Buffett thinks so with his recent purchase of BNSF) it sadly lags well behind in passenger services. While intercity services were in decline in the US in the 1970s, 80s and 90s - they were surging ahead in Europe despite the Europeans having more technical issues (gauges, voltages, rolling stock standards, etc). This is not helped by a reluctance, and even opposition, in the US towards any public funding of industries like transport that are seen as the responsibility of "free enterprise" and therefore areas where governments should have no role.

i would say that one of the biggest reasons for terrible passenger rail service in our USA is Amtrak no seriously Amtrak has killed competition in passenger service it has a virtual monopoly over all transcontinental passenger routes and most inter state and inter city routes and FYI Amtrak was a public funded government subsidiary for a long time and it makes no effort to improve its system due to lack of competition and cost of operating it's sometimes very old equipment and the fact that Amtrak owns very little of its rail lines it leases line from bnsf up CSX kcs ect. Which means they cannot do stuff like electrification or high speed rail service cause the line it leases is freight rail line designed for heavy loads not high speed trains

 

[MeowRailroad]

It can't improve its system without more money. However, since it isn't making a profit ( and can't due to having to use older equipment and being delayed due to freight railroads and lowered track speeds) it won't get any more funding since it should be profitable on its own according to some people. (Never mind that the road system is highly funded and I doubt it makes a profit.)

 

[rjhowie]

Our biggest and main problem here in Gt Britain is the much heavier use of travelling on the system than in BR days. it is well in excess of many decades before rail was passed back to private use. Many perhaps understandably as time can effect us (!) forget that BR was far from brilliant and as I point out more travelling now that in their period. It certainly does need greater work with longer trains and platforms in places and maybe a far heavier leaning on providers. But network Rail cannot be missed out of blame either ass they do the maintenance and fixing not the companies.. Although ScotRail tends to be slightly ahead of our friends south of the Border many of the problems are also Network Rail's too.

The only "State Railway" is my soft spot ot N.Ireland Railways which I have completed a while ago now. They do well as it happens but in a much different kind of situation population-wise, etc. Oh and before someone asks where is my project on the DLS I gave myself an awfully additional mountain to climb after doing what is left of rail in Ulster by extending well over the Border to three lines there as well!

 

[LargeTitanic2]

i think Britain railroads are total garbage because they never have any varity in equipment, the trains are too short, passenger trains never bother using locomotive hauled passenger cars its all just diesel or electric multiple units and the grade crossings sound and look ugly they are unsafe because trains dont bother with horns or bells or even ditch lights

 

[BLACKWATCH]

i think Britain railroads are total garbage because they never have any varity in equipment, the trains are too short, passenger trains never bother using locomotive hauled passenger cars its all just diesel or electric multiple units and the grade crossings sound and look ugly they are unsafe because trains dont bother with horns or bells or even ditch lights

Maybe when you are old enough to travel to this side of the pond without your parents permission, you can have a look at our system, then your view may be relavent, as it is you know nothing about BR judging by your comments

 

[Dean_Forest]

Must admit and to put it rather simply that I have noted the safety experts saying the driver and doors is perfectly safe. What is generally - around 30% of trains operate under that system. My suburban network is almost totally made up of drivers doing the doors and there is a conductor on the train as well. The line that stood out as different was a short DMU train on the Queen Street - Anniesland line here in Glasgow where I found the conductor did the doors so every couple of minutes had to be ready for doing the opening and shutting due to the closeness of stations. But as I indicate most of the trains I see are driver controlled and conductors there and everything works fine. So the point is that hundreds of trains are driver controlled re the doors and another staff person onb board and thing are fine for thousands and thousands of p-people.

A compromise along the lines of the Scotrail deal (DOO but the OBS is guaranteed to be travelling on every service) was almost agreed in the summer but the Department for Transport (who are pulling the strings in this debacle) quashed it. Unlike in Scotland, the DOO trains would have ~1500 people under the care of just the driver. So when some yobbo puts a brick through the windscreen, incapacitating the driver, who applies first aid? Who keeps passengers informed as to why their train has ground to a halt in the middle of nowhere? Who carries out a controlled evacuation when necessary? Answer: no one.

There was an incident near London a year or two ago where a DOO train stopped due to a fault. The passengers took it upon themselves to disembark en-masse putting themselves at severe risk. Had the service had a second member of staff on-board, that member of staff can keep passengers informed and do things like opening the locked hopper windows to provide fresh air when the air-con has packed in. The driver of course is more gainfully employed diagnosing and rectifying the fault.

The Japanese rail system is quite highly regarded in the UK (one of the reasons that the government wanted the HST replacement to be from Hitachi). Japanese trains all have guards, which considering that their passengers are far better behaved than ours anyway shows that they value safety.

I might also point out a recent incident on Merseyrail where a woman was sexually assaulted. Thanks to the actions of the guard, she spent the rest of her journey in the safety of the back cab and was provided with someone to walk her to her car when she got to her station. The offender was caught, which I doubt would've happened had the guard not raised the alarm. Guards have also proven essential when there are drunk and/or violent individuals on-board.

 

[wholbr]

Hi everybody.

A compromise along the lines of the Scotrail deal (DOO but the OBS is guaranteed to be travelling on every service) was almost agreed in the summer but the Department for Transport (who are pulling the strings in this debacle) quashed it. Unlike in Scotland, the DOO trains would have ~1500 people under the care of just the driver. So when some yobbo puts a brick through the windscreen, incapacitating the driver, who applies first aid? Who keeps passengers informed as to why their train has ground to a halt in the middle of nowhere? Who carries out a controlled evacuation when necessary? Answer: no one.

There was an incident near London a year or two ago where a DOO train stopped due to a fault. The passengers took it upon themselves to disembark en-masse putting themselves at severe risk. Had the service had a second member of staff on-board, that member of staff can keep passengers informed and do things like opening the locked hopper windows to provide fresh air when the air-con has packed in. The driver of course is more gainfully employed diagnosing and rectifying the fault.

The Japanese rail system is quite highly regarded in the UK (one of the reasons that the government wanted the HST replacement to be from Hitachi). Japanese trains all have guards, which considering that their passengers are far better behaved than ours anyway shows that they value safety.

I might also point out a recent incident on Merseyrail where a woman was sexually assaulted. Thanks to the actions of the guard, she spent the rest of her journey in the safety of the back cab and was provided with someone to walk her to her car when she got to her station. The offender was caught, which I doubt would've happened had the guard not raised the alarm. Guards have also proven essential when there are drunk and/or violent individuals on-board.

I find it difficult to believe that persons are still trying to argue against the case in regard to DOO when every authoritative body within or associated to Britain's railways have advised that the proposed driver door operation is safe to place into practise. The guards renamed as conductors will remain on the trains but will be more concentrated on ticket inspection etc which is badly needed with wholesale “fare dodging” being carried out which anyone who travels regularly on our railways witnesses every day.

Also in the above, we all now know that this so called “safety dispute” has nothing to do with safety whatsoever. The General Secretary of the RMT union has been recorded addressing a union reps conference stating that the dispute is about bringing down a “working class hating government”. The foregoing statement confirms what many have suspected throughout this dispute, that the leadership of both ASLEF and the RMT union's have some vision of creating through chaos a socialist utopian Britain that has never been achieved anywhere even after 70 years of continuous trying and failing in Russia.

What I do find discouraging is that this once proud rail workforce are being led towards its own destruction by way of listening to a union leadership that have nothing to lose themselves as it is not their jobs that will be under threat when the move to transfer government investment from rail to the road infrastructure really gets under way next year.

In the above, public regard and confidence in the railways ability to carry out the daily demands of Britain's commuters in anything like the professional manner that should be expected has been totally lost. Even prior to this dispute there has been constant and unacceptable levels of staff sickness and absenteeism that would have seen almost all of those involved in that staggering deficiency dismissed from their employment in “very short order” in any other industry.

If the guards and drivers feel they have a strong case in the door opening dispute, then why not ask an outside body such as IOSH (the Institute for occupational safety and health) to look at all the evidence and give an independent judgment on the matter. But, no they will not do that, they would rather take it out on the long suffering rail traveling public who in many cases have lost wages through not be able to get to work or in other instances lost their employment completely (disgusting).

As stated, in what was once a proud workforce and industry, we now seem to have a situation of “donkeys being led by Jackasses” at the expense of the whole British economy, and that situation must change.

Bill

 

[Billythekid01]

Hi everybody.


I find it difficult to believe that persons are still trying to argue against the case in regard to DOO when every authoritative body within or associated to Britain's railways have advised that the proposed driver door operation is safe to place into practise. The guards renamed as conductors will remain on the trains but will be more concentrated on ticket inspection etc which is badly needed with wholesale “fare dodging” being carried out which anyone who travels regularly on our railways witnesses every day.

Also in the above, we all now know that this so called “safety dispute” has nothing to do with safety whatsoever. The General Secretary of the RMT union has been recorded addressing a union reps conference stating that the dispute is about bringing down a “working class hating government”. The foregoing statement confirms what many have suspected throughout this dispute, that the leadership of both ASLEF and the RMT union's have some vision of creating through chaos a socialist utopian Britain that has never been achieved anywhere even after 70 years of continuous trying and failing in Russia.

What I do find discouraging is that this once proud rail workforce are being led towards its own destruction by way of listening to a union leadership that have nothing to lose themselves as it is not their jobs that will be under threat when the move to transfer government investment from rail to the road infrastructure really gets under way next year.

In the above, public regard and confidence in the railways ability to carry out the daily demands of Britain's commuters in anything like the professional manner that should be expected has been totally lost. Even prior to this dispute there has been constant and unacceptable levels of staff sickness and absenteeism that would have seen almost all of those involved in that staggering deficiency dismissed from their employment in “very short order” in any other industry.

If the guards and drivers feel they have a strong case in the door opening dispute, then why not ask an outside body such as IOSH (the Institute for occupational safety and health) to look at all the evidence and give an independent judgment on the matter. But, no they will not do that, they would rather take it out on the long suffering rail traveling public who in many cases have lost wages through not be able to get to work or in other instances lost their employment completely (disgusting).

As stated, in what was once a proud workforce and industry, we now seem to have a situation of “donkeys being led by Jackasses” at the expense of the whole British economy, and that situation must change.

Bill

I can imangne that if the us frieght rail systems were handled like this that whatever railroad was doing this would be in serious legal trouble as in the u.s. Frieght railroads have many regulations as well as industry standards that would immediately force whoever did this to fix said problems or face financial ruin one example of a railroad in u.s. That played fast and loose and cheap with regards to equipment and rolling stock was the Milwaukee road it wasted millions of dollars on a poorly constructed and unprofitable transcontinental mainline they used outdated locomotives in electric parts of the route and wasted money by selling there rolling stock to lessors and then leasing it right back to fake making a profit but in the end it's massive rail system cluttered with Hugh debt collapsed and thousands of miles of track were abandoned and years were spent cleaning up after enviromental spills and repairing shoddy rail lines

 

[JCitron]

I can imangne that if the us frieght rail systems were handled like this that whatever railroad was doing this would be in serious legal trouble as in the u.s. Frieght railroads have many regulations as well as industry standards that would immediately force whoever did this to fix said problems or face financial ruin one example of a railroad in u.s. That played fast and loose and cheap with regards to equipment and rolling stock was the Milwaukee road it wasted millions of dollars on a poorly constructed and unprofitable transcontinental mainline they used outdated locomotives in electric parts of the route and wasted money by selling there rolling stock to lessors and then leasing it right back to fake making a profit but in the end it's massive rail system cluttered with Hugh debt collapsed and thousands of miles of track were abandoned and years were spent cleaning up after enviromental spills and repairing shoddy rail lines

Not to take this subject too far off topic, but to the contrary the Pacific Extension was quite profitable and it was an accounting mistake as well as mismanagement which put the company out of business. Their management was set on a course of poor decisions and poor operations during their final years. Among the decisions was to dismantle the electric system, which was still operational, and to substitute it with diesels that cost way more to operate than the old electrics due to the high cost of fuel. The hope was to use the sale of the copper to finance the new engines, and operations, however, their timing was piss poor and copper prices tumbled at the same time while the cost of oil - during the energy crisis no less, skyrocketed. They also had offers from GE and Westinghouse to rebuild their electric system and to connect the two segments, along with government bailout loans and special financing for the project. But nope! They set on a course of complicated lease back programs for their railcars, deferred maintenance on everything, and let the system tank. After all the dust settled it was the discovery of the accounting mistake which lead to that route's abandonment and the rest of the bad managerial policies which eventually lead to the company's demise.

 

[rjhowie]

I do lean towards BLACKWATCH regarding that rather curt and immature mouthing by LargeTitanic2. Totally ignores the hard fact that our national railway system is very popular and heavy used. Indeed is constantly growing and I dare say part of problems are the greater usage all over the country. I would even stretch to say his corner of the world is way behind us!

 

[wholbr]

Hi Everybody.
Bobby (rjhowie), I would agree with you in your above posting that Britain's railways are heavily used. However, “very popular” most certainly not, at least in the whole southern half of the United Kingdom or around any of the large conurbations over the entirety of England. I am afraid that commuters use the railways in the above areas because there is little or no alternative transport other than rail.

Yes, government investment in the railways has been very substantial over a long period, but that has come at expense of other infrastructure especially in the roads. Between 1986 and 2006 the average government subsidy to the railways ran at near seven billion pounds per year. Since 2006 the subsidy has declined to an average of five billion pounds per year. The foregoing figures are just for day to day running and maintenance and do not include large upgrade projects such as the present electrification of the Great Western Mainline. That we now know will have a total cost of an additional six billion pounds (totally wasted) and there has been many similar waste and costs in the past years.

In the above, there has been a long term lack of investment in the roads as rail investment has been considered a priority by UK governments of all colors since the mid eighties. The foregoing situation has made many of our roads and motorways heavily congested and unusable for many peak time journeys as arrival timing at any city centre destination is impossible to judge.

It is without doubt that much of the huge anger being directed at the rail authorities at present comes from the fact that it is widely realized that the railways have consumed so much of the taxpayers hard earned money over the years. Despite that, as a country we have at present a grossly inefficient rail network in many areas, maintained by a nationalized organization (Network Rail) who seem to care little for continually wasting billions of that taxpayer funding it receives.

Along with the foregoing we have several of the train operating companies (not all) who just accept gross levels of staff sickness and other absenteeism seemingly without a care for the cancellations and disruption that causes on any “normal” day. To go along with all the above we have witnessed on Southern Britain's largest train operating franchise ongoing for the last seven months strikes and other industrial action over “who should shut a train's doors”.

In the above, rail commuters have lost wages and even their jobs over not being able to get to their employment. Businesses have lost efficiency and therefore revenue due to the current state of the railways, and it is all down to the clowns, donkeys and jackasses that run and work in Britain's railways on both management and union led staff.

In the above perhaps Britain can learn something from the United States in regard to managing rail. After all as John Citron points out in his posting at #117 of this thread at least when a rail company in the US gets it wrong it is they that go out of business and not their customers (passengers in UK) going without money, revenue or even losing their entire work. At least the UK government have now signalled that the best of the private train operating companies will be taking over a far larger role in both track maintenance and operations in the future, and for many rail commuters (myself included) that change cannot come fast enough.

Bill

 

[amigacooke]

It is without doubt that much of the huge anger being directed at the rail authorities at present comes from the fact that it is widely realized that the railways have consumed so much of the taxpayers hard earned money over the years. Despite that, as a country we have at present a grossly inefficient rail network in many areas, maintained by a nationalized organization (Network Rail) who seem to care little for continually wasting billions of that taxpayer funding it receives.

I'd recommend looking at 'Where does my money go'. It's very illuminating (transport is under 'Running the Country, Social Systems').