Quote:
Originally Posted by paul miller
What changed on the "new" railway to need, as you say FP, a major revamp of safety systems at Southall, and at Ladbroke Grove a extremely challenging and thorough regime for new train driver recruits ?
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Yes, your question is
exactly the right one. Both accidents followed the disassembly of the BR "time-honoured" mechanism of doing things. I'm not saying this out of dewy eyed sentimentalism; but they had reached an empirical practice which worked. It wasn't brilliant, but everybody knew their responsibilities and the system worked. This was largely abandoned at Privatisation, and the new companies were left to make it up as they went along.
With the Southall accident, I believe that this possibly could have happened under BR. The driver never filled in a fault report which was pretty naughty, but platform staff did tell Great Western's Operations department and they were of the opinion that it wasn't a big deal. To be fair, even the Rulebook didn't prevent a train from staying in service with no AWS. This has now been addressed, but it's a sad fact that people have to die before dangerous practice is reformed.
Ladbroke Grove though is undoubtedly a result of privatisation. The old training system was abandoned as it was considered to be tootime consuming and expensive. At the inquiry there was no written evidence that Michael Hodder had ever sat a rules exam or undergone any road learning. There was no documented training plan even. Additionally there was previously an edict that a passed driver may not drive out of Paddington until he/she had got a year's experience under their belt. Thames Trains took a guy off the street, gave him woefully inadequate training and let him drive out of Paddington from day one....and the rest is History. As a consequence, Driver Training is now extremely comprehensive and well documented. The horse has bolted, but I guess we should be grateful they have shut the stable door.