The Rail and Road Pod Episode 18: Britain's heritage railways - improving safety in the sector

Saj Chowdhury

Hello and welcome to the 18th edition of the Rail and Road Pod. I'm your new host, Saj Chowdhury. Now, Britain's heritage trains are adored by thousands up and down the country and as with the mainline and non-mainline sectors, we at the Office of Rail and Road have a duty to ensure they are run safely. So in this episode, we'll be hearing from Simon Barber, our Principal Safety Inspector of Heritage, and Richard Hines, our Deputy Chief Safety Inspector of non-mainline, who will both talk about the health and safety issues faced by the sector and what we, as the ORR, have been doing to help remedy any problems. Now, more on that shortly. 

So it's been another busy period at the ORR, so here's a roundup of the work we've been doing. We recently published our assessment of Network Rail's spending plans for the next five years and also launched a market study of railway station catering. We wrote to Network Rail over concerns about a backlog in examining the conditions of its railway structures. We announced the provider of the new ORR-sponsored Rail Ombudsman, highlighted the progress made by industry with disability awareness refresher training and also provided an insight into our monitoring of National Highways biodiversity targets.

You can find out more about our work at orr.gov.uk, but back to this episode. We want passengers to be able to have a historic experience when they visit a heritage railway but with 21st century levels of safety. Now, these are the thoughts of Simon Barber, our Principal Inspector of Heritage, who for the past year has been visiting heritage railway companies to address safety issues. And you'll also hear from Richard Hines, who will talk about the next steps for the sector.

Hello, Simon, thanks for joining us today. So, first things first, tell us about what role ORR plays in the heritage sector.

Simon Barber

Yes, we regulate over 200 heritage and minor railways across Great Britain. We have a small team of inspectors that are responsible for that and our role is to ensure that those railways are operating in a safe manner in accordance with health and safety legislation.

Saj Chowdhury

So what type of incidents are you seeing more often in heritage?

Simon Barber

One of the key risks we're seeing at the moment is working at height. So heritage railways often have to work at height to maintain or refurbish or prepare steam locomotives and vehicles for operation. And we've seen, over the last year or so, we've seen about one incident every month where a volunteer or a worker from a railway has fallen, usually a distance of about two to three metres, and suffered serious injuries such as broken bones. There's a variety of reasons, I guess, and incidences that we've seen, but certainly I think in terms of trends, definitely we've seen several of these accidents have happened when people have been preparing locos, steam locos or maintaining them in the workshop area. So that's one area where I think railways should look and think, "What can I avoid or minimise in terms of work at height?" Another area where we've seen issues over the last year is in vehicle runaways, where a volunteer believes they have secured a vehicle, but it hasn't been fully secured and it's runaway and in some cases caused quite significant damage and risk to members of the public or other workers.

Saj Chowdhury

Would you say there are any factors in particular that are leading to these incidents?

Simon Barber

Again, there's not really a kind of single cause of this. One thing I would say is that competence management often comes into this because quite a lot of these events result from a human error. So what we want to see is good competence management systems whereby people in safety critical roles, whether that's a shunter or a guard or a driver, are being regularly supervised to ensure that they've got the correct competence for operating that vehicle.

Saj Chowdhury

So at the moment, there's been a big focus on the upkeep of structures on the railways, such as tunnels and bridges, and the effects on them from climate change. Recently, ORR wrote to Network Rail about the need to clear its backlog on inspecting these. So what read across is there for the heritage sector?

Simon Barber

So we know that a number of heritage railways have got quite ageing assets - fire ducts, tunnels, earthworks, retaining walls. We want to be sure that railways are managing those assets according to the risk. One thing that we did this year is we undertook an inspection on a sample of railways, specifically looking at that topic. We did that in collaboration with civil engineers from another department within the Office of Rail and Road, and we went and looked at how each of those railways was managing civil engineering assets. Our findings, I think, were in summary, there was often quite a significant weakness in how the railways had documented what they were going to do in terms of managing these assets. For example, the sections within their safety management system were quite limited in relation to this risk. So we think there's a potential for the sector to improve as a whole in terms of how it sets itself up to manage this risk. Another area where we found weaknesses was in the record keeping associated with the management of these assets. So, for example, recording that work had been done following an inspection where a defect had been found, we often found that system was fairly weak.

And we often found as well that railways had a fairly short-term approach to asset management. I think this is an interesting one because, from a safety perspective, we want to have a longer-term view of what failures are potentially round the corner. But also from a financial perspective, I think it's quite a big risk for railways because they might have a large bill for unexpected works if they don't take that longer-term management approach to assets.

Saj Chowdhury

Now, as many of these heritage railways are volunteer-led. What kind of competencies are present or are needed in terms of the upkeep of assets?

Simon Barber

Some railways were lucky enough to have some real expertise internally, whereas other railways had quite limited knowledge of this. Obviously that then presents a risk in terms of how you interpret some of the advice that you're given and what kind of measures you might need to prioritise. So I think competence is another area where railways might want to look at in terms of how they manage civil engineering assets.

Saj Chowdhury

Now, we've heard about the incidents, but what's actually being done to educate the heritage sector?

Simon Barber

So we work quite closely with the Heritage Railway Association, who are a trade body for the sector. We hold regular liaison meetings with the Heritage Railway Association. So one thing that we have is we have a tool called RM3, the Risk Management Maturity Model, which offers a way that railways can benchmark themselves against this tool. We're really keen that heritage railways can use that and we think there's a lot of benefit in using that as they look to improve the maturity in their safety management systems and develop those towards excellence. We've been keen to promote this and one thing we've done recently is we've held workshops for heritage railways to attend free of charge with the Heritage Railway Association. One thing that we are currently developing is some specific guidance for heritage railways on safety management systems. This will be published in summer of 2023 and we hope to continue that engagement with the sector when we've published that document.

Saj Chowdhury

It's obviously heartening to hear the cooperation between the heritage sector and ORR. So, what are your thoughts, Richard?

Richard Hines

I think it's really important to just reflect that we've had a really strengthened and enhanced relationship with our colleagues at the Heritage Railway Association over the last couple of years, certainly since I came to post. And we've seen real efforts there, I think from the leadership under Steve Oates and colleagues to really bring safety to the forefront of the focus of the organisation, to try and drive and improve things forward. And I think the Heritage Railway Association's ambition to create a dedicated safety and standards body for the sector to really drive consistency in application of those standards is the right one. And of course we've reflected in our published Chief Inspectors Annual Report and Health and Safety Report that we are really supportive of that approach and we're continuing to bring sort of relevant stakeholders together in that space and to sort of facilitate discussions to try and move forward with that ambition.

Saj Chowdhury

And finally, Simon and Richard, what are your hopes moving forward?

Simon Barber

I think most railways genuinely want to improve. I think one of the challenges that they face is having enough time and resource to do that whilst also managing the day job and keeping railways running. So I don't think there's necessarily resistance, but there are definitely challenges and barriers to improving. Our approach to regulating the sector is we want to see that we strongly support heritage railways and what they're doing. We want to see that historic experience being maintained, but we want railways to do that in a safe manner in accordance with 21st century expectations for safety. In terms of our approach, we very much investigate  significant incidents that occur, complaints that we receive, and beyond that we undertake proactive inspections across a sample of railways each year that is often topic-led as well. So for example, work at height being a particular concern of ours, we are looking to do some specific inspection activity on that topic in the coming year. But we're also keen to engage with the sector as well and that's where we see, we're keen to be part of working groups and liaise with the Heritage Railway Association in working with the sector to improve its management and safety as a whole.

Saj Chowdhury

And Richard?

Richard Hines

So, I hope you've found this short piece helpful in terms of understanding some of the challenges with the sector and getting ORR's take on matters. And I just want to sort of flag sort of three things that are coming in the near future, which partly been covered in today's piece. So we'll produce our annual Health and Safety report in July. We will provide a sort of summary of the sector's performance and perhaps some case studies that deal with particular interventions we've had during the year. Secondly, our guidance on safety management systems is due to be published in the summer and again, I hope that will be helpful for operators and help us more generally in terms of understanding standards to move that forward. And we're going to use a series of events later in the year finally to really bring that to life with workshops and you can find details of that via the ORR sort of channel on LinkedIn and website and also through the HRA later in the year. Thank you very much for listening.

Saj Chowdhury

Thank you both for providing that insight into the work we do in and with the heritage sector. To find out more about this area, go to the ORR website at orr.gov.uk. And meanwhile, a summary of our safety work in the sector will be found in the annual Health and Safety Report which will be published in July. That's it for this episode. Thank you for listening and goodbye.