Update and changes to Railway Safety Regulations 1999 guidance on Mark 1 type rolling stock and hinged door rolling stock.
Our guidance document explains the application of the Railway Safety Regulations 1999 to Mark 1 type rolling stock and rolling stock with hinged doors. This follows revision of the guidance and industry consultation undertaken during 2020-2021. The guidance is supported by an impact assessment.
The Railway Safety Regulations 1999 (RSR99) were introduced to deal with safety risks highlighted by a series of accidents from trains passing signals at danger and collisions involving Mark 1 rolling stock.
RSR99 required:
- the installation of a form of train protection on the railway,
- the staged withdrawal of Mark 1 rolling stock and
- the staged withdrawal of rolling stock with hinged doors without central locking.
Under RSR99:
- A train operator must not operate a train without installing a train protection system for that train;
- An infrastructure manager must not permit the operation of any train without a train protection system for the relevant railway.
- A train operator must not operate Mark I or hinged door vehicles on the railway and the infrastructure manager must not permit the operation of such vehicles on the railway.
Regulation 6 of RSR99 allows ORR to grant exemptions from any requirement of the regulations and to attach conditions to those exemptions.
The revised guidance on regulation 4 provides for the continued issuing of exemptions for use of Mark1 type stock for operation on the mainline providing evidence of the necessary crashworthiness condition is provided.
The revised guidance on regulation 5 now mandates the fitting of central door locking to hinged door stock as required by the regulations where such stock is operated on the mainline railway.
While applications under regulation 6 for exemptions to regulation 5 requirements will be considered, stricter criteria in line with Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 (in particular the application of Schedule 1, considerations of the hierarchy of risk control) will form an integral part of the evaluation of any application.