Now whilst not actually safety related, this notice went up in my local train station car-park recently.



You can see the platforms behind and the roof of a school in the background, proving I was the right way up when I took the picture. Has to make you wonder just who Southern Railways are employing these days.

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I don't know about you Bernie, but I would have taken the following action had that been on my patch.

1. Posted that picture to all the local and national press, and the BBC.
2. Made an official complaint to Southern Railways, copy to the Dept of Transport.
3. Alerted my local Council & MP

I'll help you to do that if necessary.

No wonder the bloody country is screwed up with posts like that.

It would have been a simple matter to have a quiet word with the station staff.

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It would have been a simple matter to have a quiet word with the station staff.

Was over the weekend, no station staff. The notice has now gone and the area the notice was in is now closed off while the footbridge is being rebuilt.

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Construction workers rescued after lift hit by train.

No details about the cause are given, but it's a good guess they put themselves in a spot where they could be hit without notifying the railroad.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Was over the weekend, no station staff. The notice has now gone and the area the notice was in is now closed off while the footbridge is being rebuilt.

It is possible that the notice was put up from inside the fence, and no-one thought to check it from the outside. But that sort of basic error from railway staff doesn't engender confidence in their other procedures that might have more serious consequences. Sometimes a name & shame approach shakes up complacency.

In that case, if you see things that way, how about doing what you suggested above regarding the NATS issue? That was more serious than an upside down notice!

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Darwin Award Honorable Mention (because he's not dead).

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Darwin Award Honorable Mention (because he's not dead).

Surprised it did not get discarded as too common...

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BOINC WIKI

Ye Gods, a quarter of a century ago ..... That day I got as far as Wimbledon on the train, then everything just shut down, and Station staff were talking in hushed whispers. They obviously knew the seriousness of the situation, but the commuters at the immediate time were not told. I got to work via the tube from Wimbledon, and only found out later at lunchtime what had actually happened.

RIP to all those that lost their lives.

Clapham

The story makes it sound like a signal fault.

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BOINC WIKI

Ye Gods, a quarter of a century ago ..... That day I got as far as Wimbledon on the train, then everything just shut down, and Station staff were talking in hushed whispers. They obviously knew the seriousness of the situation, but the commuters at the immediate time were not told. I got to work via the tube from Wimbledon, and only found out later at lunchtime what had actually happened.

RIP to all those that lost their lives.

Clapham

The story makes it sound like a signal fault.

It was a wiring fault. There was a big re-signalling project in progress. One particular signal wireman had a job two weeks before, where he had to replace the wires to a certain signal relay, this he did, however investigation discovered that rather than remove or at least insulate the old wire he left it in situ close to its original relay and made no attempt to disconnect the other end that went to a power connector.

Two Sundays later work was going on next to the relay concerned and the stray wire made contact with it's old relay and the signal it controlled would now show a green proceed aspect when there was a train on the next block.

It was not noticed on the Sunday as the traffic is quite light.

The accident occurred when the first train was halted at the signal after the faulty one and as it was out of direct sight of any following train round a curve, the following train saw a green proceed aspect and continued.

The accident actually led to a lot of changes in the UK railways. It was discovered that the wireman who made the mistake had been working 12 hour shifts for 14 days straight and no one realised, also there were no independent checks carried out on his work as there should have been because his boss was also too busy and he had always been a good worker.

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I subscribe to the Rail Accident Investigation Branch e-mails and just got this

The RAIB is investigating the failure of a steam locomotive hauling a passenger train, which occurred between Fleet and Winchfield stations on Saturday 23 November 2013.

At about 18:50 hrs, train 1Z94, the 17:48 hrs charter service from London Waterloo to Weymouth, was approaching Winchfield, where it was due to stop for the locomotive to take on water. While the train was travelling at about 40 mph, the right-hand connecting rod of the locomotive, former British Railways (Southern Region) 4-6-2 34067 “Tangmere”, became detached at the leading end (referred to as the small end), and dropped down. The end of the detached rod struck the conductor rail, and there was some electrical flashing. This was noticed by the locomotive crew, and the driver stopped the train immediately, about one mile outside Winchfield station. After running along the conductor rail for some distance, the connecting rod dropped onto the sleeper ends just before the locomotive came to rest.

Just as a footnote almost all of the lines south and south west of London use the "3rd rail conductor" system.

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I subscribe to the Rail Accident Investigation Branch e-mails and just got this

The RAIB is investigating the failure of a steam locomotive hauling a passenger train, which occurred between Fleet and Winchfield stations on Saturday 23 November 2013.

At about 18:50 hrs, train 1Z94, the 17:48 hrs charter service from London Waterloo to Weymouth, was approaching Winchfield, where it was due to stop for the locomotive to take on water. While the train was travelling at about 40 mph, the right-hand connecting rod of the locomotive, former British Railways (Southern Region) 4-6-2 34067 “Tangmere”, became detached at the leading end (referred to as the small end), and dropped down. The end of the detached rod struck the conductor rail, and there was some electrical flashing. This was noticed by the locomotive crew, and the driver stopped the train immediately, about one mile outside Winchfield station. After running along the conductor rail for some distance, the connecting rod dropped onto the sleeper ends just before the locomotive came to rest.

Just as a footnote almost all of the lines south and south west of London use the "3rd rail conductor" system.

Sounds lucky to me that there was a 3rd rail for it to run along. The more likely thing would for it to dig into the ground at speed and flip the whole locomotive on its side.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

The story makes it sound like a signal fault.

It was a wiring fault. There was a big re-signalling project in progress. One particular signal wireman had a job two weeks before, where he had to replace the wires to a certain signal relay, this he did, however investigation discovered that rather than remove or at least insulate the old wire he left it in situ close to its original relay and made no attempt to disconnect the other end that went to a power connector.

Two Sundays later work was going on next to the relay concerned and the stray wire made contact with it's old relay and the signal it controlled would now show a green proceed aspect when there was a train on the next block.

It was not noticed on the Sunday as the traffic is quite light.

The accident occurred when the first train was halted at the signal after the faulty one and as it was out of direct sight of any following train round a curve, the following train saw a green proceed aspect and continued.

The accident actually led to a lot of changes in the UK railways. It was discovered that the wireman who made the mistake had been working 12 hour shifts for 14 days straight and no one realised, also there were no independent checks carried out on his work as there should have been because his boss was also too busy and he had always been a good worker.

A similar incident occurred in Montgomery, Ill. in 1964. The article is the initial news story. My quick search didn't find any further details, but what I've always heard about it is that Montgomery Tower was in the process of being converted to CTC and someone wired something wrong so the Zephyr got a false Clear.

BTW, even though this was clearly the Burlington's fault, the standard trackage rights agreement used in the US (and probably Canada too) requires that all expenses from any wreck involving a train from another railroad be paid for by the guest railroad. This was probably one of the nails in the coffin of the Rock Island.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Today I saw some cars that pulled onto the tracks when they were not immediately able to clear. Unfortunately Darwin would not give them an award as it is too common. Fortunately, there was no train coming.

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BOINC WIKI