april 2016

Having returned from The Continent travelling the railways of The Netherlands and Germany, twice in the four days that I used trains that week I ran into disruption caused by someone committing suicide on the tracks. It triggers memories from when I drove trains and was confronted with the issue, so my reason to write certainly has that personal edge to it.

Suicides through stepping or jumping in front of a train are in fact frightfully common. The resultant delays caused by some two-hundred yearly cases in Britain alone run into six-figure numbers of minutes per year. Therefore, people using trains to end it all not only cause problems to involuntary witnesses, rail customers, rail staff and emergency services staff (discussing my recent rail adventures with one of the people I met this particular week made her recall very nasty incidents from the time she worked as an emergency doctor on an ambulance), but also costs society a great deal of money indeed. In Britain rail network operator Network Rail estimates that delay compensation payments to train operators alone run into 15 million Pound Sterling per year, to which costs of damage repair (a corpse can do surprising damage to equipment under the train), operational cost due to shortage of rolling stock, employing the emergency services, insurance payments and potentially severe personal losses of customers due to missed appointments must be added. As I am mostly acquainted with the problem in Britain, I’ll sketch the picture from that point of view. I hope that readers from other nations recognize the issues from their own experiences.

Interesting is the terminology used to inform customers why the train came to a stand and foreseeably will not move for some time. In Britain the non-descript “a fatality occurred” is used, it could be a mistake on a level crossing, a trespasser on the track or it could be a suicide. In The Netherlands I was interested to hear that the train had had a “collision with a person” (aanrijding met een persoon). Equally non-descript yet, like in Britain, any seasoned rail traveller immediately knew that the delay would be substantial, so out popped the cloud of mobile telephones.

Often when discussing the issue with non-railway people, understanding is asked for the person desperate enough to resort to this kind of action. Most rail and emergency staff are more than happy to take that in account, but would in return appreciate some measure of contemplation from the side of the potential suicide about what they will have to go through afterwards. Because what confronts these people, especially when the suicide jumped from a viaduct on to the windscreen, acted in a weird manner towards the driver behind the windscreen or disappeared under the wheels of the train to be disassembled there, is indescribably ugly; gross. Then someone has to deal with clearing the remains from the track (for days crows, jackdaws and magpies can be spotted assisting in that process) and someone else has to check and clean the train or in cases repair the damage. Then half a year later the driver and other witnessing staff involved are required to dig through their recollection for as much detail as is possible during the Coroner’s Inquiry. Sometimes they’ll be asked to look at photographs of the remains, to establish whether that was the person who committed the deed. Or they have to hear the history of the person, to enable ascertaining from behaviour that it really was a suicide if no note was left behind. That, from personal experience, was difficult.

It is impossible to prepare any rookie for this sort of thing, something I discussed internationally with numerous rail and emergency services staff.  There was talk about it virtually from day one, views on the experiences gone through were freely given, yet the moment it happens to you you’re on your own and must deal with it. The difference between these experiences and, depending on personal characteristics, the way they worked on the minds of those involved is neither predictable nor ever the same. Some turn out hardly affected, others are in need of serious professional treatment. Much, obviously, depends on the way things went during and after the occurrence. One thing I found is that after the first time it is useful to return to work as soon as possible. If you don’t push yourself through that resistance, I heard more than once, returning to work may get harder by the day. Repeat occurrences, on the other side, can be approached more leisurely. Look at the time off, a godsend to any railway person, as a sort of reward to sweeten the occasion. Which did help people I worked with.

As far as potential suicide cases are concerned; like people committing intentional misuse of level crossings to e.g. issue a statement of power to influence other people’s lives, or to obtain fulfilment of a need to be noticed, there is little, if any, efficient leverage that railway operators have to influence this behaviour. In Great Britain the rail network operator Network Rail, furnishing a 5 million Pound Sterling budget, has teamed up with social assistance organisation The Samaritans to address potential suicides through posters on stations and with other advertising means, to urge them to seek help and not waste their precious life. It seems to have some positive effect. In the Netherlands the ProRail rail network provider catalogued suicide hotspots and attempted to make access to the railway harder by putting up fences to reduce instant opportunities. In Britain and Japan blue-coloured light in station areas is tried out as it appears to have a calming effect on people. Seats on platforms along fast lines were taken out.

On the other side the change to natural gas for heating and cooking, as well as the introduction of catalytic converters on cars, have driven suicidal people to the railway as their more private opportunities vanished. That is basic railway wisdom.

This is the text for an article published earlier in European railway review in 2016

“Have we forgotten the driver”, Tony Howker famously asked a few years ago.

In well-remembered articles in IRSE Magazine Tony Howker asked, whether perhaps we’d forgotten the driver with our work on improving signalling. After a recent serious SPAD incident in the UK, in which an excursion train passed a junction signal at danger and came uncomfortably close to colliding with a timetabled service, the main question is why the driver involved isolated TPWS even before coming to a stop and call the signaller, adhering to rulebook TW1/1. In a recent article in European Railway Review, Ian Mackay mentions that the rulebook is where investigation results end up as binding instructions to staff, but: The more complex the rulebook, the higher the chance of non-compliance, whilst reality often causes non-adherence to rules. Chris Carr, ERA director for safety, recently remarked in Rail Technology Magazine that we need better safety, not more safety. I’d like to put forward a long term personal work experience with AWS/TPWS to illustrate a few issues with the system that could well have a bearing on the recent incident. 

Keeping track of the delay performance of a high-speed train driver depot from 2002 till 2008, sometime after 2003, when TPWS train protection finally was installed, my employer’s trains were noticed to get stopped out of course in increasing numbers. The cause transpired to be drivers, whether brand new or having decades of experience with AWS, “failing to cancel” the AWS part of the recently combined AWS/TPWS equipment. AWS is a warning system of which the functionality goes back to the beginning of the 20^thcentury when flashing past signals within 2 seconds from 180 metres distance at 125 mph was a mere pipe dream. The present magnetic induction version was installed from the late fifties until well into the seventies and uses permanent magnet inductors in the track for permanent warnings, whilst signals have permanent/electromagnetic magnet inductors that can undo the warning sequence. If a signal magnet has failed, however, its permanent magnet will always trigger a warning to create a failsafe situation. If an AWS warning is triggered, the driver must push and release a button within a specific time, but due to the fairly inaccurate electro-pneumatic on-board equipment this could be anything between 3 and 4 seconds. Also, if a driver spotted a potential warning (signal aspects, a known warning for a speed restriction etc.) he could anticipate that warning by pushing and, on hearing the warning kick in, release the button. If for whatever reason a warning was unexpected or the equipment itself failed to cancel, there was time for another attempt and consequently trains hardly ever got stopped. So; why were they now?

On developing the TPWS Train Protection System, for from the driver’s point of view not altogether clear reasons, the system was functionally merged with the well-established AWS. For instance, the AWS cancelling button now also obtained brake release when TPWS had intervened; a debatable feature had the developers known how drivers would use this button after any intervention. And because the electronics were more accurate, the opportunity was taken to “bring back” the reaction time from whatever it was to exactly the originally intended 2.7 seconds on trains authorised to run up to 100 mph (160 km/h) and 2 seconds for trains authorised to run faster, regardless of the fact that the former 3 to 4 seconds reaction time never was proven to have been either the root or a contributory cause to an accident. Furthermore, the anticipation of having to cancel by depressing the button already before the warning started was disabled, cancelling could only be done in the 2 to 2.7 second window when the warning was live. Information to drivers about these changes was unclear about the ramifications it would have on their years of experience with the old AWS system. Then there was the poor TPWS Man-Machine-Interface (MMI). The issue there was that it was not clear which of the two systems intervened; the old AWS or the new TPWS, also because wherever there were live TPWS grids there would be an AWS inductor, often in between the trap grids. To top it off, eager to further improve on the reinvigorated AWS safety role, my employer’s driver management introduced a ruling that the arm was to be brought to the cancel button only after the warning had started. This way the cancelling consumed 1.6 to 1.9 seconds of the 2 seconds available, which left 0.4 to 0.1 second to deal with any “fail to cancel” issues. It soon was obvious that any cancelling problem or unexpected warning would trigger an intervention, with the inevitable stop. Drivers were blamed for the mounting delays, but they never had experienced this before with AWS and they angrily looked at the new TPWS as spuriously stopping them, which hid the real cause for a long time, as well as making TPWS unnecessarily, if with hindsight not dangerously, unpopular. Lastly, serious effort was spent on finding out what was wrong with “TPWS”, but hardly looking at the changes to the AWS. Yet there was a more insidious side to it; because so many trains got stopped, bad habits quickly developed. Drivers would reset the systems with the AWS cancel button or even switch it out as defective, then awaited brake release and depart without contacting the signaller. One day a train got stopped in this manner at a junction where the double track line merged into a Serpell-induced single track. The driver immediately reset AWS/TPWS with his AWS button and went away after brake time-out, but he had missed the fact that this time TPWS had, properly, intervened as he had passed the red aspect of that junction signal, awaiting an oncoming service. An alert signaller, who was good with CSR radio was all that stood between a bad fright and a serious head-on collision. After that incident rulebook TW1/1 specifically demanded that any AWS-TPWS intervention must be reported to the controlling signaller. As a result of which delays skyrocketed and under the British delay penalty system became very costly indeed. Which is where I came in.

A system meant to increase safety in fact had designed-in side-effects that in certain circumstances demonstrably diminished safety, the ill-effects of which in all likelihood were involved in a few near-misses that could well have taken lives. TPWS was also involved in problems in the platforms of terminus stations, where it was installed as an afterthought in an attempt to diminish the severity of bufferstop collisions. Unfortunately, this development stopped many incoming trains half-way the platforms due to unforeseen TPWS interventions for technical reasons. As the drivers were blamed for speeding until their trip recorders proved otherwise, they decided to come in at 3 mph (5 km/h). Which on slam door stock made commuters throw the doors open and starting to rush off, only to find that the train suddenly accelerated toward the bufferstops again. That situation was hurriedly remedied under media pressure and is at present no longer an issue. In the meantime, finally the much better AWS/TPWS MMI has been introduced, splitting the AWS and TPWS indications again whilst reset of either system has been split as well, which is based on reports that appeared already in 2004 and 2005. Unfortunately, many older train types will not benefit from this, but it is the proper way forward nevertheless.

For this article the following reports were used: RAIB: Dangerous Occurrence at Wootton Bassett junction – web site update and supplementary information. Peter van der Mark: Final document on AWS/TPWS time-out problems since 2002. Prof. John Uff QC FREng:The Southall Rail Accident Inquiry Report. Prof. John Uff & Lord Cullen: The Joint Inquiry into Train Protection Systems. Sir David Davies: Report on Train Protection Systems. Railtrack S&SD: Formal inquiry; Final report on collision and fire at Ladbroke Grove. The Rt Hon Lord Cullen PC: The Ladbroke Grove Inquiry Pts. 1 & 2. RSSB: Report Automatic Warning System Cancellation Period, Recommendations for Way Forward. Mark Halliday & Louise Raggett: TPWS: Analysis of Reset & Continue risk incl. the appendices, No       MWHA 2003/010 RSSB Ref 20/T148/RSRP/14/TRT. W. Huw Gibson RSSB: Report: Time available to cancel the AWS horn. Network Rail: The various British Rail staff rulebooks. British Railways: Diesel Traction; Manual for enginemen. Several railway staff operational publications, partially retrieved from Internet sites. Driver Instruction Video: The Fourth Question.

Even twee plaatjes van een en dezelfde machine in het spoorwegmuseum te Ljubljana, Slovenie. Het is een Duitse oorlogsmachine, gebouwd in Oostenrijk en na de oorlog overgenomen door de Joegoslavische spoorwegen. Er zijn wat dingen op te merken, de Oostenrijkse bijdrage is de exhaust door de schoorsteen, deze is van het zogenaamde Giesl type die de Duitse spoorwegen niet toepasten maar die de machine een stuk zuiniger maakte. De Joegoslavische bijdrage is op de zogenaamde Wannen/kuip tender te zien, de machine is voor oliestook omgebouwd. Joegoslavie heeft nooit echt een mijnbouw voor steenkool gekend en olie was makkelijker en zuiniger als brandstof.

Maar wat staat hij er fotogeniek bij onder die herfstbomen!

11 Maart 2014

Dit soort van scenes zie je met een zekere regelmaat op Bristol Temple Meads. In dit geval een oude LMS vier cylinder pacific met de blower aan (die recht omhooggaande kolom zwarte rook uit de schoorsteen) en nog net niet afblazend, er komt een beetje stoom uit de automatische veiligheidsventielen op de vuurkist, gereed voor vertrek.
Een van de problemen in de UK met stoomlokomotieven voor de hoofdlijnen is dat de originele beremming met een vakuumejektor plaats vond en dat ze nou ergens een luchtpomp met hoofdreservoir voor de beremming van de hedendaagse rijtuigen nodig hebben. Die apparatuur moet het liefst zodanig verborgen zijn dat het aanzien van de lokomotief niet aangetast wordt. De Westinghouse luchtpomp op deze machine kreeg een plaats boven het voordraaistel voor de linkerbuitencylinder. Het hoofdreservoir zit binnenin tegen de binnenzijde van het frame. Wel kreatief, dacht ik zo. 

Dit is een dia gemaakt door mijn schoonvader, Jack Steadman, ergens nabij
het Albert monument in het Londense Hyde Park. Ik denk dat dat was tijdens het 150 jarig bestaan van de spoorwegen in de UK. Dat is dus ook al weer een hele tijd geleden.

Toen in Nederland spoorwegen moesten komen werden er enige malen mijnheren naar Engeland gezonden om eens te kijken naar wat er zo voorhanden was en die mijnheren waren het meest onder de indruk van het Great Western Railway 7-foot (2.12 meter) breedspoor. Om welke reden de Hollandse IJzeren en de Rhijnspoorweg aanvankelijk met 2-meter brugrailspoor a la Great Western werd aangelegd. Naar deze replica van een toenmalige Great Western lokomotief kijkend, zoals die mijnheren dat destijds in Engeland gezien moeten hebben, kan ik me hun onder de indruk zijn wel voorstellen. Benieuwd of ze Isambard K. Brunel zelf nog gesproken hebben, het moet namelijk een erg ongemakkelijke mijnheer zijn geweest.

Over brugrail gesproken, ik herinner me de opwinding toen bij de Haarlemse werkplaats een kompleet spoor met deze konstruktie werd ontdekt tijdens de voorbereiding van de laatste uitbreiding. Hier in het zuidwesten van Engeland kun je indien gewenst nog enige kilometers van dit oeroude type rail bij elkaar scharrelen, het is op veel plaatsen in dienst als weilandhek met prikkeldraad door de gaten waardoor vroeger de bouten de onderbalk onder de rail in gingen. In Didcot in het museum is er zelfs nog een stuk station te zien met breed zowel als normaalspoor geheel uitgevoerd in brugrail.

Another old negative of mine I stumbled into whilst doing pictures for the book. Its quality as a photograph is debatable, I know, I took it with an Olympus Pen half 38 mm negative frame camera, a solid prescription for grainy and unfocussed photographs especially if the sun didn’t burn a hole in the sky. Never mind, you can see what’s on it.

The location is the bridge in the line from the German border to Arnhem
across the IJssel river near Westervoort, blown up during the German retreat at the end of WWII. The former double track bridge was repaired as a single track facility with a British Army Bailey type of bridge, but the second bridge still is in fact still partially available as can be seen on the
left. In the meantime this is a double track bridge again after two collisions and a number of collision precursor incidents.

The loco is number 1101 in the Prussian blue livery from the late 1950’s
till the beginning of the 1980’s, already with the NS logo’s but without the
collision noses (some made it to collision noses in this blue livery). The coaches behind her are DB “Silberlinge”, stainless steel vehicles that tended to gleam in the Budd version in the US but managed to look like a permanent bout of industrial fog in Germany. Their solebars are still black
instead of the mauve colour they received in the early 1980’s. All in all I put this picture somewhere around 1975. History!

Dit is een van de prentjes gescand van halfkleinbeeldnegatieven die bovendien nog eens van belazerde lichtkwaliteit waren. Maar ik ben heel gelukkig met hoe de computer daar raad mee weet. Ik weet niet welk station dit is, ik denk met vrij grote zekerheid Nijmegen in de tijd dat 3737 voor het eerst uit het spoorwegmuseum was weggehaald en weer werd opgeknapt zodat er weer een beetje mee gereden kon worden. Ik herinner me dat de hele oude ketel weg werd gegooid en vervangen werd door een moderne gelaste ketel met stalen vuurkist in plaats van de origineel koperen. Er werd een hele discussie gevoerd of het een verzadigde stoomlokomotief had moeten worden (goedkoper vervaardigd maar duurder in rijden) of dat er weer een oververhitter in moest, gelukkig werd voor de laatste oplossing gekozen. Ook dat de broekplaat, dat is de plaat die de ronde langsketel met de vierkante Belpaire vuurkist verbindt (met zijn karakteristieke vlakke topplaat) met de hand in de UK vervaardigd moest worden omdat er al lang geen persmallen meer van waren en niemand in Nederland nog de kennis van het staalplaat in vorm kloppen had. Het was wel opwindend om die lokomotief na twintig jaar in het museum weer aktief te zien, alhoewel hij in gebrekkige konditie bleek. Er is later nog veel meer aan vernieuwd, waaronder de lagers.

In ieder geval, zo zag een middelgroot station met armseinen eruit.
Rood-witte palen, er kon met deze hoofdseinen ook gerangeerd worden. Op de blinkende lantaarns, blokkendoosrijtuigen en de seintelefoon in zijn moderne plastic kap na kon dit zo een plaatje uit de jaren dertig of veertig zijn.
OK, die bovenleiding met DIN-profielmasten is eigenlijk ook van na de
oorlog.

Een foto van een negatief dat ik recentelijk terugvond. De man met zijn handen in de zakken is Pieter Magielsen, de vader van mijn moeder en busconducteur in de tijd dat ik hem nog kende na mijn geboortejaar 1953. Toen ik nog in Nederland woonde heb ik al zijn nog resterende spullen naar het toenmalige NZH museum gebracht.

The gentleman with his hands is in his pockets is Pieter Machielsen. My mother’s father and bus ticket inspector in the days when I knew him, after I was born in 1953

23 April 2012

Even een stukje geschiedenis als te zien in het Verkehrsmuseum te Berlijn.
Een toen al oude Pruisische P4 locomotief, in stukken gezaagd (een stuk
tender en de kabine met een stuk ketel en onderstel) om te demonstreren hoe Indusi in een lokomotief zou worden ingebouwd. Hoe dit de oorlog daar overleefd heeft mag jozef weten maar ik vond het wel geweldig. Hier stonden in de twintiger jaren seiningenieurs met verwondering naar te kijken! Let tevens even op de turbogenerator voor het machinistenhuis op de omloop, om de nodige elektrische kracht te leveren.

This is Cheddar station in 1949, looking in the direction of Axbridge, Winscombe, Sandford, Congresbury and Yatton. In the distance the ridge of the Mendip, prime rambling (hiking) country, of which the lower bit is where these days the A38 main road passes through. It separates the main ridge to the right from the valley end where I live; it’s where the Mendip is hollowed out into a broad valley with a separate ridge either side. The big knoll further on is Wavering Down, of which I live on the opposite side to the one we can see, the ridge this way starts with a slope called Shute Shelve. Bear in mind that this is Zummerzet and that zider was made and drunk (still is, actually, Thatcher’s Cider is based nearby in Churchill) in great quantities and it must have affected speech and equilibrium in equal measures. So Shute Shelve is likely to point at a place where the local executions took place, which explains why there is a road called the Lynch in Winscombe that would have taken you there. Cheddar Gorge is to our right, unfortunately not included. Cheddar signalbox (very GWR) can be seen at the platform end along the Down loop, the goods shed with the typical white barge board of the roof that distinguishes ex-railway buildings here well visible, can be seen at the Up side and an overall roof can be seen across the loading dock for cattle and other comestibles. Cheddar station, rather busy with tourists in the summertime, in fact had an overall station canopy as well. You have to go to Frome to see one of those still alive and kicking, with trains stopping under it. This is (and always was) an area for food lovers, from smoked pigeon breast to meats, vegetables and fruits. Never mind the selection of ciders. It’s 2018, all this railway was taken up and after that nothing serious was done with the land for a long time except at Axbridge, where the railway land was used for a racetrack called the bypass. Funny and very English in a way: a none to distinct or wide country road suddenly widens into a (formerly) three-track allee where everyone went berserk to overtake tractors, farm equipment and the none too fast road freight vehicles of the day, to then suddenly be forced back to a none to distinct or wide country road behind another tractor, piece of farm machinery or road freight vehicle. No different today, there still is a lot of quarrying going on here and especially during the week you’re sure to get caught behind part of the output on a truck.