“If we don’t get something done, there will be another similar incident that will see other rail workers die like my friends” was the first thing that Ronnie, not his real name, said when he was asked about events at Tebay in Cumbria in February 2004.
Genuine concern, fear and sadness were etched on his face. “I’d like to give you my name, but I’d probably get the sack” which immediately begs the question whether this Governments Whistleblowers Charter, that is supposed to protect public servants who speak out, has as yet got round to covering railway workers.
Ronnie is lucky to be alive; he could easily have been killed like four others on Sunday February 15th 2004 when a runaway road rail trailer ploughed down the hill from Scout Green South in Cumbria during maintenance work on the West Coast Main Line [WCML] Railway and brought death and destruction amongst a gang of 13 workers at Tebay three miles down the line.
Both sites were the responsibility of Carillion, who are contracted by Network Rail to maintain the WCML.
Chris Walters, Colin Buckley, Gary Tindall and Darren Burgess were killed; others suffered horrific injuries and were off work for months. “Our injuries may have cleared up, but the memory of that night never goes away” said Ronnie. Those who died were employees of Carillion who quickly accepted its civil liability for the deaths and the injuries under the ‘Employer’s Liability [Defective Equipment] Act [1969] that introduced a presumption where an employee is injured by defective equipment his employer is liable.
Mark Connolly from Anglesey, North Wales and his employee Roy Kennett from Kent, were found guilty of the manslaughter of the four men at Newcastle Crown Court in March this year and sentenced to nine and two years in jail respectively.
The Court heard how Connolly’s firm MAC Machinery Services [MCMS] had been sub-contracted by rail maintenance company Carillion to work alongside employees from another 7 separate firms at Scout Green. Such high numbers of different contracting companies working on site has been roundly condemned by the rail workers union the RMT, but is not particularly unusual at this current time.
On February 15th the two men were offloading 20 foot rails that had been transported to the Scout Green site by a road rail vehicle, [RRV] to which a road rail trailer [RRT] was attached.
The use of an off rail road crane to load old track on to the RRT made it necessary to detach the RRT from the RRV so as not to interfere with the Overhead Lines. Connolly was later found to have disconnected the trailer’s brakes due to the fact that the hydraulic systems would not work properly in conjunction with the crane. The two were relying on placing some wooden chocks under the trailers wheels to prevent it running away, which it did during the operation to load a second piece of track and promptly hurtled down towards the Tebay gang.
Records show that MCMS had only been given approved supplier status with Carillion Rail less than two months earlier on December 19th 2003 and it was only after the company had received an ‘unsolicited approach’ a month later that MCMS had been become a second tier supplier to ‘fill in’ when ‘Carillion’s two principal plant hire suppliers in the Preston area’ couldn’t ‘accommodate the requirements for road, rail vehicles and associated equipment’.
MCMS had first come to Carillion’s attention in April 2003 when they discovered that another plant hiring company were cross-hiring plant from them. Procedures were adopted to ensure that MCMS became Link-Up Qualified and Carillion Rail approved. In July 2003 the management at MCMS claimed to be Link-Up Qualified, when in fact they were not. This should perhaps have alerted Carillion to the type of company they were happy to hire plant from.
Carillion had notified MCMS that it intended to negotiate a working framework agreement; this was not in place at the time of Tebay. MCMS had also failed to supply a risk assessment for the tasks they were to undertake. MCMS were also expected to undertake inspections of machinery including ‘to check all brake systems’.
Connolly had employed two fitters to do this, one had no formal qualifications, and the other had previously done work on similar vehicles to RRV’s. No record of safety checks appears to have been requested by either Carillion or Network Rail.
Neither had Carillion itself carried out a ‘Civil Method Statement’ or as it is better known a Risk Assessment for the maintenance work at Tebay. This was in spite of the fact that following the formal investigation into events at Culgaith near Carlisle in January 2003 the company had announced in its rail safety brief of April 2003 that ‘it has been recorded that our method statements should be improved in the area of working on gradients with plant and equipment.’
It had been found that a trailer had runaway for over one and three quarter miles, joining a list that Network Rail stated may have been underestimated as they had discovered ‘that more runaway trailer incidents had taken place than had been reported’ due to ‘a perception amongst the workforce that if incidents and accidents are reported then blame may be laid against them.’
RMT members who asked for copies of the method statement for the job at Tebay were later given one dated April 4th 2004, two months after the tragedy. “I must be honest when we were given the report none of us looked at its date. It wasn’t until a few weeks later that someone noticed it was dated for April, it angered a few people I can tell you” said Ronnie.
Some of the workers believe that if the trailer had been equipped with flashing lights and hooters then those who were killed might be alive today. “All we wanted was a couple of seconds notice” said Ronnie.
Phil Dee the health and safety officer for the RMT is not convinced, stressing that “what we as a union wants is to stop runaways, we need to ensure that every vehicle is braked and there are no problems with them.”
The RMT General Secretary Bob Crow also remains concerned that “two years after Tebay, we still have a confusion of contractors, subcontractors, one man and-a-dog owner operator plant-hire operators’ on the railways and he urged Network Rail to bring “renewals work back in-house” as it did with “rail maintenance for safety and efficiency reasons” in July 2004.
Crow has been
adamant that Tebay was no accident and was the “result of privatisation”
echoing the union’s constant demands for the railways to be re-nationalised.
.
A few years ago the RMT would not have needed to have concerned themselves with
RRV or trailers as back in British Rail days the Scout Green job would have
involved rail based cranes and wagons that were attached to a locomotive being
manned by a qualified train driver. This, of course, would cost more money and
mean jobs take longer than is the case with the use of Road Rail Vehicles.
What would have certainly prevented the deaths, and save the lives of others in the future would have been the placement of a 9’ by 9’ sleeper chained to the track. The runaway trailer would have been de-railed before it got anywhere near the 13 workers at Tebay. Such actions are apparently considered unsafe due to the fact that if the sleeper was to be forgotten then the following morning a passenger train may well be de-railed with obvious fatal consequences.
As might be expected the injured have required time off work. Sympathy from their employers, Carillion PLC, did not extend to ensuring they were paid their Average Earnings rather than their basic wages, a sum of money equivalent to around £120 a week per worker and a maximum of £70,000 for a year. The company only backed down after strong representations from the RMT General Secretary Bob Crow to both Carillion and Network Rail. In 2004 and 2005 Carillion made nearly 120 million pounds profit.
The Carillion Rail web-site states that ‘Our Vision is to be a company renowned for working in a spirit of openness’. Yet when asked a series of questions relating to Tebay a company spokesperson replied ‘the issues raised [in them] are subject to a formal investigation by Her Majesty’s Railway Inspectorate’ and ‘therefore we cannot comment’ which Andy Buyack from the RMT office in Liverpool said “is news to members of the RMT as we know of no other enquiry taking place” pointing out that the union has “vigorously pushed for a full public enquiry from the start.”
A Network Rail spokesperson said that since Tebay the company had ‘worked closely with the [rail] industry to implement a number of improvements in the control, maintenance and operation of the type of rail equipment involved at Tebay’ and that by bringing 15,000 staff in-house this now meant there is ‘absolute clarity over roles and regulations’ such that it ‘allows easier control of work practice’ on sites.
Ronnie and his fellow rail workers are not so sure saying “it’s’ true that there does appear to be a reduced number of reports of runaways, but let’s not forget that late last year a locomotive even ran away and hurtled at 60mph down the track at night between Birmingham and Lichfield. I don’t want what happened at Tebay to ever be repeated.”
This article was published in the Big Issue on 11/5/2006 - download the article: Page 1 Page 2