Return to Archive -by date - by topic - 2002.
In our daily lives, health and safety depends on countless ordinary people doing ordinary jobs by the book, day in - day out Rudyard Kipling hymned them as the ‘Sons of Martha' from the new testament story of the two sisters whose house Christ visited.
While Martha busied herself with the domestic arrangements, Mary sat and listened to Jesus. When Martha complained that her sister was not pulling her weight she received what seems like a mild rebuke for being ‘careful and troubled about many things' unlike the devout Mary.
Today, the sons and daughters of Martha on whose care and trouble we depend are under greater pressure than ever before. On the railway, for example, maintenance is expected to be done when the customers sleep. Clerks are expected to deal with fares structures of increasing complexity. Drivers must never make even a tiny mistake.
That the railway service is demanding has always been the case. No wonder people used to talk of ‘railway servants'. But there were two abiding characteristics of railway people, loyalty to an absorbing job and an ethos of doing things by the book - literally in the case of the rule book.
Both traits are at odds with today's society and today's railways.
Being old railway in the 1990s was not career enhancing – although is now belatedly being appreciated. Experience and loyalty was not an asset. As for doing things punctiliously, the privatising politicians and the new owners failed to realise that railways are a safety critical industry where, as with other forms of transport, an excess of can-do zeal can lead to disaster.
Nowhere have the railway's sons of Martha suffered more than in permanent way maintenance. Integrated teams broken up, an artificial division between maintenance and renewal, new owners who inherited uneconomic contracts with an absentee customer. But worst of all was the creation of ane army of subcontractors and sub-subcontractors as the various privatised businesses streamlined, rationalised and coalesced.
In this turmoil the work force was a commodity to be TUPED between employers as contracts changed hands. In the continuing Diaspora contractors have tended to keep talented staff and transfer them to other contracts. As a result local asset knowledge was lost.
Meanwhile Railtrack was busy selling off white space in the timetable, putting possessions under even greater pressure, so that more trains could be run. In an ideal world this is commendable. But with Railtrack and its contractors exploring an evolving contractual matrix of RT1A, IMC2000 and IMC2002 we are not in an ideal world. Some tolerance has to be built in if the system is not to seize up.
Which brings us to Point 2182A at Potters Bar . As we write much remains unclear, save that vital nuts were not in place on two tie bars on the fatal day. And some son of Martha either took the nuts off, failed to put them back on or assembled the tie bars incorrectly.
Pressures in the Railtrack Zones and Regions to bring more responsibility for maintenance in-house is starting to look increasingly prescient.