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How Safe Are Rail Depots?
Things Are Steaming Rapidly Ahead. Are All Depots Keeping Up?
Some rail maintenance depots seem to look, and operate, as if they are still in the steam age. All very quaint, but how efficient are they, and even more important, how safe are they for rail depot staff?
Health and Safety Executives statistics for 2017/18 reveal that 144 people were killed at work in the UK that vear and over 71,062 injuries were reported under RIDDOR. It is difficult to obtain a precise figure of the cost of a fatality, but in addition to the unquantifiably enormous cost of human grief and suffering, when considering the cost of legal proceedings, medical and emergency services charges, associated damage to equipment, loss of production and insurance costs, then a seven figure sum is not unreasonable.
So clearly it is vital in both human and financial contexts that everything possible must be done to reduce these risks, especially when severe hazards such as moving trains and high voltage equipment are present in the workplace.
Train movements within a depot are an obvious occupational hazard in the rail industry. Research carried out by the Rail Safety Standards board in the Halcrow Report looked into the course of collisions and accidents relating to train movements in maintenance depots, reviewing 880 incidents taken from information gathered in relation to 28 depots during a seven year period.
