On Fri, 30 May 2008 06:22:26 -0700 (PDT), Mwmbwls
wrote:

On May 29, 2008, Paul Corfield wrote:

While I am not at all surprised that top level communication has
occurred as a result of this incident I do find the tone of Network
Rail's "outrage" and their "banning" to be tinged with a large splash of
hypocrisy given the almighty cockups that they have inflicted on the
travelling public.

The difficulty with this type of language, as Mr Gisbey will find out,
is that if you are prepared to dish it out, you must also in the
fullness of time be prepared to take it. What we have here is a near
miss - now these are important as research work done by the University
of Minnesota on sites such as oil rigs,chemical factories, airports
and railroads shows that often a near miss occurs not by chance but
because inherently unsafe process are being followed generically.

Well exactly. It could have been much worse but it wasn't. Feet back on
planet Earth is always a helpful place to be.

Accidents often happen when a fatal cocktail of events align - in this
case we were lucky - but the more we learn from this the luckier we
shall remain. The Rail industry was until recently bedevilled by a
"someone has got to be summonsed" mindset which resulted in moats and
draw bridges being built after major incidents as everybody scuttled
for lawyers who promptly advised clients to clam up. Fortunately with
the new RAIB we have an " no blame" approach borrowed from Civil
Aviation. If anybody is banning anything it should be the RAIB
together with their colleagues from the HSE. Apart from securing the
bridge to avoid further immediate hazards I would imagine that the
RAIB have already insisted that the site is preserved so that detailed
analysis can begin together with interviews of the people involved.

Yes and I hope we will have a balanced and "unemotional" response to
whatever is discovered and that the lessons are duly learnt.

At
times like this a message from Mr Gisbey indicating a willingness to
help TfL through this situation would have been more appropriate.

Possibly - it people want to express their anger then they should pick
the phone up or meet face to face not rubbish a key stakeholder and
business partner via a press release. It makes you wonder what will
happen if a TfL owned (ok leased) London Overground train ever does any
damage to the NR network. Are all the trains going to be "banned" from
NR's precious metallic rights of way?