When the operators of the most popular steam train service in Britain decided to challenge the safety authorities, they were confident that sentiment and nostalgia would win out. They’ve been proved wrong. The health and safety brigade has triumphed and consequently the Jacobite train, popularised in a Harry Potter film and running along one of the nation’s most attractive rail lines between Fort William and Mallaig on the West Coast, will no longer operate.

It’s the culmination of a lengthy battle between the train-spotters and the grey men of the Office of Road and Rail (ORR), who are insistent that a temporary concession to allow the trains to operate without key safety equipment cannot be extended. That key safety issue is that these carriages, which date from the early days of British Railways, do not have a central door-locking device that is now mandatory on all trains operating on main lines but are still allowed on heritage routes on which services are limited to 25 mph.

The operator, West Coast Railways (not to be confused with Avanti West Coast), was given a temporary dispensation to operate these old carriages more than a decade ago but its failure to introduce the central-locking device now means a permanent ban.

Is this ’elf and safety gone mad? After all, trains traditionally ran without any such safety device and slam-door trains operated until the middle of the first decade of this century. West Coast Railways argues that fitting the device would make its operation uneconomic. Indeed, one could ask how likely it is that people will risk their lives by opening doors while a train trundles along in the spectacular scenery of the west Highlands? This is not India, where passengers regularly sit in open doorways watching the world go by (I have done so myself, without coming to any harm).

QOSHE - Don’t blame health and safety for killing the Harry Potter steam train - Christian Wolmar
menu_open
Columnists Actual . Favourites . Archive
We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close
Aa Aa Aa
- A +

Don’t blame health and safety for killing the Harry Potter steam train

9 1
24.03.2024

When the operators of the most popular steam train service in Britain decided to challenge the safety authorities, they were confident that sentiment and nostalgia would win out. They’ve been proved wrong. The health and safety brigade has triumphed and consequently the Jacobite train, popularised in a Harry Potter film and running along one of the nation’s most attractive rail lines between Fort William and Mallaig on the West Coast, will no longer........

© The Spectator


Get it on Google Play