A rare shot of a Class 165 train set between breakdowns
DB Chiltern Railways on good form tonight. 18.36 to Aylesbury from Marylebone cancelled after it leaves platform 1 when brakes hang and then takes 20 minutes to reverse back into station. Maintenance on the Class 165’s is becoming more laughable by the day. Chiltern tell us your proud record on Mean Distance Between Failures (MDBF) on Class 165 stock?
Passengers were told to go to Platform 5 to board the incredibly crowded 18.51 which actually leaves @ 19.13 (but is taken off the board at 18.50 just to add a further sense of adventure for the old and disabled!) and crawls forward having missed its window on the Met Line from Harrow to Amersham. Got to Aylesbury over 45 minutes late. Of course no apology, no mention of Customer Refunds for a delay over 30 minutes. Of course IF you did get one of these (not that they tell you how) by filling in a Customer Comment form they would give you a voucher from the Company Store for anything under £30.00. Strange that most Season Ticket Holders don’t bother? How long must this customer abuse from UK Taxpayers subsidy by this wholly owned subsidiary of German State Railways continue?
Marylebone concourse without 100's of passengers wondering why their delayed / cancelled train is no longer showing on the display
Contrast this oppressive customer contract with the enthusiasm for demanding £20 Penalty Fares from customers now that they have reduced Ticket Office opening hours. Saw their icentivised (they get a £1.00 for every PFN they issue) Revenue Staff in action. They don’t say they are issuing a penalty fare, rather they say you MUST pay a £20 minimum fare even if they are regular commuters and there were ticket office / machine queues. Their Penalty Fare leaflet is totally deceptive and tells the story the Railway wants to tell and does not even approach a fair summary of the Penalty Fare Regulations. So shy are they of this seminal work that they don’t have it on leaflet stands but is kept by Revenue Protection Staff at barriers to intimidate customers into parting with their money.
Let’s rebalance the Customer Contract – No Cash Penalty Fares without immediate Cash refunds for delays!
Read your Penalty Fare rights here; DB Chiltern won’t tell you;
A rare shot of a Class 165 train set between breakdowns
DB Chiltern Railways on good form tonight. 18.36 to Aylesbury from Marylebone cancelled after it leaves platform 1 when brakes hang and then takes 20 minutes to reverse back into station. Maintenance on the Class 165’s is becoming more laughable by the day. Chiltern tell us your proud record on Mean Distance Between Failures (MDBF) on Class 165 stock?
Passengers were told to go to Platform 5 to board the incredibly crowded 18.51 which actually leaves @ 19.13 (but is taken off the board at 18.50 just to add a further sense of adventure for the old and disabled!) and crawls forward having missed its window on the Met Line from Harrow to Amersham. Got to Aylesbury over 45 minutes late. Of course no apology, no mention of Customer Refunds for a delay over 30 minutes. Of course IF you did get one of these (not that they tell you how) by filling in a Customer Comment form they would give you a voucher from the Company Store for anything under £30.00. Strange that most Season Ticket Holders don’t bother? How long must this customer abuse from UK Taxpayers subsidy by this wholly owned subsidiary of German State Railways continue?
Marylebone concourse without 100's of passengers wondering why their delayed / cancelled train is no longer showing on the display
Contrast this oppressive customer contract with the enthusiasm for demanding £20 Penalty Fares from customers now that they have reduced Ticket Office opening hours. Saw their icentivised (they get a £1.00 for every PFN they issue) Revenue Staff in action. They don’t say they are issuing a penalty fare, rather they say you MUST pay a £20 minimum fare even if they are regular commuters and there were ticket office / machine queues. Their Penalty Fare leaflet is totally deceptive and tells the story the Railway wants to tell and does not even approach a fair summary of the Penalty Fare Regulations. So shy are they of this seminal work that they don’t have it on leaflet stands but is kept by Revenue Protection Staff at barriers to intimidate customers into parting with their money.
Let’s rebalance the Customer Contract – No Cash Penalty Fares without immediate Cash refunds for delays!
Read your Penalty Fare rights here; DB Chiltern won’t tell you;
Riga was a major centre of the Hanseatic League, deriving its prosperity in the 13th–15th centuries from the trade with central and Eastern Europe. The urban fabric of its medieval centre reflects this prosperity, though most of the earliest buildings were destroyed by fire or war. Riga became an important economic centre in the 19th century, when the suburbs surrounding the medieval town were laid out, first with imposing wooden buildings in neoclassical style and then in Jugendstil. It is generally recognized that Riga has the finest collection of art nouveau buildings in Europe. In 1997 the Art Noveau District of Riga was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Jugendstil
The Historic Centre of Riga boasts the largest collection of Art Nouveau buildings in Europe. Between 1896 and 1913, the city expanded and a housing boom followed. The style which developed in Riga was influenced mainly by German, Austrian and Finnish architects.
Before World War I Riga was a growing industrial city and the wealth of the 'haute' bourgeoisie naturally found its way onto the facades of their new luxury town homes. Many of the designs were of the Art Nouveau style. I am particularly fond of this short-lived style because so much emphasis was placed on creating something unique, free flowing, and just a little 'off the scale.' ...Not so different from today's avant-garde and in a way it’s uniqueness expresses Latvian’s desire to be free and part of the European mainstream.
Alberta Street
After the revolution of 1905 a distinctively Latvian variation of Art Nouveau developed, known as National Romanticism. Architects started to use traditional Latvian folk elements and natural building materials. Typical elements were steep roofs, heavy structures and the use of ethnographic ornamental motifs.
Riga as a city made its first mark in history in the 1201. In that year, Albert the Bishop of Bremen established his first German fortress here. With his Knights of the Sword he executed a Crusade to the Baltic’s. The town started to prosper as a trading station. This resulted in joining the Hanseatic League in 1282. What makes it different is something to do with Latvia and Lithuania being the last two European countries to adopt Christianity in the 12th Century and as a result most of the traditional symbols and icons are distinctly pagan. Pre-Christian symbolism persists in Latvian folk tradition and can be seen in Art Nouveau buildings which display the face of Mother Nature and the look of intricately carved wood, both of which are distinctly Baltic features. It's a little eerie (and possibly fun) to walk down a dark side street and notice all these symbols normally associated with witchcraft and the devil.
Mother Nature
Walking around in Riga what most surprises is the eclectic architecture. Notably in the Old Town there is always a medieval highlight next to some Stalinist leftover. This diversity in styles adds a lively atmosphere to the town. Generally, Riga is less an open-air-museum like than Tallinn for example. The main reason for inclusion is Riga's fine collection of Art Nouveau buildings. They can be found a few blocks north from the city center. There are several streets adorned with great specimens. The buildings by Mikhail Eisenstein are well restored and freshly painted. Another feature of Riga are the 19th century wooden buildings. They are less prominent than the Art Nouveau ones, and less often renovated.
The architectural and artistic answer to the literary Modernist movement that began in the late 19th century was the Art Nouveau movement in Europe. The Art Nouveau movement reached its peak in the early 20th century, which is when the majority of Riga’s Art Nouveau houses were built, beginning in 1899. Riga’s term for the movement, Jugendstil, comes from the German and Scandinavian movement named after the avant-garde periodical Jugend (“Youth”). Unlike the stiffer sensibilities of Victorian style, Art Nouveau stressed a complete creative freedom, mixing fantastic elements with a tendency to show all utilitarian construction elements as artistic value, with very characteristic elements such as dynamic, undulating, and flowing lines and geometrical ornaments. In Riga, Art Nouveau could be split into two main directions, decorative and romantic-nationalistic Art Nouveau.
Jugendstil Frauenkopf
Riga is one of the largest centres of Art Nouveau, with more than a third of the buildings of its Central District built in the style; other significant centres include Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, Vienna, Krakow, and Moscow and St. Petersburg, among others. The main street for Riga’s Art Nouveau district is Elizabetes, which intersects Brivibas Boulevard. In addition to Elizabetes Street, Alberta and Strelnieku Streets also feature impressive examples of the style. In total, there are over 800 Art Nouveau buildings in Riga, but finding them all would be quite an ambitious undertaking, so I’ll try to guide you to the most noteworthy ones. Significantly, most of the Art Nouveau buildings were designed and built by Latvian architects.
Buildings in the decorative Art Nouveau style by one of the most famous architects, Mikhail Eisenstein can be found at Elizabetes 10a and 10b, as well as at Alberta 2, 2a, 4, 8 and 13. On Alberta 13 stands a building from 1904 which now houses the Riga Graduate School of Law, which is fully restored and publicly accessible. Right around the corner, Strelnieku Street also features eccentric examples of the style. Romantic-nationalist Art Nouveau can be seen in the buildings by Latvian architects E. Laube, K. Peksens, and A. Vanags, such as those on Terbatas Street 15/17 and Brivibas Street 47, 58, and 62. The most famous of the local architects was Mikhail Eisenstein. His son, Sergei, was a pioneer of early cinema. Ironically, Sergei moved to Moscow to make propaganda for the Bolsheviks who despised (and eventually destroyed) the same bourgeoisie that supported his father and fed him as a child.
Art Nouveau Staircase
More information can be learned about Art Nouveau and other architecture in Riga in the Latvian Museum of Architecture located in one of the Three Brothers in the Old Town. The Riga Art Nouveau Centre in Latvia, that used to be linked on the website of the City of Riga, now has its own website where the centre and Art Nouveau architectural heritage of the city are presented and where events related to Art Nouveau in Riga are listed. The Riga Art Nouveau Centre also moved into new premises in the Art Nouveau building located at 12, Alberta Street, the facade having being restored a few years ago and the interior still being in the restoration process.
This is their website; (Only in Latvian at the moment)
Riga is a rewarding place to visit both for its Architecture and its vibrant urban life. The old town is richly textured with the wondrously titled “House of the Blackheads”, essentially a palace for visiting Hanseatic merchants. Due to their indulgent lifestyle they developed blackheads and turned this into a little joke by calling this rather rich palace after what was originally its nickname! The old town is a rich and rewarding mix with Swedish gun towers, a castle, museums, Art Nouveau district and many fine churches including St Peter’s Cathedral in the Baltic brick gothic style. St Petri has a lift to the top of the steeple affording good views of the city and the river Daugava on which it sits.
I’ll remember it for its energy, sense of purpose and historic and human interest which makes it such a worthwhile travel destination. The persistence of the ideals of personal freedom and free association cemented by trade of the Hanseatic League can be seen in the way the cities of the newly free Baltic countries have readopted their Hanseatic titles after gaining their freedom.
My abiding feeling coming back from Riga is how important freedom is to people who have been deprived of it and how much in the West we take it for granted, not something they will ever do in Riga which is watched over by the symbol of Latvian nationhood “The Freedom Monument.” The Art Nouveau District is another testament of the determination of the people of this small nation to look westwards and assert their unique culture, language and cultural identity. It is a deserving UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Riga was a major centre of the Hanseatic League, deriving its prosperity in the 13th–15th centuries from the trade with central and Eastern Europe. The urban fabric of its medieval centre reflects this prosperity, though most of the earliest buildings were destroyed by fire or war. Riga became an important economic centre in the 19th century, when the suburbs surrounding the medieval town were laid out, first with imposing wooden buildings in neoclassical style and then in Jugendstil. It is generally recognized that Riga has the finest collection of art nouveau buildings in Europe. In 1997 the Art Noveau District of Riga was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Jugendstil
The Historic Centre of Riga boasts the largest collection of Art Nouveau buildings in Europe. Between 1896 and 1913, the city expanded and a housing boom followed. The style which developed in Riga was influenced mainly by German, Austrian and Finnish architects.
Before World War I Riga was a growing industrial city and the wealth of the 'haute' bourgeoisie naturally found its way onto the facades of their new luxury town homes. Many of the designs were of the Art Nouveau style. I am particularly fond of this short-lived style because so much emphasis was placed on creating something unique, free flowing, and just a little 'off the scale.' ...Not so different from today's avant-garde and in a way it’s uniqueness expresses Latvian’s desire to be free and part of the European mainstream.
Alberta Street
After the revolution of 1905 a distinctively Latvian variation of Art Nouveau developed, known as National Romanticism. Architects started to use traditional Latvian folk elements and natural building materials. Typical elements were steep roofs, heavy structures and the use of ethnographic ornamental motifs.
Riga as a city made its first mark in history in the 1201. In that year, Albert the Bishop of Bremen established his first German fortress here. With his Knights of the Sword he executed a Crusade to the Baltic’s. The town started to prosper as a trading station. This resulted in joining the Hanseatic League in 1282. What makes it different is something to do with Latvia and Lithuania being the last two European countries to adopt Christianity in the 12th Century and as a result most of the traditional symbols and icons are distinctly pagan. Pre-Christian symbolism persists in Latvian folk tradition and can be seen in Art Nouveau buildings which display the face of Mother Nature and the look of intricately carved wood, both of which are distinctly Baltic features. It's a little eerie (and possibly fun) to walk down a dark side street and notice all these symbols normally associated with witchcraft and the devil.
Mother Nature
Walking around in Riga what most surprises is the eclectic architecture. Notably in the Old Town there is always a medieval highlight next to some Stalinist leftover. This diversity in styles adds a lively atmosphere to the town. Generally, Riga is less an open-air-museum like than Tallinn for example. The main reason for inclusion is Riga's fine collection of Art Nouveau buildings. They can be found a few blocks north from the city center. There are several streets adorned with great specimens. The buildings by Mikhail Eisenstein are well restored and freshly painted. Another feature of Riga are the 19th century wooden buildings. They are less prominent than the Art Nouveau ones, and less often renovated.
The architectural and artistic answer to the literary Modernist movement that began in the late 19th century was the Art Nouveau movement in Europe. The Art Nouveau movement reached its peak in the early 20th century, which is when the majority of Riga’s Art Nouveau houses were built, beginning in 1899. Riga’s term for the movement, Jugendstil, comes from the German and Scandinavian movement named after the avant-garde periodical Jugend (“Youth”). Unlike the stiffer sensibilities of Victorian style, Art Nouveau stressed a complete creative freedom, mixing fantastic elements with a tendency to show all utilitarian construction elements as artistic value, with very characteristic elements such as dynamic, undulating, and flowing lines and geometrical ornaments. In Riga, Art Nouveau could be split into two main directions, decorative and romantic-nationalistic Art Nouveau.
Jugendstil Frauenkopf
Riga is one of the largest centres of Art Nouveau, with more than a third of the buildings of its Central District built in the style; other significant centres include Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, Vienna, Krakow, and Moscow and St. Petersburg, among others. The main street for Riga’s Art Nouveau district is Elizabetes, which intersects Brivibas Boulevard. In addition to Elizabetes Street, Alberta and Strelnieku Streets also feature impressive examples of the style. In total, there are over 800 Art Nouveau buildings in Riga, but finding them all would be quite an ambitious undertaking, so I’ll try to guide you to the most noteworthy ones. Significantly, most of the Art Nouveau buildings were designed and built by Latvian architects.
Buildings in the decorative Art Nouveau style by one of the most famous architects, Mikhail Eisenstein can be found at Elizabetes 10a and 10b, as well as at Alberta 2, 2a, 4, 8 and 13. On Alberta 13 stands a building from 1904 which now houses the Riga Graduate School of Law, which is fully restored and publicly accessible. Right around the corner, Strelnieku Street also features eccentric examples of the style. Romantic-nationalist Art Nouveau can be seen in the buildings by Latvian architects E. Laube, K. Peksens, and A. Vanags, such as those on Terbatas Street 15/17 and Brivibas Street 47, 58, and 62. The most famous of the local architects was Mikhail Eisenstein. His son, Sergei, was a pioneer of early cinema. Ironically, Sergei moved to Moscow to make propaganda for the Bolsheviks who despised (and eventually destroyed) the same bourgeoisie that supported his father and fed him as a child.
Art Nouveau Staircase
More information can be learned about Art Nouveau and other architecture in Riga in the Latvian Museum of Architecture located in one of the Three Brothers in the Old Town. The Riga Art Nouveau Centre in Latvia, that used to be linked on the website of the City of Riga, now has its own website where the centre and Art Nouveau architectural heritage of the city are presented and where events related to Art Nouveau in Riga are listed. The Riga Art Nouveau Centre also moved into new premises in the Art Nouveau building located at 12, Alberta Street, the facade having being restored a few years ago and the interior still being in the restoration process.
This is their website; (Only in Latvian at the moment)
Riga is a rewarding place to visit both for its Architecture and its vibrant urban life. The old town is richly textured with the wondrously titled “House of the Blackheads”, essentially a palace for visiting Hanseatic merchants. Due to their indulgent lifestyle they developed blackheads and turned this into a little joke by calling this rather rich palace after what was originally its nickname! The old town is a rich and rewarding mix with Swedish gun towers, a castle, museums, Art Nouveau district and many fine churches including St Peter’s Cathedral in the Baltic brick gothic style. St Petri has a lift to the top of the steeple affording good views of the city and the river Daugava on which it sits.
I’ll remember it for its energy, sense of purpose and historic and human interest which makes it such a worthwhile travel destination. The persistence of the ideals of personal freedom and free association cemented by trade of the Hanseatic League can be seen in the way the cities of the newly free Baltic countries have readopted their Hanseatic titles after gaining their freedom.
My abiding feeling coming back from Riga is how important freedom is to people who have been deprived of it and how much in the West we take it for granted, not something they will ever do in Riga which is watched over by the symbol of Latvian nationhood “The Freedom Monument.” The Art Nouveau District is another testament of the determination of the people of this small nation to look westwards and assert their unique culture, language and cultural identity. It is a deserving UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Under the Railway Safety Act 2005, Irish Rail is required to commission an independent audit of its safety management system every four years. The next audit is scheduled for 2010. It will consider if inspections of the Broadmeadow viaduct were regular enough, and if an underwater survey of the pier should have been conducted. Irish Rail and the RSC are also expected to appear before the Dail Transport Committee next month to answer questions about safety.
What is particularly disgraceful about the state of Irish Rail is that it has had ten years worth of European Union and taxpayer funded largesse and has spent money on high end capital projects and new equipment without even looking at the fundamental business cases for such expenditure or indeed reinforcing its basic operating discipline or customer focus in that time. Indeed it has dreamt up more grandiose schemes such as the 3 Bn Euro Dublin underground Interconnector to connect Heuston to Connolly Station even though they are already linked by Rail. Such is the Government’s lack of faith in Irish Rail that they bypassed them for the Dublin Light rail and proposed Metro system with the result that a separate Quango has now come up with totally disconnected and grandiose schemes for these. In Ireland they say “It’s an ill horse which blows no wind” and hopefully the collapse of the Celtic Tiger will ultimately result in more realistic Public transport policies and a safer system?
Under the Railway Safety Act 2005, Irish Rail is required to commission an independent audit of its safety management system every four years. The next audit is scheduled for 2010. It will consider if inspections of the Broadmeadow viaduct were regular enough, and if an underwater survey of the pier should have been conducted. Irish Rail and the RSC are also expected to appear before the Dail Transport Committee next month to answer questions about safety.
What is particularly disgraceful about the state of Irish Rail is that it has had ten years worth of European Union and taxpayer funded largesse and has spent money on high end capital projects and new equipment without even looking at the fundamental business cases for such expenditure or indeed reinforcing its basic operating discipline or customer focus in that time. Indeed it has dreamt up more grandiose schemes such as the 3 Bn Euro Dublin underground Interconnector to connect Heuston to Connolly Station even though they are already linked by Rail. Such is the Government’s lack of faith in Irish Rail that they bypassed them for the Dublin Light rail and proposed Metro system with the result that a separate Quango has now come up with totally disconnected and grandiose schemes for these. In Ireland they say “It’s an ill horse which blows no wind” and hopefully the collapse of the Celtic Tiger will ultimately result in more realistic Public transport policies and a safer system?
Irish Railways have always had a bit of a Noddy status suffering from a toxic mixture of neglect and confused pork barrel politics. The neglect resulted in the system being starved of meaningful investment for years and gaining a negative public perception for shabby crowded trains particularly at peak times. I remember standing in a 40 year old coach from Mullingar to Dublin where the floor was the ashtray for a carriage full of chain smokers. Over the past 50 years a number of lines have closed to passenger services and gone into that euphemistic state “In the care of the Chief Engineer.” More seriously railways have been justified on social grounds with bottomless subsidies given as a PSO (Public Service Obligation) and pensioners, irrespective of means given the “right” to free unlimited rail travel. Well, as Ireland has certainly found out recently, there is no such thing as a free lunch and somebody has had to pay for “free travel.”
The confusion in policy is very apparent on routes such as Dublin / Galway where the Irish state pays a subsidy on the rail trip, the bus trip (By the state bus monopoly) and on the flight (110 miles!) on Aer Arann. Whilst paying subsidies unnecessarily on competing links it has also improved the roads so much that it is quicker to drive from Dublin to Galway than go by train – Irish Rail no longer uses the shorter direct route to Galway to save on maintenance. Their operating standards have always been a cause for concern. When I was at college a friend of mine, who was studying engineering, worked for Irish Railways for the summer. He was somewhat incredulous to find when he inspected the newly installed pneumatic signals south of Pearse St. Station that they were now in fact hydraulic signals! – the bleed valves had not been opened and the compressed air tubes which operated the points had filled with water!
Last time I went by train from Dublin to Limerick I had checked at the ticket office that there was a First Class service on the next morning’s train. In going to Heuston Station in Dublin the next morning I had to stop three times to show my ticket BEFORE getting on the train and went into the First Class Carriage to be greeted with the well practiced words before I even sat down “You know there is no First Class on this train, they’ll refund the difference on your ticket!” Indeed a lot of use a refund in 2 months by way of a euro cheque would have been to me in the UK. I told him I had checked the night before so why was there no First Class. Quick as anything he replied “Staff Shortages.” I then had the surreal experience of spending the whole 3 hour trip to Limerick as the only person in First Class apart from THREE Irish rail staff who spent the entire trip listening to a Gaelic Football final on a radio! It seemed like a shortage of motivated staff. Indeed there is strict demarcation on Irish Rail as I noticed once on the Belfast Train when the staff had to break into the buffet as the “catering staff” had not opened it. Every year on some pretext the Train Drivers hold customers to ransom by going on strike to protect their lack of productivity and restrictive practices which would be laughed at in the commercial world. Go into www.irishrail.ie/ now and they will still take money off you for weekend services timetabled as First Class (Premium in Irish rail Speak) at weekends where there will be no such service. There is no concept of a “Train Manager” multi-tasking and ensuring joined up service is delivered to the customer on Irish Rail.
But more serious than the lack of customer focus and the free ride at the taxpayers’ expense are the safety lapses. On the main line to Belfast just 10 miles north of Dublin the Broadmeadow viaduct, which runs over open water in north Dublin, collapsed into the sea last Friday despite being passed as safe following two inspections by Irish Rail engineers. The company last night stood by its inspection regime, defending a decision to pass the structure as safe despite being told by the Malahide Sea Scouts (Hi Lo!) that one of the supporting piers was damaged. It has also emerged that the pier that collapsed, causing the viaduct to fall into the water, will not be rebuilt. Instead, engineers will strengthen the line.
Irish Passenger Rail Network
Critical railway safety checks have not been carried out for the past three years because the Irish Railway safety watchdog does not have enough staff. The Railway Safety Commission (RSC) was established under the Railway Safety Act 2005 on the back of EU legislation requiring each member state to have a national railway safety authority. And Irish Rail admitted last night that its inspection regime -covering more than 1,200 bridges - would need to be reviewed after one of the busiest rail lines in the country collapsed into the sea last week.
The RSC had warned about a lack of inspectors since it began operations in 2006. It said this "lack of resources" prevented it from "devoting the time we would wish" to safety checks. It had just four inspectors responsible for almost 2,000km of rail line and hundreds of bridges until this year. Only in 2009 could it recruit an additional three inspectors, bringing the total employed to seven. It revealed that it was too busy approving new rail projects to carry out planned safety checks, and it was only able to recruit its full complement of safety inspectors this year. The RSC is charged with ensuring Irish Rail and other operators perform to the highest safety standards, but last night it emerged that just half the necessary staff were in place to cope with the huge workload of checking safety systems. The RSC began operations on January 1, 2006. It is responsible for safety on the entire rail network, including heavy rail and tram systems. It currently employs seven inspectors - three of whom were only appointed this year. The commission has four primary tasks including safety approval, which assesses if new infrastructure or rolling stock is fit for purpose. It is also responsible for safety auditing and monitoring, safety enforcement and investigations. Auditing and monitoring has included studies on the safety of level crossings, emergency escapes at stations and bridge-protection warning systems. The RSC has warned in all three of its annual reports that it has committed less time to compliance auditing "than we would have wished".
And it emerged:
The collapse of the rail viaduct over Broadmeadow estuary in north Co Dublin last Friday evening might have been a disaster, causing significant loss of life. A commuter train had just passed over it minutes earlier and another would have followed but for the alertness of driver, Keith Farrelly, who raised the alarm when he noticed the bridge starting to collapse as his train was crossing it.
That is how close we came to a real human tragedy on Irish railways. Amazingly, it transpired that the 180 metre-long viaduct had been inspected just three days beforehand and no evidence of any defect was reported to Iarnród Éireann. Yet after one of its support piers had crumbled, the State railway company was able to say there was “little doubt” that tidal scouring was a factor in the incident.
Rail Users Ireland spokesman Mark Gleeson rightly suggested that what happened raises serious questions about the maintenance and inspection regime on Ireland’s rail network – and not for the first time. After the derailment of a cement train caused the partial collapse of the Cahir viaduct in Co Tipperary, the Railway Safety Commission found “serious deficiencies” in Iarnród Éireann’s management of its infrastructure, and concluded in its 2006 report that these critical shortcomings in the company’s inspection and maintenance regime “were principally responsible for the accident”. The number of passengers carried on the line that runs through Cahir from Limerick Junction to Rosslare is minuscule compared to the 20,000 passengers per day using Dublin’s northern commuter line or the Belfast Enterprise express.
Iarnród Éireann’s Logo
But serious questions have been raised over how a supposedly 'safe' bridge could fall into the sea after two inspections. There are also concerns about safety on the network, especially as the Railway Safety Programme was extended from five to seven years in an effort to reduce costs in last year's Budget. Ensuring that bridges, viaducts, rail lines, level crossings and all other pieces of rail infrastructure are safe is a key plank of the RSC's brief. Last year, it also approved 57 infrastructure projects, ranging from construction of new bridges to approval of Luas extensions, which led to it postponing inspections.
Broadmeadow Viaduct
"The number of railway projects that required RSC approval meant that we were able to commit less time to performance auditing and monitoring than we would have wished," it warned in its 2008 report. A safety management system is only as effective as its implementation. Assessing the railway undertakings' safety case compliance is an essential part of the RSC's work but lack of resources has, in the past, prevented us devoting the time we would wish to this task."
Fine Gael's Transport spokesman Fergus O'Dowd said that the Railway Safety Programme had seen its funding cut, and that there was a "lack of accountability" in relation to the Broadmeadow inquiry. "They're the regulator of the industry and the guarantor of safety on the trains. I would be very concerned," he said. Under the Railway Safety Act 2005, Irish Rail is required to commission an independent audit of its safety management system every four years. The next audit is scheduled for 2010. It will consider if inspections of the Broadmeadow viaduct were regular enough, and if an underwater survey of the pier should have been conducted. Irish Rail and the RSC are also expected to appear before the Dail Transport Committee next month to answer questions about safety.
Irish Rail Class 22000
What is particularly disgraceful about the state of Irish Rail is that it has had ten years worth of European Union and taxpayer funded largesse and has spent money on high end capital projects and new equipment without even looking at the fundamental business cases for such expenditure or indeed reinforcing its basic operating discipline or customer focus in that time. Indeed it has dreamt up more grandiose schemes such as the 3 Bn Euro Dublin underground Interconnector to connect Heuston to Connolly Station even though they are already linked by Rail. Such is the Government’s lack of faith in Irish Rail that they bypassed them for the Dublin Light rail and proposed Metro system with the result that a separate Quango has now come up with totally disconnected and grandiose schemes for these. In Ireland they say “It’s an ill horse which blows no wind” and hopefully the collapse of the Celtic Tiger will ultimately result in more realistic Public transport policies and a safer system?
