RAIL SAFETY PIONEER FIGHTS FOR HIS JOB

RMT helpline 0800 3763706 :: april 2010 :: RMTnews 20 “The crashes at Southall and Ladbroke Grove in the late 1990s had a big impact on me and made want to do something about rail safety,” says Nigel Hitchcock, Bristol Branch, who works on track and signal projects for Network Rail in the West Country. Nigel is the pioneer of possession boards, signalling diagrams which map out the rail system in his region. It is these diagrams – and their development over 10 years – that has seen his work used in rail offices from Paddington to Penzance. Whenever a track needs to be shut off for work to be carried out, the local section manager’s office uses one of Nigel’s diagrams for planning and implementing the track possession. In spite of Nigel’s immense contribution he was recently informed that he faces compulsory redundancy in Network Rail’s latest round of cutbacks. “My job is non-standard and doesn’t fit their template, so now it’s under threat,” Nigel says. This is in spite of the fact that he has letters from senior project managers, among others, requesting new possession boards for track and signalling remodelling over the next six years. CAREER Nigel began his career on the railways on 1981 when he joined British Rail, working on the Bathampton Permanent-Way as a trackman. He joined the union when he first started working on the railways because “I always believed in being in the union because it offers protection in the workplace”. Since then he has worked his way up through a variety of jobs, which has given him a thorough knowledge of the railway system in the West Country. “When I was at school the teachers said I had an engineering mind,” Nigel says. It is his interest in engineering that means that he has long been inspired by one of the greatest engineers of them all, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. In 1833, Brunel was appointed chief engineer for the Great Western Railway and work began on the line that linked London to Bristol. Brunel designed the network of tunnels, bridges and viaducts for the Great Western Railway. Impressive achievements during its construction included the viaducts at Hanwell and Chippenham, the Maidenhead Bridge, the Box Tunnel and Bristol Temple Meads Station. Brunel is also noted for introducing the broad gauge in place of the standard gauge on this line. While working on the line from Swindon to Gloucester and South Wales he devised the combination of tubular, suspension and truss bridge to cross the Wye at Chepstow. This design was further improved in the bridge over the Tamar at Saltash near Plymouth. It is easy to see why Nigel is inspired by Brunel’s achievements, when he is working on the same line that Brunel oversaw the construction of. Nigel was heavily involved in the commemorative events that marked the 200th anniversary of Brunel’s birth in 2006. Nigel’s knowledge and experience led to him being chosen to work on the testing train that covered the Bristol division from the mid 1990s until 2002. In the mid 1990s Nigel discovered that all the old British Rail track diagrams for his region were going to be thrown out when the British Rail Civil Engineering Dept was sold off. He single-handedly saved them from being destroyed. “In 1999 I started working on track and signalling diagrams in my capacity as a technical officer. It was to give the PICOPS (Person in Charge of Possession) something to work from”, Nigel says. While producing each diagram is labour intensive, requiring great attention to detail, their strength is in the fact that they are very simple to use. The finished product consists of the diagram, mounted on a magnetic board, with a transparent plastic covering to seal and protect it. These diagrams have come to be known as possession boards. Usually mounted on an office wall – although they are portable – PICOPS can use the boards to monitor trains throughout their possessions and see exactly where they are relative to signals, tunnels, points and level crossings. During the period of each possession red magnets are added to represent detonator protection, and magnetic Award winning signalling expert Nigel Hitchcock (right) talks to RMT News about his pioneering work and the threat to his job RAIL SAFETY PIONEER FIGHTS FOR HIS JOB