RailStaff

Every year, the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) publishes its Annual Safety Performance Report. This reviews the rail industry’s safety performance over the latest financial year. The latest report, covering 2012/13, was released at the end of June. Once again, overall use of the railways has increased although freight dropped off slightly. Compared to [...]

LPA Group is sponsoring the Newcomer/Graduate of the Year at this year’s Rail Staff Awards. LPA Group Plc designs and manufactures top class LED lighting solutions, market leading electronic and electro-mechanical systems as well as equipment with the flexibility to solve complex inter-car connection problems, auxiliary power & distribution systems from their four UK subsidiaries, [...]

Sochi, on Russia’s Black Sea coast will be hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics. David Shirres went to the International Rail Business Forum in the city and reports from an Olympian event. David Shirres reports Russian Railway’s operations are certainly large scale, and so are their conferences. With 1400 delegates from 32 countries, this year’s Eighth [...]

The last resort Last month I suggested that the time was ripe for us to phase out the use of flags, whistles and horns as a way of protecting track staff from trains. Writes Colin Wheeler Nostalgia for the exciting days when the Victorians built our railways can hardly be used to justify such an [...]

2013 looks like being a busy and successful year for Virgin Trains, which is backing this year’s Depot Team of the Year at the RailStaff Awards. Says Tom O’Connor of the Rail Media Group, ‘We are delighted to welcome Virgin Trains back to the RailStaff Awards. Virgin is running more trains than ever and is [...]

London Underground joins Network Rail as associate sponsor of the RailStaff Awards 2013. London’s Underground (LU) is one of the busiest urban rail networks in the world. The Tube carried more than 1.2bn passengers in 2012/13, as many as the entire National Rail network. With around three and a half million journeys made each day, [...]

The RailStaff Awards emphasises the success of railway staff from all backgrounds in delivering the railway day by day, night by night. That Colin Flack, who runs the Rail Alliance, should be hosting the event is quite fitting. Award winners find his presence reassuring. His own story underscores the message behind the RailStaff Awards Quite [...]

As the countdown continues to the 75th anniversary celebrations of Mallard breaking the world steam speed record the National Railway Museum is trying to find the drivers and other crew that worked on the world’s fastest locomotive. The Museum plans a Drivers Day in October. Several members of the crews that worked on the footplates [...]

This year sees the fiftieth anniversary of Richard Beeching’s ‘The Re-Shaping of British Railways’. Writes Colin Garratt 2013 also sees the thirtieth anniversary of the Serpell Report. These two events mirrored the tempestuous undertones of railway policy in the years following World War Two. In this eight part series, Colin Garratt of Milepost 921⁄2 outlines [...]

The Institution of Railway Operators (IRO) was launched in May 2000 to develop and promote the safe, reliable and efficient operation of the railways – heavy rail, metro, light rail and heritage rail operations – and to ensure the institution acts as the custodian of best practice in railway operational management. Our association identifies with [...]