In April, a group of IRO members undertook another Operating Skills weekend at the Ffestiniog Railway in North Wales. IRO members shadowed front line service delivery roles to either gain an understanding of the principles of railway operating or to experience a different operational role to their substantive post.
Members started the visit on the Friday afternoon and quickly familiarised themselves with their hosts and their trains, taking some locos and coaches up the line to Rhiw Goch signal box for a briefing session. The session was designed to give the IRO members as broad an experience as possible, ranging from signal box to drivers cab via guards van and ground frames. As requested the Ffestiniog staff used as much obscure and rarely used equipment as possible so intermediate blocks and token instruments, normally only seen by engineer’s trains, were exposed to the light day which maximised the practical element of the exercise.
Saturday dawned and it was with degrees of trepidation that the IRO members made their way to Porthmadog Harbour station for their emergency exercise pre event briefing. The exercise and scenario was relayed to us; our train would ‘fail’ with the brakes unable to be released in a tunnel, (but handily, the loco would just be outside the tunnel mouth!), the emergency lighting batteries had run flat and the PA was inoperative. Faced with such a challenging scenario it was a minor miracle that the IRO guests stayed the course! Each guest was then given their instructions as to what role they would play in the exercise.
As the train failed in the tunnel, the realisation dawned that this was for real. Under the watchful guidance of the Ffestiniog Staff, the IRO members were charged with service recovery, under the rulebook of the Ffestiniog Railway, which doesn’t differ too much in principle from the National Rail rule book. However, one ‘customer’ was diabetic and needed something to replenish their blood sugar level, another ‘customer’ was rather angry that he was being delayed and did not want to get his suit dirty by climbing from the train under ‘controlled evacuation’ procedure. The IRO members coped admirably with what was thrown at them which was creditable given their novice level.
An informal debrief session took place over dinner and a few glasses of something strong that evening, before a formal debrief took place on Sunday morning, where lessons learned were discussed, the National Rail rule book applied to our scenario, and discussion on train evacuation took place. Debrief complete, it was back to London and reality.
The IRO would like to thank its friends at the Ffestiniog Railway for their continued support in hosting us, their continued generosity and in particular friendly, welcoming and knowledgeable staff both paid and volunteer who all conspire to make these events such a success.