§ 5.29 p.m.
§ LORD SOMERS rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what action they propose to take to urge the British Transport Commission to carry cut better maintenance of the permanent way on British Railways, especially in tunnels. The noble Lord said: My Lords, in asking Her Majesty's Government the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper, I want to make it clear that I do so only for information, because I am sure that both they and the Ministry of Transport feel as much as I do that it is a very urgent matter. The rise in the number of railway accidents during the past ten years or so has been colossal, when we consider what our 1034 record was in pre-war clays. I do not think that many of them are doubtful in origin, but certainly there have been some which have not been explained. It may well be that this is due to the fact that the supervision of the permanent way is not really adequate at the present day. travel a good deal by rail and often I have noticed stretches of line where the keys have fallen out of the chairs. As a passing thought, I wonder whether the present day form of key, a metal spring key, is as satisfactory as the old-fashioned wooden ones, since often I have seen stretches of line where, if the keys have not fallen out. they are well on the way to doing so. There are many other stretches of line, not perhaps on the main lines, but on the branch lines—and these, after all, are equally important—where one sees ancient sleepers, which have obviously been asleep for many years without having been woken up, and points which show that the rails are badly worn. Altogether, I feel that the permanent way, particularly on branch lines, is not in a good state.
§ The chief example was the case of a mishap in the Watford. tunnel on:February 3, about which your Lordships probably read. The "up" Royal Scot was passing through the Watford tunnel, not at a high speed, and the last three coaches were derailed. Fortunately, as the train was going fairly slowly, the rate of casualties was not high, and only nine passengers were injured. However, an examination of the permanent way afterwards showed that nineteen rails were cracked; and, in the opinion of the experts, these rails were not cracked as a result of the accident but were cracked before. I should have thought that this was fairly obvious, because a derailment of that kind would not tend to crack the rails so much as to bend them. The inspector for the permanent way of that district said that it was a renowned stretch of line for being in a bad state. Apparently, a six-monthly inspection of the permanent way had been ordered, but the inspector said that through lack of manpower, he had been unable to carry it out. He said that even he, an in spector, had been working on the line, which was hardly his work.
§ This seems to me to be a most unsatisfactory state of affairs. No doubt n is due to the fact that the permanent way 1035 gang workers are underpaid, and it is difficult for the Railway Executive to find men who can take on this work. But surely this is an urgent enough matter for something to be done. One has to consider, also, the tunnel structure. Many of these tunnels have not been reconstructed or reconditioned for a great many years. If. by any chance, a sudden subsidence of the earth, or anything like that, occurred, no train could be stopped until an accident had happened; nobody would know about it, because the supervision of the line is not taking place. We have heard from the Ministry of Transport report that a certain mileage of track has been renewed, but naturally they would concentrate on the main lines, and I feel that the less important lines have been grossly neglected. As rail traffic is becoming a good deal heavier—not in the sense of more trains per minute, but in the sense that the trains themselves are a good deal heavier— and the rolling stock itself is not maintained in an efficient way, which causes increased wear and tear on the rails, something should definitely be done about this. Therefore, I ask Her Majesty's Government what they propose to do about it.
§ 5.35 p.m.
LORD HAWKEMy Loins, the noble Lord has made a number of quite sweeping comments about the conduct of our railways; indeed, the way he has put his Question might raise some doubts in the mind of the travelling public as to the general safety of travel on British Railways. I therefore wish to state categorically that, in the opinion of Her Majesty's Government, as advised by their technical advisers, there is no ground whatsoever for any such doubt. They are aware that British Railway engineers and operators, who have always regarded safety as their first aim, still continue to do so, and are applying all their unrivalled experience, married to the latest moves of science, to the end of safety.
Having said that, let me return to the precise subject of the Question. It is common ground that the end of the war found our railways very run down. The rehabilitation required a great deal of material—and that at a time when much of the world was looking to us for exports of railway material to rehabilitate their 1036 own railways. Not only did we need the foreign exchange, but the crops and the materials of the world could not move without those railway exports. In the result, there was not enough steel to go round, and everyone went short. However, we did give priority to our permanent way. Our railways have faced, and are still facing, great difficulties, but they are overcoming them. At one time, the difficulty was materials. Now they can get as many rails as they can put in the track, but the difficulty is labour. One cannot ignore the fact that the railway service in many grades is not so attractive as it used to be, and service in the permanent way gangs does not attract as many as one would like. The full complement is not there, and the turnover of labour is too heavy. But our engineers are realists, and they know they have got to find methods of maintaining our permanent way, in spite of a shortage of labour.
There are many methods by which this is being done. More use is being made of flying gangs; heavier flat-bottomed rails are replacing the bullhead rail—and that means less maintenance: re-laying, is to a greater extent now being done by prefabricating sections in the workshops and then placing them in the track by means of cranes; more use is being made of outside contractors; maintenance machinery is being introduced; the drainage is being improved, and various steps of that kind are being taken. All this means that a labour force, inadequate by the old standards is, in practice, managing to do the job. But that does not mean that there are not black spots where the position is most difficult. So much for the numbers.
When it comes to quality, the position is more difficult, and a tremendous strain is placed on all the more responsible men, from the ganger up to the district engineer. However, the position is being tackled. There are competitions between gangs for the best-kept sections of lines. There are instruction classes, evening classes, and such like. But the ultimate quality of the track depends upon the experience and zeal of the man in charge of the gang in patrolling his line every day and spotting the faults. He is not now so dependent as he used to be on the size of his gang, for the flying gang is now available for the bigger jobs. To 1037 measure the quality of the track one cannot have a better yardstick than the overall speed limit and the number of local and temporary speed restrictions. British engineers have been bred in a school of caution, and I believe that their judgment in fixing limits is likely to be what it always has been; that is, cautious. I should explain to your Lordships the difference between a speed limit and a speed restriction. The speed limit is the more permanent thing, operating perhaps over the whole of the line, whereas the speed restriction is something temporary over a shorter distance, imposed for some special purpose. We are not quite back to the prewar speed limits, but much of the mainline running track is now back to a 90 m.p.h. speed limit, and other lengths will be rising from 70 m.p.h. to 90 m.p.h. before very long. As for local speed restrictions, those imposed on account of track condition have dropped in six years from 85 to less than 20. I think your Lordships will agree that this is a sound indication of progress, and we ought to be grateful to the men with responsibility for this state of affairs, from the ganger up to the chief engineer, who have made it possible.
One can have the best track in the world, but some small defect overlooked. or some act of carelessness, may mean an accident; and that is the continual anxiety of all those who are in authority. With more inexperienced labour on the line, there is a heavy burden on all those who are responsible for supervision. One does not hear much about the permanent way unless there is an accident. Ergines and trains take the glamour, and the permanent way tends to be taken for granted. Now what happens if there is an accident? A long-established and rigorous process is immediately set on foot. All accidents to passenger trains, all accidents to goods trains affecting a passenger line, together with various specified mechanical faults, including broken rails, have to be reported to the Minister. Every report is scrutinised by one of his inspecting officers, and, if necessary, further facts are elicited. An inquiry is almost always ordered by the Minister when a passenger has been killed, when the accident is serious, where there are lessons to be drawn, or where the causes are obscure. The Minister's inspecting officers are, of course, quite independent of the British Transport Commission, and they stand in the same relation to the British Trans- 1038 port Commission as they stood to the old railway companies. The recommendations of the inspecting officers to the railways are not legally binding on the railways but are almost invariably adopted.
It is a little difficult to pick out accidents that were caused purely by permanent way defects—and this afternoon it is the permanent way about which we are talking. I have found it possible to do so by taking cases where there was an inquiry into a derailment. Of course, it is possible for there to be other sorts of permanent way accidents, but derailment would be the normal consequence. There are other accidents, but they are mostly trivial into which there is no inquiry. Therefore, the category of inquiry and derailment separates off the accidents of consequence. From 1930 to 1939 there were thirteen cases of derailment caused by permanent way defects into which an inquiry was held, while after the war there were thirteen cases, in the first five years, and five cases in the most recent three and a quarter years. When one is dealing with such spasmodic cases, it is difficult to speak of improvement or the reverse, but these figures seem to suggest some decline in track maintenance immediately after the war, with some subsequent improvement. At any rate, it is clear that the actual numbers of accidents in these two categories combined are not large.
At this point I would comment on one or two remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Somers. He has really suggested that the track is in a very bad state. If he will pardon my saying so, that is not correct. Undoubtedly on some branch lines he will find some rather old rails and points, and so on, but it is not correct or fair to say that on lines on which speeds of any consequence are run the rails, sleepers or points are not in good order. The noble Lord raised the point of spring keys. That is rather a technical point, and my technical advisers tell me that in certain cases they are better than wooden keys; and, of course, in the new standard flat-bottom track they do not exist at all, so that gradually keys will be eliminated altogether.
The noble Lord also raised the question of tunnels. I will start by saying that the maintenance to the permanent way in tunnels has always been recognised as presenting special problems 1039 for which special rules apply. But it would be entirely wrong to let the general public think that the permanent way in tunnels is less safe than in the open. I presume that the noble Lord's anxiety was almost entirely founded on the Watford tunnel. His facts were not quite correct there. Two coaches of the "up" Royal Scot became derailed and detached, with the unfortunate result that fifteen persons were injured—rather more than the noble Lord said. In the subsequent inquiry it was reported that a broken rail was the cause, and that further cracked rails had been found since the accident. I have walked through the tunnel and had the accident explained to me. I am not going to say any more about it this evening, because the inspector's report has not yet been published. The matter is sub judice, and I feel that it would be wrong for a Government spokesman to comment on it at this stage. I will say, however, that immediately following the accident the word went round the railways of Britain from the Transport Commission, "Look to your tunnels," and there has been a most careful checking up and a revision of the rules all over the country for the checking up of the maintenance of the tracks in the tunnels. Your Lordships may ask whether the permanent way in tunnels often causes accidents. My advisers have gone back to 1930, and they have found only one inquiry into an accident in a tunnel caused by the permanent way. before the Watford one, and that was in 1948, somewhere between Barnet and Potter's Bar. One can say, then. that it is quite clear that these cases are very infrequent—although, of course, that does not satisfy the engineer, because he regards every single accident as a reproach.
The problem of defective rails has had some publicity. Therefore. I should like to say something about it. We have over 7 million rails in our running lines and, of these, about 1,000 are found to be defective every year. About one third of this 1,000 are broken. These figures are very much better per mile than those in the United States, and are much better than those in many countries on the Continent of Europe. A broken rail sounds alarming but, in practice, it is soon found and removed;in any case, being firmly held by chairs, spikes and 1040 fish plates, it is very rare indeed in this country for it to cause an accident. My advisers have gone back to 1930, and until the Watford tunnel case this year they can find no case of an inquiry held into a derailment caused by a broken rail. As regards rails which have cracks but which are not broken, a few hundreds are found and removed every year, but they do not constitute any appreciable danger to traffic. If left in the track and unfound, they would eventually, after a time, probably develop into broken rails; but it is a matter of speculation as to how long that would be. So long as there are railways, there will always be a few cracked and broken rails. The great thing is to find them quickly and have them out of the track. Their detection is more difficult in tunnels than in the open; hence there are specially rigorous rules for opening up and examining the track in tunnels. But, in addition, the railways are now following the London Transport Railways in providing ultrasonic rail flaw detectors especially intended for use in tunnels and difficult places. I should like to emphasise here that every main line in the country is patrolled and inspected every day.
The noble Lord made some rather startling statements which seemed to suggest that there was danger in tunnels from subsidence, and so on. The Question on the Paper is entirely about the permanent way. If he likes to put down a Question or a Motion about railway safety in other directions, I, or one of my colleagues, will be only too delighted to answer him; but this evening I am not prepared to embark on a discussion of earthworks and the roof safety of tunnels. My noble friend the Minister is satisfied that the tunnels are as safe as any other part of the track in this country. Finally, I would say that the responsibility for the maintenance of the permanent way, and the safe operation of the railways, is clearly placed on the Transport Commission by the Transport Act, 1947. The Minister would intervene only if he thought that the Transport Commission were failing in their duty and that a question of major policy was at stake. I think I have said enough to show that the Minister, as advised by his technical advisers, considers that there is no need to remind the Commission of their duties in respect of the permanent way. In his opinion, they have been, and are, constantly striving 1041 for the improvement of the permanent way, and he considers that their efforts are showing results. The keynote of the operation of our railways has always been safety, and the quality of the track has always dictated speed limits. So long as British engineers are in charge, we can be assured that a cautious policy will always prevail in fixing these speed limits. In fact, the short answer to the noble Lord's Question is that the Minister sees no reason to intervene.