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Has time come for return of the night watchmen?

For the G-WR, it is particulary heartbreaking as the line is still struggling to raise the money to pay for the repair of two landslips, but the ever-present threat of low-life thieves aiming at the ‘soft targets’ presented by many heritage railways is one that is becoming all too common.

Several railways have installed closed-circuit TV cameras in a bid to thwart the intruders, but to cover every angle of an often sprawling yard is virtually impossible with the limited finances available to most steam lines and it is therefore possible for the burglars to dodge them, especially if they’ve done their homework by ‘casing the joint’ beforehand. Likewise, fences can be cut through with relative impunity by determined criminals.

All this has made me wonder whether the time has now come for railways to seriously consider the employment of ‘night watchmen’. When I was a kid, no self-respecting factory or industrial site would close for the night without leaving a watchman or an alsatian guard-dog on the premises. Of course, in the crazy era we now live in, burglars have rights over their victims so the guard would have to be careful about being pro-active, but his very presence alone could prove a deterrent.

Too expensive to employ? Well, you could probably hire two or three for a year for the £60,000 the G-WR has just lost, so it would seem false economy not to.

Alternatively, why not see if your railway’s volunteer force would be prepared to start a rota in which they opt to spend one night a month on the premises to deter anyone from breaking in? Many volunteers already spend the night in old sleeping cars, so the only difference is that they would need to stay awake for the night in illuminated rooms. The police might say it would be risky for anyone to do this alone, but a group of two or three volunteers in well-lit premises would provide strength in numbers. Is any railway already undertaking such a scheme? If so, let me know whether it’s a success. If not, is there a reason why it cannot be done?

MANY thanks to all those of you who emailed or texted me with appreciative comments after my guest appearance on BBC2’s hilarious Top Gear show on July 17. I had no idea so many of you were ‘petrol head’ fans!

I was on holiday abroad at the time, so it was a strange feeling receiving the messages but not knowing quite how the programme had turned out until I got home. Although a bit miffed that they cut out the part mentioning Britain’s best-selling railway title (after all, wasn’t that why they’d invited me to be a judge?), I was pleased for my Mortons colleague Murray Brown, whose Rail Express title was mentioned four or five times. Mind you, the price for such publicity was to be showered by flying effluent from a toilet bolted to the back of a train (even if it was in reality gravy mixed with water),  so I think on balance I got the best of the deal!

The show’s ending – in which a speeding train hauled by ‘Peak’ class diesel smashes into a caravan lying across the tracks – was astonishing and reminded me of the time in 1984 when another ‘Peak’ was driven into a nuclear flask. What with that and a train merrily trundling along with one of its ‘carriages’ on fire, it all seemed more like Titfield Thunderbolt than Top Gear. Thank God it’s Philip Hammond who’s running the country’s railways and not Richard Hammond and his madcap mates!

Nick Pigott
Editor