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Is it a case of ‘back to the future’ with McNulty?

Parts of it are infuriatingly non-specific, as many official documents produced by outsiders ‘parachuted’ into unfamiliar fields often are (Sir Roy is a former head of the Civil Aviation Authority), but among the report’s three hundred-odd pages is support for the regionalisation of the railways and a recommendation to the Government that vertical integration be introduced in two or three regions on a trial basis.

So it seems as though ex-Prime Minister John Major might yet see the geographically-based divisions he favoured back in 1992, even though it was supposed to be an EU directive that track and trains be separated.

The enthusiast in me would be fascinated to see a future bearing some of the hallmarks of the pre-Grouping era, but I feel the network has seen enough upheaval in recent years, that it’s working reasonably well at the moment and that it should be left alone for a while to enjoy the fruits of stability and longer franchises. 

EVERY time I’m on a platform and notice weeds or litter on the track, I find myself thinking that if I were the station manager, I would simply wait until the trains had finished running one evening and then go along with a black bin bag and clean it all up.

Today’s rules would prevent me from doing so, of course – but if, God forbid, I ever saw something on the track that was a clear hazard to trains, I’d like to think I would act quickly to move it out of the way. That’s what most decent, conscientious folk would do when faced with a threat to public safety – and it’s what Ian Faletto, the station manager at Lymington Town, did when he discovered one morning that vandals had thrown a supermarket trolley onto the rails.

But in the ‘Bizarro’ world’ that Britain sometimes seems to have become, Mr Faletto was sacked for his troubles by South West Trains. His crime? Transgressing health & safety regulations.

I can see both sides to this dispute as the rules have to be strictly enforced, especially on third-rail lines, and on the face of it, this was a serious breach. But, as our news report explains, no train was imminent and Mr Faletto apparently believed the power had been switched off. By all accounts, he was a long-serving, passionate and popular employee who seems to have been acting in the public interest – so to deprive him of his living seems an astonishingly harsh course of action. Surely a bit of common sense and a written warning would have sufficed? 

Presumably the reasons behind SWT’s tough stance will be revealed if the case goes to a tribunal hearing, but on a general point of principle, when ‘too safe’ starts to mean ‘un-safe’, the lunatics are alarmingly close to taking over the asylum.

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