Her Majesty's Railway Inspectorate
Encyclopedia
Established in 1840, HM Railway Inspectorate (HMRI: Her Majesty
's Railway Inspectorate) was the British
organisation responsible for overseeing safety
on Britain's railways and tramway
s. Previously a separate non-departmental public body
it was, from 1990 to April 2006, part of the Health and Safety Executive
, then was transferred to the Office of Rail Regulation
and finally ceased to exist in May 2009 when it was renamed the Safety Directorate.
, when Inspecting Officers of Railways were first appointed by the Board of Trade
(BoT). Britain's railways at that time were large monopolistic
private companies, so the BoT was concerned with competition
and the safety of the public. The Railway Inspectorate was formed to investigate accidents reported by the companies to the Board of Trade, and report their findings to Parliament
. They were also tasked with inspecting new lines, and commenting on their suitability for carrying passenger traffic. Their reports were published and so made available to everyone. Their first investigation concerned the derailment of a train caused by the fall of a large casting from a wagon on a passenger train. The Howden rail crash
on 7 August 1840 killed four passengers. Other important investigations included the public inquiries into the Shipton-on-Cherwell train crash
in 1874, and the Tay rail bridge
disaster of 1879. The then Chief Inspector, William Yolland
chaired the first, and was a member of the board in the second.
The Chief Inspecting Officer from 1916 to 1929 was Colonel John Wallace Pringle
, responsible for investigating many accidents. It was during his tenure, in 1919, that the office became part of the newly created Ministry of Transport.
Until the late 1960s HMRI's Inspecting Officers were all recruited from the Corps of Royal Engineers
; as the Corps ran the UK
's military
railway system and they would be very familiar with the Railway Rule Book. The last Chief Inspecting Officer, Major Rose, with a Royal Engineers back ground, retired in 1988 and he was replaced by an appointee from the Health and Safety Executive
(HSE). Since then, Inspecting Officers have been recruited from the HSE or as mid-career
railway employees
from the former British Rail
.
s; and the two activities were carried out by separate parts of the HMRI.
Accident investigations have tended to be held in public
, and the findings were published
as HMRI Railway Accident Reports. These investigations were inquisitorial
, in that their aim was to determine the causes behind the accident and to make recommendation
s to avoid re-occurrence. The reports were widely circulated around the railway industry, and among the travelling public.
Many of their reports are available as facsimiles of the originals at the railways archive.
and remained so until 1990, when it was transferred to the Health and Safety Executive
(HSE). About this time HMRI expanded its scope and recruited additional staff, Railway Employment Officers. It was their job to monitor the workplace safety
and health of railway employees.
After the move to the HSE, (newsworthy) train crash investigations tended to be held as public inquiries
presided over by a High Court Judge
; and the findings published
. These inquiries tended to be more adversarial
; with the aim of identifying the guilty parties. In some cases criminal
prosecution of these parties has occurred in parallel with the public inquiry, delaying the Inquiry until the criminal prosecutions have been completed.
The transfer to the HSE was unpopular with many in the industry, and as part of its rail review in 2004 the government announced that the Railway Inspectorate would be transferred from the HSE to merge with the Office of Rail Regulation
. The transfer took place on 2 April 2006.
The Inspectorate oversaw both operational safety and the initial integrity of new and modified works. As a result of the legislative change, which transferred them to the Office of Rail Regulation, the scope of HMRI enforcement no longer covered guided bus, trolleybus and most cable-hauled transport systems. In May 2009 the legal entity known as "HM Railway Inspectorate" ceased to exist when a single rail regulatory body covering both safety and economic issues, the Safety Directorate, was created, but the 180 individual inspectors will continue to be known as Her Majesty's Railway Inspectors.
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...
's Railway Inspectorate) was the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
organisation responsible for overseeing safety
Safety
Safety is the state of being "safe" , the condition of being protected against physical, social, spiritual, financial, political, emotional, occupational, psychological, educational or other types or consequences of failure, damage, error, accidents, harm or any other event which could be...
on Britain's railways and tramway
Light rail
Light rail or light rail transit is a form of urban rail public transportation that generally has a lower capacity and lower speed than heavy rail and metro systems, but higher capacity and higher speed than traditional street-running tram systems...
s. Previously a separate non-departmental public body
Non-departmental public body
In the United Kingdom, a non-departmental public body —often referred to as a quango—is a classification applied by the Cabinet Office, Treasury, Scottish Government and Northern Ireland Executive to certain types of public bodies...
it was, from 1990 to April 2006, part of the Health and Safety Executive
Health and Safety Executive
The Health and Safety Executive is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom. It is the body responsible for the encouragement, regulation and enforcement of workplace health, safety and welfare, and for research into occupational risks in England and Wales and Scotland...
, then was transferred to the Office of Rail Regulation
Office of Rail Regulation
The Office of Rail Regulation is a statutory board which is the combined economic and safety regulatory authority for Great Britain's railway network. It was established on 5 July 2004 by the Railways and Transport Safety Act 2003, replacing the Rail Regulator...
and finally ceased to exist in May 2009 when it was renamed the Safety Directorate.
History
The body originated in 1840, as a result of the Railway Regulation Act 1840Railway Regulation Act 1840
The Railway Regulation Act of 1840 brought regulation to the rapidly emerging railway industry in the UK. It was enacted on 10th August 1840 and originally titled An Act for regulating Railways....
, when Inspecting Officers of Railways were first appointed by the Board of Trade
Board of Trade
The Board of Trade is a committee of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom, originating as a committee of inquiry in the 17th century and evolving gradually into a government department with a diverse range of functions...
(BoT). Britain's railways at that time were large monopolistic
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...
private companies, so the BoT was concerned with competition
Competition
Competition is a contest between individuals, groups, animals, etc. for territory, a niche, or a location of resources. It arises whenever two and only two strive for a goal which cannot be shared. Competition occurs naturally between living organisms which co-exist in the same environment. For...
and the safety of the public. The Railway Inspectorate was formed to investigate accidents reported by the companies to the Board of Trade, and report their findings to Parliament
Parliament
A parliament is a legislature, especially in those countries whose system of government is based on the Westminster system modeled after that of the United Kingdom. The name is derived from the French , the action of parler : a parlement is a discussion. The term came to mean a meeting at which...
. They were also tasked with inspecting new lines, and commenting on their suitability for carrying passenger traffic. Their reports were published and so made available to everyone. Their first investigation concerned the derailment of a train caused by the fall of a large casting from a wagon on a passenger train. The Howden rail crash
Howden rail crash
The Howden rail accident in Yorkshire on 7 August 1840 killed 4 passengers. It occurred when a large cast-iron casting fell from a wagon and derailed the following carriages. It happened on the Hull and Selby Railway as the train was travelling from Leeds to Hull. The crash was one of the first...
on 7 August 1840 killed four passengers. Other important investigations included the public inquiries into the Shipton-on-Cherwell train crash
Shipton-on-Cherwell train crash
The Shipton-on-Cherwell train crash was a major disaster which occurred on the Great Western Railway. It involved the derailment of a long passenger train at Shipton-on-Cherwell near Kidlington, Oxfordshire, England, on Christmas Eve, 24 December 1874, and was one of the worst ever disasters on...
in 1874, and the Tay rail bridge
Tay Rail Bridge
The Tay Bridge is a railway bridge approximately two and a quarter miles long that spans the Firth of Tay in Scotland, between the city of Dundee and the suburb of Wormit in Fife ....
disaster of 1879. The then Chief Inspector, William Yolland
William Yolland
William Yolland CB, FRS was an English military surveyor, astronomer and engineer, and was Britain’s Chief Inspector of Railways from 1877 until his death...
chaired the first, and was a member of the board in the second.
The Chief Inspecting Officer from 1916 to 1929 was Colonel John Wallace Pringle
John Wallace Pringle
Colonel Sir John Wallace Pringle was Chief Inspecting Officer of the Railways Inspectorate of the Ministry of Transport from 1916 to 1929...
, responsible for investigating many accidents. It was during his tenure, in 1919, that the office became part of the newly created Ministry of Transport.
Until the late 1960s HMRI's Inspecting Officers were all recruited from the Corps of Royal Engineers
Royal Engineers
The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually just called the Royal Engineers , and commonly known as the Sappers, is one of the corps of the British Army....
; as the Corps ran the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
's military
Military
A military is an organization authorized by its greater society to use lethal force, usually including use of weapons, in defending its country by combating actual or perceived threats. The military may have additional functions of use to its greater society, such as advancing a political agenda e.g...
railway system and they would be very familiar with the Railway Rule Book. The last Chief Inspecting Officer, Major Rose, with a Royal Engineers back ground, retired in 1988 and he was replaced by an appointee from the Health and Safety Executive
Health and Safety Executive
The Health and Safety Executive is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom. It is the body responsible for the encouragement, regulation and enforcement of workplace health, safety and welfare, and for research into occupational risks in England and Wales and Scotland...
(HSE). Since then, Inspecting Officers have been recruited from the HSE or as mid-career
Career
Career is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as a person's "course or progress through life ". It is usually considered to pertain to remunerative work ....
railway employees
Employment
Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. An employee may be defined as:- Employee :...
from the former British Rail
British Rail
British Railways , which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was the operator of most of the rail transport in Great Britain between 1948 and 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the "Big Four" British railway companies and lasted until the gradual privatisation of British Rail, in stages...
.
Original twin functions of the HMRI
The function of HMRI was to inspect and approve all new (or modified) railway works and to investigate railway accidentAccident
An accident or mishap is an unforeseen and unplanned event or circumstance, often with lack of intention or necessity. It implies a generally negative outcome which may have been avoided or prevented had circumstances leading up to the accident been recognized, and acted upon, prior to its...
s; and the two activities were carried out by separate parts of the HMRI.
Accident investigations have tended to be held in public
Public
In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individuals, and the public is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the Öffentlichkeit or public sphere. The concept of a public has also been defined in political science,...
, and the findings were published
Publishing
Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...
as HMRI Railway Accident Reports. These investigations were inquisitorial
Inquisitorial system
An inquisitorial system is a legal system where the court or a part of the court is actively involved in investigating the facts of the case, as opposed to an adversarial system where the role of the court is primarily that of an impartial referee between the prosecution and the defense...
, in that their aim was to determine the causes behind the accident and to make recommendation
Recommendation
A recommendation can be:* In technical contexts, a norm or a norm * Recommender systems use Information filtering systems to create computer generated recommendations* European Union recommendation, in international law...
s to avoid re-occurrence. The reports were widely circulated around the railway industry, and among the travelling public.
Many of their reports are available as facsimiles of the originals at the railways archive.
Recent history
The HMRI became part of the Department of TransportDepartment for Transport
In the United Kingdom, the Department for Transport is the government department responsible for the English transport network and a limited number of transport matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland which are not devolved...
and remained so until 1990, when it was transferred to the Health and Safety Executive
Health and Safety Executive
The Health and Safety Executive is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom. It is the body responsible for the encouragement, regulation and enforcement of workplace health, safety and welfare, and for research into occupational risks in England and Wales and Scotland...
(HSE). About this time HMRI expanded its scope and recruited additional staff, Railway Employment Officers. It was their job to monitor the workplace safety
Workplace safety
Workplace safety & health is a category of management responsibility in places of employment.To ensure the safety and health of workers, managers establish a focus on safety that can include elements such as:* management leadership and commitment...
and health of railway employees.
After the move to the HSE, (newsworthy) train crash investigations tended to be held as public inquiries
Public inquiry
A Tribunal of Inquiry is an official review of events or actions ordered by a government body in Common Law countries such as the United Kingdom, Ireland or Canada. Such a public inquiry differs from a Royal Commission in that a public inquiry accepts evidence and conducts its hearings in a more...
presided over by a High Court Judge
Judge
A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as part of a panel of judges. The powers, functions, method of appointment, discipline, and training of judges vary widely across different jurisdictions. The judge is supposed to conduct the trial impartially and in an open...
; and the findings published
Publishing
Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...
. These inquiries tended to be more adversarial
Adversarial system
The adversarial system is a legal system where two advocates represent their parties' positions before an impartial person or group of people, usually a jury or judge, who attempt to determine the truth of the case...
; with the aim of identifying the guilty parties. In some cases criminal
Crime
Crime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction...
prosecution of these parties has occurred in parallel with the public inquiry, delaying the Inquiry until the criminal prosecutions have been completed.
The transfer to the HSE was unpopular with many in the industry, and as part of its rail review in 2004 the government announced that the Railway Inspectorate would be transferred from the HSE to merge with the Office of Rail Regulation
Office of Rail Regulation
The Office of Rail Regulation is a statutory board which is the combined economic and safety regulatory authority for Great Britain's railway network. It was established on 5 July 2004 by the Railways and Transport Safety Act 2003, replacing the Rail Regulator...
. The transfer took place on 2 April 2006.
The Inspectorate oversaw both operational safety and the initial integrity of new and modified works. As a result of the legislative change, which transferred them to the Office of Rail Regulation, the scope of HMRI enforcement no longer covered guided bus, trolleybus and most cable-hauled transport systems. In May 2009 the legal entity known as "HM Railway Inspectorate" ceased to exist when a single rail regulatory body covering both safety and economic issues, the Safety Directorate, was created, but the 180 individual inspectors will continue to be known as Her Majesty's Railway Inspectors.
Further reading
- Hall, Stanley, (1990), Railway Detectives: The 150-year Saga of the Railway Inspectorate. Shepperton: Ian Allen Ltd. ISBN 0-7110-1929-0.
- Hutter, Bridget M., (1997). Compliance: Regulation and Environment. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-826475-5.
- Hutter, Bridget M., (2001). Regulation and Risk: Occupational Health and Safety on the Railways. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-924250-X.
- Rolt, L.T.C., (1955). Red for Danger: A History of Railway Accidents. London: John Lane, The Bodley Head Ltd.
- Lewis, Peter R, (2007) Disaster on the Dee: Robert Stephenson's Nemesis of 1847, Tempus, which describes many key investigations made by the Inspectorate.
- Lewis, Peter R, (2008) Wheels to Disaster: the Oxford train wreck of Christmas Eve, 1874, The History Press, describes the early history of the Inspectorate.
External links
- http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/index.php for copies of many Inspectorate reports