Tales of Incompetence

Let's say you own a railway network, and the trains that run on it. You decide to sell it to make some money. You sell the track to one company, and you sell the trains to lots of different companies to run their own services. The company that takes over the tracks sub-contracts the maintenance of those tracks to a third party. So far so governmental.

A few years later there is a derailment. An inquiry finds that some bolts were left by the side of the points. The inquiry shows that the maintenance company is not totally responsible for the crash because they were following maintenance procedures that were put into place before they were given the contract.

I'm sorry? Did I miss something here? Did it not occur to anyone to check what the procedures were, and that everyone understood the procedures completely. According to the BBC News website, "The Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) said since the type of points was introduced in the 1980s, their maintenance was "not fully understood". " How can anyone introduce something onto a national rail network, and expect trains weighing several tons and travelling at high speeds, carring thousands of passengers per day, and not "fully understand" how to maintain it? This is just absolutely mind-boggling. Did they not think to find out how to maintain the points? Did it not occur to them to replace the points with something they could maintain? Or to find out who commissioned that type of installation in the first place and ask them how to maintain it? Did the bolts work their way loose or did the engineer(s) simply forget to replace them? Or did they finish the job, look down, and see a couple of nuts and bolts seemingly spare and think "ah fuck it. I've had enough for the day. Who's up for a pint?"

Someone somewhere is responsible for this. It may be the engineer who last maintained that set of points. It may be the foreman, or the site supervisor, or the area manager, or even the chairman of the board. Seven people lost their lives in that derailment, and a report stating that no "conclusive evidence of any one cause" is to blame for the crash is totally unacceptable. I find it unacceptable, I daren't even think what the families of the deceased must be thinking. No-one has categorically stated that it will never happen again. I get the impression they're saying it's "just one of those things" and "we're working on tightening our procedures". They should have started by tightening the nuts and bolts.