When you have the opportunity to see your own industry being reported by the disreputable rabble of the mainstream press, you begin to understand just what a useless, ignorant and lazy bunch of morons they are.
British Transport Police (BTP) said the men were wearing ear defenders and may not have heard the train coming. A third person was treated for shock at the scene but was uninjured.
Two rail workers who died after being hit by a passenger train were wearing ear defenders and may not have heard it coming, police say.
Two railway workers who died when they were struck by a passenger train in south Wales were wearing ear defenders and could not hear it approaching, British Transport Police said.
If these useless lazy pricks had actually done a bit of fact checking instead of quoting verbatim from someone who clearly doesn’t (but should, being BTP) know better, they would realise that the wearing of ear defenders is an irrelevance. There is no safe system in use on our network that relies on workers hearing a train approaching. This is because you can’t.
One of the first things we teach new rail workers is that you do not rely on hearing trains because they are remarkably quiet. If you are working open lines with trains running normally, you have to be in a position of safety for at least ten seconds before the train arrives – and the safe system needs to allow time for you to get there. You will hear a train when it’s about three seconds away – regardless of the type of train. Hence, we do not listen for the approach of trains, because by the time you do hear it, it’s too late.
This is simple stuff and easily found out. Yet these fake news outlets all went with the easy quote rather than do a fact check and avoid printing utter bollocks.
So, what we have here is reporting that is factually inaccurate. So no news there, then. Even that twat Gorge Monbiot is onto it.
The old threat has not abated – it has intensified. If a newspaper is owned by a billionaire, be suspicious of every word you read in it. Check its sources, question its claims. And withhold your support from any party that allows itself to be bullied or – worse – guided by their agenda. Stand in solidarity with those who resist it.
Of course, this being Moonbat, he is only half right, for it’s got bugger all to do with billionaires as the Guardian, the very organ he writes for, is also guilty of blatant falsehoods that peddle a partisan message. But, the general point stands here – never trust a word they say. Always do your own fact checking. The media – all of them – are liars, charlatans and frauds. Nothing they say can be taken as truthful and honest.
As for the deaths in South Wales, we have to wait and see what it was that went horribly wrong. If they were working open lines, they would have been using either an automatic warning system with vibrating harnesses to alert them of approaching trains or a touch lookout. If they had one or more lines blocked, then it would seem that they may have strayed onto open lines, possibly believing them blocked. Only an inquiry will tell us what happened and I have no desire to prejudge that. But it had fuck all to do with them wearing ear defenders and not being able to hear the train coming, just as Ladbroke Grove was not caused by the sighting of SN109, despite the media peddling that myth at the time.
“just as Ladbroke Grove was not caused by the sighting of SN109”
That’s an eye-opener and the first time I’ve heard different, but I’d trust you to know rather more reliably. Care to expand? I’d be fascinated to hear more.
The driver had not been adequately trained and assessed in the route in and out of Paddington. Nor had he been adequately briefed on issues relating to this particular signal. Thames Trains were using outdated training and assessment and there was generally poor quality control over the process.
The inquiry deduced that he may have seen the yellow aspects of SN109 reflecting back and took this as a proceed aspect. However, this is supposition and cannot be verified. What we do know from the on-board data is that he had failed to respond to two previous signals – a double yellow and a yellow. On first seeing the double yellow he should have been braking. By the time he reached SN109 he should have been travelling slowly enough to stop, having expected to see a red aspect. He passed it at around 50mph. The sighting in this instance was clearly irrelevant.
Yes, signal sighting was a problem at that time as the layout at Paddington was becoming crowded with overhead gantries and there had been previous SPADs at SN109. But the underlying cause of this one was human factors.
Great post! But…
Everybody that reads this will know all that.
We know that most everything posted in the MSM is either a lie of hopelessly biased towards their own agenda.
It was second-hand smoke that did it for me. I realised it was bollox and a little research proved that and introduced me to a whole world of knowledge and knowledgeable bloggers like yourself.
But how do we get others to read this stuff…? I’ve just posted a link to Guido in a thread about Brexit to a forum here in Cyprus. I know it is hopeless and they will just trash Guido (ignoring the facts in the post).
I’m guessing that anybody that reads your blog is intelligent and aware enough to realise (without any knowledge of the railways whatsoever) to realise that railway workers don’t jump out of the way when they hear a train coming – it is just common sense!
But people believe this shite!
My daughter who has a PhD in a STEM subject takes all the MSM stuff on board…
How do we beat the MSM…?
I think, slowly, that we are. That’s why the push-back and the shrill cries about fake news. From the very pedlars of the stuff.
I discovered this myself while working around the back of a factory that had a railway line close by. I nearly jumped out of my skin when a high speed train went past and the thing that struck me was that you couldn’t hear it approaching at all.
Now imagine standing on the ballast a couple of metres from the track.
If the trains are quiet, then why the need for ear defenders in the first place? Is it because the equipment they use is very noisy?
Yes. They were probably using grinding equipment or kangos.
It was actually quite amusing reading Monbiot’s rants. All that happened was that he wrote a report of pretentious bollocks which the current Labour hierarchy were happy to drink down in one, but everyone else called out as the piece of communist bullshit it is.
And poor little diddums had his feelings hurt because most commentators don’t regard taking everyone’s almost entire wealth off them when they die so Guvment can spend it as a great idea.
Ah, Michael Crichton’s good old Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.
Not really. I have taken their pronouncements with a pinch of salt for a long time. I will always cross check their stories with others and where possible seek out the original source. It’s precisely because I noted their inaccuracies at about the time of Ladbroke Grove, that I realised what ignorant cretins they really are and over time have assumed that if they are wrong about this, the likelihood is they are wrong about everything else.