Heritage railway fined £40k over painter's fall

A heritage railway has apologised after a locomotive painter suffered serious injuries when he fell from the roof of a carriage.

The Severn Valley Railway was fined £40,000 and £48,000 costs at Kidderminster Magistrates' Court after admitting safety offences.

The worker, who was alone and not wearing a safety harness, broke six bones in their lower back and suffered neck injuries in the 13ft (4 metre) fall in February 2021, said the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) which prosecuted.

The railway, which runs trains between Kidderminster and Bridgnorth, apologised to the man and his family and said it had brought in a "raft of measures" since.

The ORR said the railway had pleaded guilty to offences under Work at Height Regulations 2005.

The worker was repainting a Mark 1 carriage at the railway's Bridgnorth Locomotive Works on 22 February when he fell, hitting a metal storage carriage before landing on a concrete floor, the industry regulator added.

The court found the defendant “fell woefully below the standards expected," it said.

ORR's investigation found Severn Valley Railway (SVR) had failed to put in place recognised standards of protection when working at height.

Safe systems of work, appropriate instruction, planning and supervision were also not present during the repainting, it said.

"This is yet another avoidable working-at-height incident at a heritage railway which resulted in very serious injuries. My thoughts are with the individual concerned," said Richard Hines, HM chief inspector of railways.

He added inspectors recently met with heritage operators across the sector to reinforce expectations around safety for such maintenance tasks "because, sadly, these types of incidents remain too common".

SVR said after the case it fully acknowledged there were shortcomings in its safety management when the accident happened.

"Now proceedings have been completed, we have the first opportunity to express publicly to the person affected and their family how sorry we are that this accident happened," said SVR’s managing director, Jonathan ‘Gus’ Dunster in a statement.

"In the three-and-a-half years since the incident happened, we have put in place a raft of measures to try and prevent anything like this happening again."

He said an established health and safety department at SVR was driving safety improvements across the railway.

Its "continual improvement process" included regular reviews of internal policies and procedures and a "significantly greater level of training and supervision for our paid staff and volunteers".

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