Train drivers’ racket exposed after crash

Press, 21 January 1982, Page 6

Train drivers’ racket exposed after crash

NZPA London Charges of “featherbedding” levelled against British Rail took on a new meaning yesterday. A train driver who signed on for a night shift was said to have gone straight home to bed.

The case came to light when the train which he should have been on as assistant engine-driver crashed at East Croydon station in South London.

The driver, Steven Walton, aged 28, was trapped in the wreckage for seven hours and was released only after doctors amputated a leg.

His assistant, Nicholas Rolls, aged 22, was missing. Railway workers claimed it was a regular practice for workers to clock on for a shift then go home instead.

British Rail denied it, but an employee at one depot was quoted as saying: “This has been operating quite successfully until now. “If two qualified drivers arrived for duty to operate a train together, then they would toss a coin to see who would take the night off instead.

“Both men would have booked on in the normal Way, then one of them would slope off home and no-one would be the wiser.”

Mr Roils married only two months ago. “Steve must have given him the nod and said, ‘Go home to the missus’,” another worker said.

A spokesmen for the drivers’ union, the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen, said they knew nothing about such a practice.

(A.S.L.E.F. is embroiled in a series of strikes in which the issues include efficiency and productivity. They began another 48-hour strike yesterday paralysing the railways for the fourth day in a week.) Mr Rolls, meanwhile, was questioned by senior rail officials.

Later, a spokesman for British Rail said he had also been seen by a medical officer and was “not fit at present for footplate duty.” He is expected to appear before a full inquiry later. Rescue workers at the

crash had spent some time cutting through the wreckage looking for him. A policemen at the scene said: “We were very angry. W'e spent a great deal of time in difficult circumstances trying to ascertain exactly where the second man was.

“It was only when an officer called at his home and found that he was in bed asleep that we realised we had been wasting our time.”

Assistant drivers are usually employed, under union agreement, only where a driver’s duty is of excessive duration, mileage, or in special circumstances — as when a solo locomotive is being ferried with no waggons or guards.

“Part of the assistant driver’s duties is looking out for signals,” said British Rail.

The train that crashed into a parcels van at East Croydon was on maintenance duty, which often involved a driver in long hours accompanying a Work gang. A hospital report said Mr Walton’s condition was “still serious, but stable.”