You’re probably familiar with the Jacobite Steam Train, even if you didn’t. The train is featured in the Harry Potter films as the Hogwarts Express, chugging along the curved Glenfinnan Viaduct in the Scottish Highlands.
In recent decades it has become one of Scotland’s most popular tourist attractions, and this week it topped a Virgin Media O2 poll as the best filming location in Britain (out of 2,000 adults surveyed, it came out on top). But its future is now under threat due to concerns surrounding the door locking mechanisms.
Watch an archive film of a commuter train pulling into London Waterloo station with a swinging door and long before the train comes to a stop, half the passengers stride across the platform, apparently desperate not to waste a second getting to work. They could take the risk of jumping from a moving train, because the carriage doors would then be opened by the passengers themselves.
This involved the once ubiquitous Mark 1 carriage, which was introduced in 1951. However, since then, several accident reports involving them have concluded that the design is not inherently unsafe.
In the 1990s, British Rail began introducing a system of centrally controlled door locking to prevent potentially risky behavior. Following privatisation, the government ordered an investigation by the Health and Safety Executive into the continued use of such vehicles in frontline service and pressed for their replacement by rolling stock leasing companies.
This resulted in regulations introduced in 1999 to resolve the problem entirely, ordering its replacement by 2003 unless certain changes were made to expand its permitted uses. The regulations applied to railways where speeds exceed 40 km/h, excluding heritage railways, but mainly affected the small number of charter and tour operators who favored the use of Mark 1 stock and who never used the were the main target of the regulations.
One of the conditions for its continued use for rail travel was that stewards would be responsible for secondary door locks, fitted to the four doors of each coach. The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) first granted exemptions in 2003 for a period of ten years, provided that evidence of a coach’s structural soundness had been approved and satisfactory steward arrangements had been made. These exemptions were extended for another ten years in 2013. Implicit in these extensions was that, unless circumstances changed significantly, similar waivers could be expected in the future.
In 2021, ORR updated the guidelines to require all inventory operating on the mainline after March 31, 2023 to have center door locks. Only in exceptional circumstances could further exemptions be granted. Saphos Trains has fitted central locks to its single air-braked set for 12 carriages, and Vintage Trains has agreed a timetable with ORR to suit their comparable number of vehicles. However, West Coast Railways (WCR) has taken ORR to court, under judicial review of the process underlying the diktat. A three-month exemption has been granted until the ruling is made (probably not before February 2024).
Britain’s largest charter operator, West Coast Railways (WCR), operates around 600 charter trains a year with 120 carriages and estimates that incorporating central locking into the fleet would cost around £7 million, making the business unviable. The high costs of installing central door locks are partly because the carriages of the steam era are vacuum braked and central door locks require air supply – modern trains are air braked.
As commercial director James Shuttleworth said: “[though] we are pleased that the ORR has granted us another exemption…this remains a precarious position we find ourselves in…’.
Sharing his concern are the many small businesses that have come to rely on the West Coast flagship Jacobite Steam Train to lure people to Fort William and Mallaig, in Scotland’s Western Highlands. During the 2023 season the train carried 110,000 passengers, helped in no small part by the publicity given to the scenic line through its use in Harry Potter films. It is estimated that The Jacobite’s total contribution to the British tourism industry as a whole is in excess of £25 million.
As Bill Reeve, Director of Rail at Transport Scotland, said: “We are strongly in favor of operating charter trains in Scotland. Trains such as the Jacobite make a strong contribution to the economics of the routes they serve. People come to Scotland specifically to travel on these types of trains and that generates good business for hotels and catering establishments.
“Similarly, safe operation is an absolute requirement for every operator of Scotland’s railways and this is rightly the responsibility of the rail industry’s independent safety regulator, ORR.”
WCR states that ORR has not conducted a risk assessment to establish a proportionate and realistic position. There have been no accidents or casualties under the exemptions granted since 2003, and in 2014 the ORR itself proposed repealing the regulations, saying the risk associated with hinged doors on commuter trains in the Southeast had been removed by the introduction of new trains. No parliamentary time was found for its repeal, but implicit in the proposal was an acceptance that the objectives of the 1999 Regulations had been met and that they did not need to be applied to the few charter operations.
The majestic sight of a fast steam locomotive on the main line could be in jeopardy if the judicial review goes against WCR’s case. For the country that holds the world speed record for steam locomotives, with Mallard’s speed of 200 km/h on Stoke Bank between Grantham and Peterborough in 1938, it would be a sad day if future generations only had steam locomotives at 40 km/h would be seen wandering around.