The Rail Safety and Standards Board Podcast

In this episode, Dr Emma Taylor talks about the human aspects, the culture change that will be needed to address digital safety threats.  The need for traditional design engineers to broaden their sphere of thinking, and to bring others into design conversations.  Emma also talks about the need to start thinking about reasonably foreseeable scenarios. For us all to start thinking about what could...

In this episode Jason Alexandre of Samaritans talks about the Samaritans' partnership with Network Rail and the rail industry to reduce the number of suicides on the railway.  Customer experience manager Rizwan Javed talks about how the training gave him the confidence to intervene, and then tells the story of just one of the 29 life-saving interventions he has made. 01:19 About Jason. 01:57...

In this first podcast about trespass, Oliver Bratton, Director Network Strategy and Operations, Louise McNally, Trespass Prevention Lead, at Network Rail, and Inspector Becky Warren, of the British Transport Police, talk about the human, safety and operational impacts of trespass on the railway. They talk about its human costs, as a result of fatalities and life-changing injuries.  On the family a...

In this podcast Dr Emma Taylor, former rocket scientist and chartered mechanical engineer, talks about how the changing railway and increasing number of digital components will start to blur the lines between rolling stock and infrastructure design and build. And how it will be increasingly beneficial to have software engineers and cyber security specialists in teams. Emma has been talking to stak...

In this podcast Sara Sherrard and Tom Moran talks about failings in customer care and the improvements implemented after Sara's mother suffered a fatal accident at Mill Hill Station. Sara Sherrard's mother, Priscilla Tropp, died following a fall down a station staircase. Tom Moran is now the MD at Thameslink and Great Northern Railways. Sara describes her experience as she learned the de...

In this episode Dougie Hill, Head of National Freight Strategy & Policy at Direct Rail Services, and Geoff Spencer, former CEO of DB Cargo (UK), talk through the challenges to get competing companies to collaborate.  Their work in the National Freight Safety Group (NFSG) has led to the Freight Integrated Plan for Safety. 00:50 About Dougie Hill. 01:50 About Geoff Spencer. 02:45 Freight sector...

This podcast looks at the part that CIRAS, the Confidential Incident Reporting and Analysis Service, contributes to the continual improvement of safety management for the railway and other transport systems. In this episode Catherine Baker, director of CIRAS, talks about how the confidential reporting service works—the types of incidents and reasons for calls, and examples of the results that CIRA...

Trevor Parkin of East Midlands Railway and Chris Harrison of RSSB talk about what the rail industry is doing to reduce the number of signals passed at danger, and so the likelihood of a potentially fatal train accident. 01:25 About Trevor Parkin. 02:10 About Chris Harrison. 02:35 SPADs in the 1990s and the changes made since. 03:53 The Train Protection and Warning System (TPWS). 06:07 Optimising t...

Joana Faustino, Work Psychologist at RSSB, talks about the feelings we might be experiencing and some coping strategies for the pressures that we are facing. 01:00 Possible effects of the lockdown on your mental health. 03:10 Acknowledging your emotions. 04:12 How are news reports affecting you? 04:55 Managing worry. 07:09 Managing difficult situations. 09:30 Physical and mental health working tog...