by Pedro Ferreira

This is a rail clip. Millions of others just like it are put together to keep tracks in place and sustain the thousands of trains that pass over them. I picked up this rail clip from the track side some fifteen years ago. Over the years, this became a symbol and souvenir for my living and working in Great Britain’s railways.

Being ‘on track’ means you’re either a trespasser, or a person working on the engineering side of the railways. The night this clip caught my eye, was the first time I went out on track with a rail maintenance crew. My task was simple: observe and talk to track workers about a number of processes and safety procedures that were being put in place. These duties felt silly when placed in the context of men carrying heavy gear and tools, walking miles of track on foot over damp wooden track slippers and ballast. All of this whilst having to look out for huge machinery and trains, carrying tons of building materials and equipment within the same space. Ironically though, one of the main causes of serious injury and death for engineering crews, was working in the proximity or having to cross tracks that remained open to regular train traffic. The rapidly changing and often rough British weather, was just the right seasoning for this work. Just pass midnight, temperature was -2ºC, but most were on their standard issued high-vis T-shirt, steam literally evaporating from their heads.

This was just another night at work for the crew, except for the visit of a couple of people from the office “up in London”. The centenary heritage of the GB railways is filled with stories of “us and them”. There’s “up in London” or “up to London” for all things in the railways. Roads go East or West, North or South, flights are inbound or outbound, all depending on where you are or where you’re going. But the railway always goes up to London, or comes down from London. Despite all severance that cut so deeply through the rail industry, those of us with soft hands and no tattoos, were greeted with smiles and incredible openness to talk about life out on track.

The conversation flowed so naturally that it became irresistible to pick up the sledgehammer and give it a go at removing rail clips. As part of that night’s job, a rail was being replaced, which meant removing a few hundred clips from their fasteners. The company had come up with a leveraging contraption to remove clips, but the sledgehammer was still much faster and ‘manly’. The technique was deceptively simple: hit the clip from its tightly tight position hard enough, so that it would come out with one single hit. To prevent the clip from flying off and hitting someone else nearby, the clip had to be fired off from its fastener against the steel sole of your boot. The worst that could happen was the clip missing your boot and hit you in the legs. Or being a novice, the thought of missing the clip entirely and hitting my legs with an incoming sledgehammer also crossed my mind.

It was then time to leave, as our presence became too much of an interference with the demanded pace of work. If all else was not enough, engineering work is invariably undertaken under a dark cloud of time pressure. Every minute engineering crews are accessing the infrastructure, is one minute less of access for train operations. The railways are a world of impossible conflicts and dialectics: The infrastructure is to be made available for train services as much as possible. The access charges paid by train operators are the vital revenue to maintain the rail infrastructure. But the more trains operate on the infrastructure, the more maintenance work is needed, as the access time to deliver that growing volume of work shrinks. The competition between operations and engineering for access to the infrastructure is one of the oldest and fearsome ones. And of course, engineering always looses the battle.

The expression “we are trackmen” surely emerged from the experience of this impossible and persistent struggle. More than a male identity, there is a deep sense of pride in looking after and taking care of a piece of the railways. Similar to seamen referring to ships as “she”, trackmen refer to the railway as “ours”. We watch over our railway and each other.

In the course of my time with the company, a project manager came up with the idea that the culture of engineering had to be improved. Track workers were getting killed due to poor safety culture and “we are trackmen” simply had to go. Funny how these massive companies with equally big legacies, always seem to have many project managers, yet few project teams are seen. This had all the signs of yet another attempt at moving up the ladder from an ambitious corporate hero. Naturally, it failed to change anything meaningful.

The organisation’s belief in corporate heroes remained unshaken by the failure of this and many other similar projects. I don’t recall how the failure of this particular project was justified, but surely it was done in such a way that the project manager’s leadership remained unquestioned. Only when the prevailing belief system comes in to question, can the heroes that personify them be challenged. And quite possibly, “we are trackmen” remains one of the most powerful metaphors and symbols in the world of rail engineering. Quick fixes and control never achieved much in transforming organisations and their culture. If anything, they further widen the gaps and reinforce barriers between “us and them”. Underestimating the failure of a single rail clip can compromise the integrity of the whole track. Just as much, underestimating the power of a seemingly simple idea like “looking after our railway and for each other” is being clueless about what makes a person endure a lifetime of such hard work and conditions.