"Just because you want to watch the trains go by"

That 1960s BR rail safety TV ad’ had a rather sneering and sarcastic tone. The words were directed at railway enthusiasts, though it was not train spotters who were the most endangered species at the rail side but rail workers, followed by the travelling public.

Some stations banned spotters altogether for health and safety reasons. That decision was supposedly made for the benefit of passengers but also perhaps to take a bit of pressure off the station staff. There could be quite a lot of us around from time to time.

Since those days, an avalanche of rules and regulations has been accompanied by a gradual improvement in working conditions, especially for those engaged in safety critical operations on the railway. I would like to think that such advances emanated from greater consideration by the public, government and employers for the well-being of the workforce. It was not “health and safety gone mad,” as some might have been tempted to describe it - though increased fear of litigation no doubt pushed things along a bit, too.

   

In France, the United States and Tanzania - examples I have seen at first hand, the railway is not hemmed in with quite the same insistence on interminable miles of robust fencing as it is here. Everybody knows that trains are big heavy bits of metal and it’s therefore probably not a good idea to get in the way of them. Road vehicles everywhere pose a similar threat, but other than alongside motorways, we don’t seal them in quite so vigorously.

Circumstances are certainly different elsewhere, both culturally and developmentally. Those countries are all characterised by larger expanses of land, lower population densities and sparser rail networks. In Britain, the railway often appears to be more up close and personal, cheek by jowl with suburbs that seem to go on for ever.

In much of western America, appointed places to cross the railway are frequent, almost always on the level and many passageways do not have any kind of barrier. It is largely a matter of “Look and Listen” before you cross, as is still the case in some of the more rural parts of Britain. In developing countries, people walk along the track, using it as a thoroughfare, generally saunter over it as required and in many cases live uncomfortably close to it, through necessity.  

It must contribute notably to the cost of train travel in Britain when almost every inch of the network has to be sealed in with fencing which seems to be growing higher and becoming more substantial and invasive. It is also uncompromisingly metallic and very unsightly. It makes the lineside a less welcoming environment and it spoils the view.

In Trains and Buttered Toast [John Murray, 2008, p.125] Sir John Betjeman wrote, that “Railways were built to look from and to look at. They still provide those pleasures for the eye.” Unfortunately, I think we now seem to be in a spot of bother with that assertion.

[Based on an article of the same name that first appeared in the Railway Antiques Gazette, with thanks to the editor, Tim Petchey. Thanks also to Simon Turner at GW Railwayana Auctions for permission to include an illustration from the GWRA archive.