First fifty years Establishment The body originated in 1840, as a result of the
Railway Regulation Act 1840 ('Lord Seymour's Act'), when Inspecting Officers of Railways were first appointed by the
Board of Trade (BoT). Britain's railways at that time were
private companies; the 1840 Act required them to report to the BoT all accidents which had caused personal injury: it also gave the inspectorate powers to inspect any railway, and hence from its formation the inspectorate was used to investigate serious railway accidents and report upon them to the BoT.
Inspection of new lines They were tasked with inspecting new lines, and commenting on their suitability for carrying passenger traffic. However, the inspectorate had no powers to require changes until the
Railway Regulation Act 1842 ('An Act for the better Regulation of Railways and for the Conveyance of Troops') gave the BoT powers to delay opening of new lines if the inspectorate was concerned about "Incompleteness of the Works or permanent Way, or the Insufficiency of the Establishment" for working the line.
Crash investigation Their first investigation was of the
Howden rail crash on 7 August 1840, which had killed five passengers (although the inspector's report said four, three passengers were killed instantly, two dying later of their injuries) as a result of the derailment of a train caused by the fall of a large casting from a wagon on a passenger train. The inspectorate's reports of their accident investigations were made to the BoT alone, but eventually published as part of the BoT's annual report to Parliament.
Competence Until the late 1960s HMRI's inspecting officers were all recruited from the
Corps of Royal Engineers. In the early years of the inspectorate, their competence to adjudicate on civil engineering structures was questioned by critics, sometimes with good reason. A reorganisation of the inspectorate in November 1846 abolished the post of inspector-general, and led to the departure of Major-General
Charles Pasley, the incumbent, and one of his subordinates. Pasley had come under criticism after the bridges and earthworks of the
North British Railway's line from Edinburgh to Berwick – approved by Pasley in June 1846 – failed to withstand heavy rain in September 1846, with nineteen miles of track being rendered unusable. Temporary works were undertaken to restore a service, Pasley approved them (orally), but some of the new work then proved faulty. In 1849 the
Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway's
Torksey viaduct across the
River Trent was not initially accepted by the railway inspector
Lintorn Simmons because he was unhappy with its novel (tubular girder) design by
John Fowler. This decision (and also the basic premise that a bridge designed by a member of the
Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) which had passed all practical tests could be rejected by a railway inspector because he was uncomfortable with its novel design) was criticised by the ICE: Threatened with a call for a parliamentary enquiry should approval continue to be withheld, the inspectorate reconsidered and approved the bridge un-modified. Subsequently, and consequently, the BoT took the view that (as it explained in defending itself from criticism that the defects in the
Tay Bridge should have been seen and acted upon by the inspectorate): Critics at the end of the 1850s also noted that during the
Crimean War, the
Grand Crimean Central Railway had been built to forward supplies from Balaclava to British siege lines not by the Royal Engineers, but by a consortium of civilian railway contractors. If the government turned to civilians as best fitted to build a military railway, was it not anomalous that it thought military engineers best fitted to inspect new railway lines?
Extension and formalisation of powers The inspectorate's powers were extended and formalised by the
Railway Regulation Act 1871 ('An Act to amend the Law respecting the Inspection and Regulation of Railways'). Paragraph 4 extended the power to inspect to give inspectors explicit powers to require the production of persons and papers by a company being inspected. Paragraph 5 meant new works on existing lines were liable to the same inspection regime as new lines. The BoT could now set up a formal
court of inquiry to investigate an accident, taking evidence on oath in public hearings. Inspectors investigating an accident were now required to make a formal report to the BoT, which was now empowered to publish reports (from an inspector or from a court of inquiry) directly. Subsequent public inquiries under the new powers included those into the
Shipton-on-Cherwell train crash in 1874 (chaired by an inspector
William Yolland), and into the
Tay Bridge disaster of 1879. However, the procedure fell into abeyance after the failure of the three-man board (of which Yolland, by now chief inspecting officer, was a member) of the Tay Bridge inquiry to arrive at an agreed report. For many years in the mid-19th century the Railway Inspectorate advocated in its accident returns and otherwise three safety measures it saw as vital to ensure passenger safety: •
"lock" Interlocking of points and signals, so that conflicting signal indications are prevented; •
"block" A space-interval or
absolute block system of
signalling, where one train is not allowed to enter a physical section until the preceding one had left it;
and •
"brake" Continuous
brakes, to put at the command of the engine driver adequate braking power; this requirement being increased as the technology made it reasonable to 'automatic' (in modern parlance 'fail-safe') continuous brakes which had to be 'held off' by vacuum or compressed air and would be applied automatically if that supply was lost (e.g. if a train were divided). The Board of Trade got as far and as fast as it could by persuasion, but had no powers to enforce its views on often reluctant railway managements of existing lines. Inspectors disagreed as to whether the board should be given powers to require changes. Yolland's official report on an 1867 accident (in which eight people died at a junction unaltered since an 1862 fatal accident, despite an inspector having urged improvements) pressed for such powers: Tyler himself supported the view taken by successive governments: that to take such powers would remove the clarity of existing arrangements, where responsibility for passenger safety lay with the railway companies alone. The death of 80 people on a Sunday school outing in the
Armagh rail disaster of 1889 brought a reversal of this policy on the three key issues: within two months of the accident
Parliament had enacted the
Regulation of Railways Act 1889, which authorised the Board of Trade to require the use of continuous automatic brakes on passenger railways, along with the block system of signalling and the interlocking of all points and signals. This is often taken as the beginning of the modern era in UK rail safety: "the old happy-go-lucky days of railway working" came to an end.
Modern era The chief inspecting officer from 1916 to 1929 was Colonel
John Wallace Pringle, responsible for investigating many accidents. It was during his tenure, in 1919, that the office became part of the newly created Ministry of Transport. The last chief inspecting officer with a Royal Engineers background, Major Rose, retired in 1988 and he was replaced by an appointee from the
Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Since then, inspecting officers have been recruited from the HSE or as mid-
career railway
employees from the former
British Rail.
List of chief inspecting officers / HM Chief Inspectors of Railways ==Original twin functions of the HMRI==