There have been several accidents and close calls involving vehicle deliveries and collections near operational railway lines. These have involved lorries (including those with lorry loaders) and vans. Those who are involved in the planning of deliveries adjacent to open railway lines are reminded about the risks of working Any Line Open (ALO) and the controls needed to protect infrastructure, trains, passengers, and others. Drivers who are loading, unloading, or moving vehicles next to open railway lines must be reminded about the risks of working ALO and to adhere to their planned safe system of work. Safety Bulletin NRS334 provides additional detail.
To reduce risk of accidents, consideration needs to be given to:
- Plant being stored at the access.
- Heavy materials being stored at the access.
- Plant and heavy materials including a crane, lorry loader or forklift used to load, or unload must not foul any open line.
Ellipse (Network Rail’s asset register) shall be used to better understand access points combined with site visits.
Rail Infrastructure Network Model (Geo-RINM) provides visualisation of access points. This is currently only available to Network Rail but will be made more widely available during CP7.
A local dossier should be produced with visualisation of each access point, along with its restrictions, which should be sent to third parties making collections and deliveries.
Interactive OTP Access Points can be accessed via the PDF map attachment. Please note for the interactive functionality to work you will need to click on the document in the attachments, then right click and save to your computer, then reopen the saved version.
When you open the saved PDF there will be no access points showing. To display the layers click the plus sign next to the layers folder, and this will show the two access point layers you can turn on:-
- OTP Heavy Materials Access Points with RRAPs of 10m and larger
- All other OTP Heavy Materials Access Points.
(Note : When zooming in to see the detail of a site, right click anywhere on the map and select ‘Object data Tool’, then when you have this selected triple click on the desired point of interest. The details will then show in the bottom left hand corner of the layers panel.)
The attachment “Road Based Lineside Deliveries and Collections” shares good practice information for Delivery & Collection Point Management.
The use of public highway for delivery and collection of Plant and heavy materials, Network Rail and those working on behalf of Network Rail need to comply with NR/L1/CIV/601 and current legislation which includes:
- The New Roads and Street Works Act 1991
- Traffic Management Act 2004
- Transport Scotland Act 2005.
- Highways Act 1980
In the delivery and collection of Plant and heavy materials, CDM Regulations apply. Standard NR/L2/OHS/0047 provides additional information and supporting documentation. The focus is on the principles of prevention.
In enhancing access points, work has been undertaken setting out good practice design. This is included in the Infrastructure Plant Manual NR/L2/RMVP/0200/P301.
