Meet the York men and women keeping your trains on track

“The 11.15 Transpennine Express service to Manchester is now at Platform 11,” it intoned. “Calling at Leeds, Huddersfield and Manchester Victoria. The 11.15 Transpennine Express Service to Manchester is now at Platform 11.”

The passengers scurrying to get to the platform were entirely unaware of the honour being done them. Because that voice didn’t belong to station announcer Michael Kenny. It was none other than York’s Lord Mayor, Cllr Dave Taylor.

He seemed entirely unfazed by the experience, remaining resolutely calm at the microphone. Not so the Sheriff of York, Jonathan Tyler, who could hardly hide his eagerness as he took his own place in the announcer’s chair.

“This is the Sheriff of York with an important security announcement,” he said. “Will all passengers please remember to keep your personal luggage with you at all times. I remind you that smoking is not permitted anywhere in this station.”

Mr Tyler's beam of pleasure afterwards lit up the little room. He could be forgiven his eagerness, however, having begun his working life as a young traffic apprentice on the railways more than 50 years earlier. His stint as an announcer was clearly bringing back memories.

It was the Sheriff who had arranged for the civic party to be given a behind-the-scenes tour of the railway station and of Network Rail’s £25m rail operation centre behind, in order to meet the 'unsung heroes' of the railways. The Press tagged along for the ride.

The £25m rail operation centre

The station announcer’s office overlooking Platform 3 was our first stop. Mr Kenny, whose own announcing style employs that effortless singsong intonation familiar from stations up and down the county, was pressed into giving a few tips.

How do station announcers get that effect? “Everybody does it in their own way,” he said. “Although you do need a clear voice.”

And a clear head. Mr Kenny's job involves much more than just announcing the details and destinations of trains as they arrive and leave. If there's a delay or some other problem that requires a switch of platform, it's the station announcer's office that organises it, liaising all the time with train operators and signallers. Since any platform change is going to have a knock-on effect, it can involve quite a bit of juggling...

We left Mr Kenny to his job, and headed across the footbridge over platforms 3, 5, 9,10 and 11 to the back of the station.

From there, a winding path took us to the rail operation centre: a smart £25m building opened in 2014 which combines a major training centre for rail employees with a control room which is the nerve centre for East Coast services from London up to Scotland.

After a security check, we called in at one of the many classrooms ranged along a corridor. A group of surprisingly mature-looking trainee signallers - one of them was a retired RAF mechanic - were seated around a table, being tutored by trainer Bruce Langlands on day 1 of a ten week course.

They were learning about 'absolute blocking' - the system designed to ensure only one train can be on a particular stretch of track at one time.

The Sheriff of York Jonathan Tyler demonstrates how to pull a signal lever

But how should a signaller react if there were more than two trains on a section of line? one trainee asked. "There will never be two trains!" Mr Langlands said, firmly. That's reassuring to know.

In one corner of the classroom was a set of antique-looking signal levers. Surely nobody used those for training purposes any more?

Oh yes they did, Mr Langlands said. Levers like these were still used in parts of the rail network, so signallers had to know how to use them.

The ones in the classroom were connected to a sophisticated simulator. "It means trainees can make their mistakes here," Mr Langlands said. "And once they've made a mistake, they won't do it again."

The levers also gave the Sheriff a chance to demonstrate his technique. "I pulled my first signal like this in 1962," he said.

We skirted the training centre’s section of indoor track – used for teaching everything from trackside safety to rail maintenance and repair - and headed for the welder’s teaching workshop.

Here, Ian Wallace and Peter Summerfield were demonstrating how to weld two sections of track together using an 'alumino-thermic portion'. This, Pete explained, was a canister of aluminium and iron oxide (commonly known as rust). Begin a chemical reaction in this canister, and the aluminium captures the oxygen atoms, producing loads of heat, molten iron, and aluminium oxide slag. "The Germans invented it for incendiary bombs to drop on London," Pete said.

Ian Wallace (left) and Peter Summerfield demosntrate track welding

It works pretty well for welding rail too, as the pair demonstrated. They positioned the canister over a mould fixed between two rail ends, set off the reaction, and waited. There was a hissing and crackling, then white hot molten iron poured into the mould, continuing to glow red and throw off heat for minutes afterwards.

This is the technique engineers and welders use out on the track in all weather. So how long before rails joined in this way can be used? After 30 minutes the join will be cool enough to grind smooth, Ian said - and then it is ready for use.

Our final stop was the rail operations centre itself. It's the nerve centre for controlling train services along the length of the East Coast Main Line, from King's Cross right up to Scotland, as well as on branch lines to places like Whitby, Scarborough, Middlesbrough and Hull.

Network Rail have a large team of operators here, keeping an eye out for problems on the track: and both Northern Rail and Virgin East Coast also have big teams of controllers, all sitting in front of banks of computer screens showing the movement of trains across the network.

Inside the rail operations centre: the nerve centre for controlling train services along the East Coast Main Line and even further afield

Virgin's duty operations manager Ian Stewart was sitting in front of one such bank, watching a live feed from the cab of a train heading south to Doncaster from York.

The feed showed the train doing 115mph, but applying the brakes. Trains are permitted to go at up to 125mph down to Doncaster, Ian said. "But the driver's braking at the moment to get his speed down to 100mph to go through Doncaster itself."

From this control room, Ian and his large team are responsible to trying to ensure the 30-odd Virgin trains out on the East Coast at any one time run on time - and, more importantly, are safe.

They're alerted to a whole host of incidents, ranging from people on the track to derailments, collisions, points failures, train breakdowns, track defects and problems at level crossings. If there's an issue on the track they're the ones who, working with Network Rail, try to work out an alternative route or, if necessary, lay on replacement buses. They also initiate investigations following incidents.

There's a real emphasis on safety, Ian said. Train cabs are fitted with safety systems including pedals on the floor that have to be automatically reset by the driver lifting his/ her foot off then pressing back down, and warning hooters that sound as a train approaches a slow or stop signal. The driver has to press a button to acknowledge he's aware of the warning within two seconds: if he doesn't, the breaks go on automatically.

During our visit, there was a problem up in Scotland. A driver passed a signal when he shouldn't have done. Services on that stretch of line were suspended, leading to the cancellation of six Scotrail trains - though Virgin services were unaffected.

And what happened to the offending driver? "He's getting relieved for now," Ian said.

Putting safety first

Things don't always run smoothly on the railways, as everybody who uses them knows. Usually the result is little more than grumbles over delays, missed connections, or overcrowding (thank you Mr Corbyn).

Serious incidents are rare, although devastating when they do happen. Few living locally will ever forget the Great Heck disaster.

There are also incidents which, while serious, don't lead to loss of life.

One such was reported in this newspaper a month ago, following the release of a report by the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB). The incident happened last autumn, when a York to Harrogate train was derailed because a signaller had authorised it to pass a red signal.

The signaller, who was in the Knaresborough signal box, was a 'mobile operations manager' who only occasionally operated signal boxes, and hadn't realised a set of points was in an unsafe condition.

The leading five bogies were derailed, although none of the crew or five passengers were injured.

The RAIB concluded the signaller did not have a full understanding of the working of Knaresborough signal box, and said an underlying factor was Network Rail's 'lack of robustness' in managing 'non-signallers' - staff who were only occasionally asked to operate signal boxes.

Asked about this incident following The Press's visit to the rail operations centre, a Network Rail spokesman said: “We take safety incidents such as the one at Knaresborough extremely seriously and have worked alongside the Rail Accident Investigation Branch to produce the comprehensive report into what happened on that day. We work hard to prevent incidents like this happening and have already started to implement the recommendations made by the RAIB report to try and stop similar incidents from occurring again in the future.”