A strange sort of Big Bang
After privatisation of the railway in the mid-1990s, we were all expecting an almighty bang. That failed to materialise. Or, rather, it did not come in the way we expected. First there was an almighty shake up of who was in charge day to day. Previously, each section of track work had its own line of management. Permanent Way would have supervisors and managers with a Permanent Way background, Signals and Telecommunications likewise, and so on. Now we had managers and supervisors from different departments with little or no experience of what we did but expecting us to help them run the...