IRSE News 135 Jun 08.pdf

FEEDBACK
IRSE
Dear Editors
Lightning Protection
As the warmer weather approaches so
does the threat of lightning and the
inevitable delays caused by signalling
equipment knocked out of action.
Are we in the UK doing all we can to
avoid such delays? Are we perhaps going
to see more delays as the equipment being
installed becomes increasingly electronics
based?
It would be a shame to see the
improvements in performance recently
achieved cancelled out by a few inevitable
if not predictable events.
Ian Maxwell
How about an article on Lightning
Protection from someone? - ED
Editor’s Note:
We would not normally publish letters of
this sort, but have made an exception in
this case. This particular charity is
indirectly connected with every reader’s
work – there have been many pictures on
UK television programmes of these very
young station children jumping on and off
moving trains trying to scavenge scraps
of food in order to survive from day to
day.
The Three Peaks
This summer a Team of IRSE Exam Students from the London Study Group are
setting out to climb ‘The 3 Peaks’ in 36 hours. In summary this involves climbing
the three highest peaks on the UK mainland:
Snowdon (Wales, 3560ft) - IN THE DARK OF NIGHT with head-torches attached!;
Scafell Pike (England, 3206ft);
Ben Nevis (Scotland, 4309ft).
All to be completed within 36 hours, travelling on a special train between the
mountains (see picture). For more information on the 3 Peaks Challenge take a look
at this website: http://www.railwaychildren.org.uk/peaks/itin.html.
The team members are:
Mike Backhouse – A Systems Modelling Specialist & current student of the
IRSE London Study Group;
Richard Chester – A Systems Modelling Support Specialist & while not yet an
IRSE member, he does have the ability to quote random STANOX codes (a
station coding system used in the Total Operations Processing System), for
most locations you throw at him;
Steve Hobbs – A Systems Modelling Specialist & coordinator of the IRSE
London Study Group;
Douglas Young – ERTMS Project Engineer & coordinator of the IRSE London
Study Group.
Of course we are not doing this all for our own
benefit, there is a charity to which we’re inviting you
to make a donation to help our team raise the
entrance fee of £2500.
Our chosen charity is the Railway Children; http://
www.railwaychildren.org.uk/ for obvious reasons we
all felt this was the best charity to support given our
employment.
Railway Children supports street children living
alone and at risk on the streets. Last year they
helped over 24 000 children all over the world,
many of whom live in and around railway stations.
The focus of their work is stopping the abuse of
children living on the streets and they are currently
involved in 117 projects worldwide across Africa,
Asia, South America and Europe.
I’m sure that our challenge and effort, combined
with your recognition of such a worthy charity,
means that you now just want to pledge a donation.
The good news is that donating is easy using the
just-giving website below:
http://www.justgiving.com/steve_hobbs_3_peaks
Please note that we are all employed by Network Rail. The Railway Children is a
charity which Network Rail recognises and therefore whatever you donate they will
match, although their donation doesn’t go towards our £2500 – we need to earn
that on our own.
Thanks for taking the time to read this to the bottom – now take that one step
further and visit the fundraising webpage!
Steve Hobbs
Network Rail
24
Issue 135 June 2008
IRSE
NEWS