June 2009


Name Change Approved

On Thursday 21 May 2009 a Certificate of Incorporation changing the name of CHRTSA to HRSA was received.

This meant that the meeting held at Cobdogla on Saturday 23 May was the first meeting of HRSA Inc.

Filling of Vacancies Executive Committee

The two vacancies on the Executive Committee have been filled following a call for nominations. The Returning Officer, Ron Fluck advised that nominations had been received from Ian Milne Peterborough and Bob Sampson NRM and as these were the only nominations they were declared elected.

Meeting with Manger Rail Safety and his team

On Saturday 16th May those members of HRSA who are accredited under the SA Rail Safety Act were hosted by Derek Heneker, Manager Rail Safety at a meeting to discuss a number of issues some of which have been raised at previous CHRTSA meetings.

The main topic of discussion was the National Guidelines for Safety Management Systems for Tourist and Heritage railways. These guideline have been developed at a National level for the guidance of T&H groups throughout Australia.

When the South Australian Rail Safety Act was first proclaimed it was prepared having regard to Australian Standard 4292 which in itself was based on ISO 9000 – Quality, where as this was not the case in a number of the other States and with the change to a common Australian Rail Safety Act based on, but not directly referenced to AS 4292 many of out counter part organisations interstate have major changes to deal with.

There are some new elements in the new Act which we all have to add to our Management System but there is not the major change as required elsewhere in Australia.
General discussion also took place about the revised Act in general and the fact that a further change is to take place to require Road Authorities to have to be part of Interface Agreements at level and pedestrian crossings. This hopefully will occur later this year.

Derek also advised of changes to the way in which Notifiable occurrences are to be reported in an attempt to try and make the reporting from all areas more consistent. In return we expect to be able to obtain more information about occurrences and their frequency in an attempt to prevent or reduce the frequency of occurrences.

I am aware that near misses at level crossings are of a major concern to many organisations and one of the most frequently reported incidences.

Many of the persons present at this meeting were persons who are not normally attendees at CHRTSA and it was felt that this was an important issue and made for the session being most valuable to all present.

Formation of Sub Groups

The Constitution calls for the establishment of at least four sub committees , namely

· Business and Governance sub committee

· Marketing and Promotion sub committee

· Technical sub committee

· Operational sub committee

The current PLI sub group will become part of the Business sub committee whilst the current Rules group will become part of the Operations sub committee.

With the formation of these Sub committees HRSA will be looking for participants on these groups in addition to the HRSA members with the various member groups being asked to nominate participants.

The Constitution does allow for “specialist” persons who are not members of any group to be appointed to the Sub committee.

The aim of this structure is to try and assist all of the members of HRSA towards a common goal of attracting patronage and trying to bring commonality to our working to enable exchange of workers and ideas.

What happens interstate

Each State, with the exception of the Northern Territory, has a body similar to HRSA which brings together their T&H groups, both rail and tram. These groups have as members, not only operational groups but also museum groups the same as HRSA.

All of the State bodies are then members of the Australian group known as ATHRA which meets twice a year.

The next meeting of ATHRA is in October at Ipswich which will follow the holding of an International Rail Conference at the Workshops Rail Museum. Information about the International Conference and attendance can be found on the Railway Museum Workshops web site.

Lesson Plans

On of the concerns raised by the T&H sector has been the National push by the NTC for all training to be conducted under the auspices of a Registered Training Organisation and whilst this may be acceptable and affordable for major main line track owners and operators it is far from affordable for the T&H sector

In fact if any one of the current groups in SA had to engage an RTYO for their training they would be out of business.
This does not mean however that there should not be some control over the training and standard of training and in this regard ATHRA did seek and gain funding for the development of lesson plans for a number of positions so that training can be carried out against these plans which are compliant with the training requirements.
Further groups then need to consider how this training is given and more importantly how the trainee is assessed.
Many groups have persons who have undertaken training in Workplace Training and Assessing and by using these persons it is a way in which the sector can argue that there is not a need for RTO’s.
Further by the sector having their own standards by which the assessing is able to be undertaken can also be used as an argument not to have RTO involvement.

The draft lesson plans have been made available from ATHRA to HRSA for comment and this is a task which each operational group will need to undertake and then meet as HRSA to formulate a response to ATHRA by not later than 31 July 2009

It was also another issue discussed at the meeting with Derek and his group on 16th May.

Lesson plans due for review are: Operations, Fireman, Steam Loco Driver, Observer, Diesel loco Driver, Tram Driver and Guard.

From an HRSA perspective the Operations Sub committee will be the group to have responsibility for the review of these documents

ATHRA Annual Awards

ATHRA have in place an awards system for a variety of subjects including loco restoration, carriage restoration, infrastructure and Excellence. These awards are open to all TY&H groups and are now open for submissions.

For further information please refer the ATHRA Web site.

Last year Pichi Richi won an Honourable Mention for its restoration on NYAB 1 whilst SteamRanger worker Phil Neville won the Excellence Award.

Brian Busch
President
12 June 2009