Personal protective equipment: Railway infrastructure

This control measure should be read in conjunction with Operations – Personal protective equipment

Personnel should wear appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) on the railway infrastructure. This should include a high-visibility vest or tabard, boots and head protection, such as a firefighter helmet. This may need to be in addition to appropriate structural firefighting protective clothing.

The level of PPE available and used should be determined as part of a joint risk assessment between:

• The fire and rescue service
• Railway infrastructure service provider or Network Rail Route Control
• Specialist resources provided by the relevant railway infrastructure service provider or rail incident officer (RIO)

The outcome of the risk assessment could be to:

• Obtain the required PPE
• Deploy additional responders with PPE
• Allow personnel to proceed without full PPE, while considering alternative risk mitigation

Specialist resources provided by the relevant railway infrastructure service provider, including a RIO, mobile operations manager (MOM) or station incident officer (SIO), usually wear orange high-visibility clothing.

However, to avoid confusion, pre-planning should include an agreement about the colour of high-visibility clothing for personnel should be made with local train operating companies (TOCs).

Incident commanders should brief personnel about the colour of the high-visibility clothing being worn by each of the organisations attending a railway infrastructure incident.