West Coast Railways lost its High Court bid to avoid central door locking

West Coast Railways runs the Jacobite on Scotland's West Highland Line from Fort William to Mallaig — the service that appeared as the Hogwarts Express, for which WCR supplied Warner Bros with the locomotive and heritage carriages. It makes two trips a day from March to October at up to 100 mph, using 1950s 'slam-door' carriages kept legal by a safety exemption. When the Office of Rail and Road refused to exempt the hinged doors from rules requiring central locking, first in January and again in March 2023, WCR took the regulator to the High Court.

WCR argued its steward-operated door procedures and warning signs were as safe as central locking, and that fitting it to the traditional carriages could cost £7 million — potentially wiping out about ten years of profit. Mrs Justice Thornton dismissed the case, noting the doors 'can be opened by anyone inside the train even when the train is moving', and that central locking was 'common sense' compared with a system 'dependent on no more than an assumption by the guard that the stewards have locked the doors'.

The judge also noted the ORR had found no evidence of a WCR investigation or 'lessons learnt' after a train left York with a door open in October 2020, and after a passenger overpowered a steward to open a door of a moving train in June 2022. The ORR told the court it did not want heritage operators to go out of business, but wanted minimum safety standards met; other mainline heritage operators had already made the investment.

Fitting central locking to the heritage fleet was estimated at £7 million — about ten years of profit — plus the costs of a lost High Court challenge.

The business ran heritage rolling stock on a regulator's exemption, so refusing the exemption struck at the fleet's legality, not at a marginal route.

Its own safety record — an open-door departure at York in 2020 and a passenger forcing a door in 2022 — gave the regulator its evidence.

The £7 million retrofit, roughly a decade of profit, pushed the company to spend on lawyers rather than locks.

Litigating a safety rule delays the bill but rarely cancels it; a regulator armed with incidents and a judge's 'common sense' usually wins.

The challenge was dismissed in December 2023. WCR said it was 'disappointed' but remained committed to working with the ORR on a long-term solution; the regulator pointed out that converted carriages 'can both retain their heritage appeal yet also reflect minimum modern safety standards', leaving the company to reflect and consider options for keeping the Jacobite running.