Most European railways require a driver to have done some route familiarization for most routes, which tends to work fairly well. What does not work very well is that the UK has very patchy and antiquated train safety systems (AWS / TPWS are somewhat rudimentary and deployed - by far - not everywhere) and signaling. Even speed restrictions in the UK are placed very, very tightly and you better know them by heart because they didn't get placed with the idea that the driver must have sufficient time to reduce speed / react between where they get a warning signal and where the restriction comes into effect.I suspect the move from public to private ownership did adversely affect the upgrades of those, as well as electrification on several key routes.
If I remember correctly they do not even have something as basic as an electronic coursebook - which became mandatory in Germany in the 90s already. And at least in NL if you have a set of routes in a certain direction / route set - drivers would get route familiarization both for the main routes and for the bypasses.
AnotherGoodName|3 months ago
It should also be made clear that you don't need to get an actual qualification from a bureaucratic org. You basically just need to document the last time the driver drove the route with another qualified driver and then document that they've kept the qualification up to date. It's a documentation process and just not that onerous. Also absolutely required for any railway since trains don't stop or accelerate quickly. You need the drivers to know what's coming ahead and no amount of signage or signalling can beat knowing the route.
The only concern i have is the guard qualification. That does seem overboard but... i don't know the UK and chances are there's nuance to this. So i'd have concern with anyone reading GPs post and thinking this is the cause of UKs railway inefficiency.
iggldiggl|3 months ago
I don't think that's quite true. AWS is rudimentary, true (only forces acknowledgement of warning signals, but otherwise no speed supervision, braking curves or trainstop functionality), but AFAIK deployed almost everywhere, the only major exception I'm aware of being some complex but slow-speed station layouts.
And TPWS… while it doesn't do everything that a truly modern train protection system could do, together with the British practice of long enough overlaps (i.e. an additional safety distance beyond a stop signal that needs to be kept clear, too, in case of an overrun) it's still quite reasonably effective at preventing dangerous overruns. And its deployment has been indeed more gappy, but AFAIK junctions and major speed restrictions, where the biggest risks are, are still quite comprehensively fitted. The biggest gap are automatic signals on the plain line, but then again there haven't been many accidents at those.
> If I remember correctly they do not even have something as basic as an electronic coursebook - which became mandatory in Germany in the 90s already.
Part of that goes a long way back. One of the most fundamental differences is that the UK still does route signalling, whereas Germany completely switched to speed signalling at the beginning of the 1930s.
Route signalling means that the signals indicate the route the train will take, but not the exact speed, so if you want trains to operate safely but without excessive dawdling, route knowledge is a must.
Whereas with speed signalling, the signals directly indicate the safe speed for proceeding, so route knowledge, while still useful and necessary for other purposes, is no longer quite as crucially relevant. Consequently, in the UK ad-hoc diversions without route knowledge are quite taboo, whereas in Germany, emergency diversions due to short-notice incidents are mostly (except for some specific lines with more complex requirements) allowed, albeit with a speed restriction of 100 km/h.
julik|3 months ago