Tuesday 1 November 2011

“Setting back a train up to one car” basically means that if you go past a signal or platform by less than one car you can reverse the train. In the past we had to walk through the train and drive it in the wrong direction; if you stayed up front and stuck it into reverse you were sacked.

I’ll say that again, YOU WERE SACKED.

LUL have decided that something that TOps used to lose their job for doing is fine and dandy. It doesn’t matter if we can’t see what’s behind us, just back her up and carry on. This procedure has been in use on the Jubilee Line Extension since it opened but they have Platform Edge Doors so there’s no chance of anyone falling on the track behind you.

OSN no.101 says that if the train is setting back into a platform then the move will carried out by either using the in-cab CCTV or with a member of station staff on the platform at the rear of the train to “make announcements to customers” and “to pass messages from the controller to the train operator”. How you pass messages to someone who’s at the other end of a train isn’t explained.

As we have CCTV on the Central I could be asked to drive a train backwards into a platform with just my trusty, somewhat grainy, often flickery and fuzzy in-cab monitor to guide me . Somehow I can’t see myself doing that with a platform full of passengers.

3 comments:

  1. Mind you, there's nothing to stop you walking back through the train to the other cab and using that, is there? If the option is there in the amended regs. that is. It'd be at the driver's discretion, surely?

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  2. Unless I read ASLEFshrugged wrong, that's the current procedure, right?

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  3. TRT – the old method was to walk back through the train if practical, say if the train overran NOR EB around 23:00 on a Saturday night when there is hardly anyone on board

    If the same thing happened at 08:30 at BEG WB with a packed train I would have been instructed by Wood Lane to carry on and tell the passengers who’d wanted to get off at BEG to get a train back from LIS.

    Long time ago there was an incident at BAN late on a Friday night, I was stuck in the tunnel looking at the tail lights of the train on the platform and was instructed by Wood Lane to go to the rear and take the train back to STP.

    It took me nearly five minutes to navigate my way past the drunks, etc, and by the time I reached the rear cab the BTP had turned up, dragged the “trouble” off the train and we were on the move again. Took just as long to get back to the front.

    Rearspring – a “qualified” person would be another TOp or a DRM, somehow I doubt if there would be one in the vacinity when you needed them.

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