Re: "lost" trains

[John MacCallum <johnmac@MYlisp.com.au>]

There is an awful lot of discussion on this subject and it seems
to basically hinge around some of you suggesting that the driver
of the IU should have been more careful.

Dave Proctor asked the question , "how far is it reasonable to proceed
at caution?" SWU 245 which replaced the old Regulations
for passing signals at stop in Track Block and Automatic areas
states 2 Signals. I can't remember the old Regulation Number but
basically it said the same things that SWU245 does.

Contrary to what someone said most drivers do have a good working
knowledge of how signals work. They don't know the exact
technical set-up but they understand the concept of how the whole
system works. 

One person seems to think that if you see a signal changing aspects
rapidly that you should throw out the anchor and stop. Then sit there
for 5 mins before you even attempt to move. Then you are meant
to travel at caution until you can talk to a signal box and find
out exactly where the next train is. A Signal changing aspects rapidly
like that occurs quite often and in my experience it is usually caused
by a fault in the traction current return turtles that isolate the AC of
the signalling circuit from the DC traction
return. So that type of signal anomaly the driver of the IU had
probably seen many times during his career and he would most
likely think that it was a fault with just that one signal.

All of these things need to be seen in the context that a driver
is charged with getting the train (with its load) to its 
destination in a timely manner. Obviously within the parameters
set by the Infrastructure and the Regulations that apply. The poor
bastard (I don't know his name) that was driving that IU was just
trying to do his job the best that he could with the training and
knowledge that he had. You can't go running trains at 20 kph for
kilometre after kilometre and not get asked by the management 
why are you loosing time?
The fact that he had reported a signal defective tells me that he indeed
was doing his job the way he was trained to.
Now at the risk of getting really rude here I think
that some of you should shut the fuck up and stop vilifying the
poor bastard. You don't know what the exact circumstances were
because you weren't there in the Cab with him. 

Trains fail all the time and signals fail all the time. There are
a lot of people who think that there is more to the whole 3801
incident than was reported in the Inquiry. My opinion
is that the official finding that Sand isolated the train from
the track circuit is somewhat convenient for the SRAM as it was
at the time. In the end the same as with Glenbrook it was the
Infrastructure failed and this led to a set of events that resulted
in a collision.  In both cases the drivers of the Inter Urbans were
just trying to do their job and get the train to its destination
in a timely manner. 

-- 

Pope

Alias	John MacCallum

remove MY from MYlisp to get the real email address.