Re: guard/driver training (was: "Olympic Sprint Platform - Lidcombe")

[craigd@lios.apana.org.au (C. Dewick)]

In <372BB14D.ABE3C1A@fastlink.com.au> Railway Rasputin <bob@fastlink.com.au> writes:

>> Yes, but guards are not given enough training in the first place, and a
>> great many recently qualified guards who might pass the schools and road
>> trials can't do their jobs properly, or don't want to.

>Agreed, the time it takes to train a guard has more than halved since I was
>trained. I hear that it is now only 5 weeks.

And in 5 weeks they learn *nothing*. No wonder we get so many new guards who
don't have a clue.

It's impossible to teach a guard anything other than what's in the books in
5 weeks, unless some of them are ultra-keen rail buffs (like Mr Trainman,
who is a guard down here at Waterfall!) and they have a lot of railway
knowledge already.

Nobody allows any time for new drivers and guards to get used to the actual
working conditions, and the way things operate, and this causes soooo many
stuff ups. Training co-ordinators think that once someone has done a
compressed course that they are ready to work in a real situation on their
own. This is rarely the case. I know I was 'green' for about 6 months after
taking up at Cronulla in early 1995, and I'd been on the railway for 8 years
before that (4 of them at Enfield on freight trains).

So to say that a guard can come out of a 5 week school and perform to a 100
percent expectation level is ludicrous. But that's what management and the
government and the public expects, esp. with the olympics just around the
corner...

Regards,

Craig.
-- 
            Craig Ian Dewick            |       Stand clear - jaws closing
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