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

[Railway Rasputin <bob@fastlink.com.au>]

C. Dewick wrote:

> 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.

Just in:

Guards now learn the roads in one day out of a book saving 2 weeks. The 2 week period of
working with a selected guard is now going to be 1 day.

This has come from the guy "designing" this new training platform.
The ultimate plan is to have the guards do no safe working in rediness for D.O.O

rgds