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

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

In <19990513203452.07299.00000221@ng21.aol.com> markbau1@aol.comQQQQyuk (MarkBau1) writes:

><<<<<You can certainly teach people by the book(s) in a short time - I don't
>dispute that at all, but to give people a classroom course and then say
>"right, off you go" doesn't work with a system so diverse as ours.>>>>>

>Its funny that US roads can take a bloke off the street and have him running
>15,000 ton coal trains in under a year yet in Australia it takes longer than
>that to train a driver of much smaller trains.

Except that those much smaller trains carry people, and people in large
numbers are far more difficult to predict behaviour-wise that 15000 tons of
inanimate mineral. So there are completely different sets of skills
involved.

>I wonder why that is?

You're wrong Mark. It doesn't take a year, at least not here in Sydney.

Depending where you come from, the training can run from 2 months (for
drivers transferring from freight to CityRail like I did in 1994) to about 4
months (for guards wanting to become drivers) to about 6 months or more (for
new drives coming 'off the street' with no railway experience at all). These
are all averages, since training schools get smaller or longer as they are
changed around, and methods of training, etc. evolve.

Also, different people will need different ammounts of time with a trainer
driver before they can drive on their own, so there are lots of variables to
consider.

Regards,

Craig.

-- 
            Craig Ian Dewick            |       Stand clear - jaws closing
 Send email to craigd@lios.apana.org.au |  Visit my Australian rail transport
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