Re: Melton - Bacchus Marsh close revisited.

[David Langley <del@ancc.com.au>]

stephen wrote:

> The drivers have to take their eyes away from the track to read the ASW unit. as
> this may take a while to read the message this was deemed to be unsafe.
> The messages can be long so it wasn't safe.
>

But the SAW equipment in locos is not in the driver's line of sight to the track. And
even if the equipment is on the control panel, the driver has to look down thus
taking his eyes off the rails with the potential for problems. I personally don't
think that any system is safe in that case if you only have 1 man in the cab. In a
two man situation, the other person read out the section names on the electric staff
etc. It seems that perhaps the only safe system for 1 man operation is CTC where the
driver is already looking for signals and hence it would be no less safe than now,

David.