Hey guys, I’ll keep this short and sweet. What is the secondmans seat actually used for in real life on English trains?
Back in the old days, so locos from NTP and TVL, you would have a driver and a secondman (which is where the name of the seat comes from) so the secondman would sit on that seat. These days secondmen are no longer required so the second seat in the cab for the trains on SEHS for example are these days used for training, route learning/refreshing or assessment purposes.
I don’t know if it is still the case but I’ve got a video of the GWR and a second driver got on board for the high speed sections because they had to have a backup when travelling over a certain speed. Also, as Matt (above) says, drivers are regularly assessed so the assessor would presumably use the second seat. Not forgetting the people that film driver’s eye view videos. I’m sure they would like to sit down.
I'm sure half way through building the hst or it might have been the apt, there was a big fuss because there was only one seat in the cab. After some protests and strike action they eventually had to redesign the cab, costing millions to return the second man's seat. Only for it not to be required a few years later.
It may have been. If I remember they were half way thru building them when the union stepped in and said we are not having that. Like I said they had to redesign the trains and modify the trains already built. If I remember rightly that's why modern British trains look so dated. They wanted to build new trains with a single driver centred in the cab like the 800 series but the rmt put a spanner in the works and put a stop to it.
I just travelled from Inverness to Stirling and did notice two people in the cab, do ScotRail still have second men?
If it was just one train that you went on, then it was probably a trainee, trainer, or, if the railways do a similar thing to the aviation industry, that was a crew member on their way back to the depot in which they are stationed.
