How Are You Supposed To Learn British Routes As A Driver?

In that case they either didn't have any or they care more about their railways to renew their infrastructure

Britain's railways, however, have a history of not being cared for and in some cases underfunded.

 

..which is exactly why I like the Brits. Germans are taking themselves way too seriously.

 

I edited my post. I know english humor very well. But still a bit hard to put that in here without any reasonable context.

 

Oh I'm becoming quite a fan of German humour, if Henning Wehn is representative. If not, he's an excellent ambassador

 

You missed my point - most countries do have a lot of rail infrastructure that dates from the 19th or early 20th centuries.

 

It wouldn't be the first time. Sorry.

 

So back on topic - it's all about route learning, which probably plays a bigger role in the UK than elsewhere.

My own humble self fails to learn a route when the HUD is on. When there's nothing else to watch except what's out there and your loco gauges, your brain starts going into learning mode, looking to memorize landmarks and braking points.

 

Yeah I think just running back and forth isn't effective. I found splitting it into sections and learning a bit at a time worked well, with an annotated diagram to jog my memory when needed. Landmarks are effective too, and sitting in the cab while the ai drives is useful too as you can make notes.
Running hudless focuses the mind too during the process. If you suddenly find yourself wondering what the speed limit is, you've just found a learning opportunity.

 

Me and my family, we like the Two Ronnies and Benny Hill very much. Discovered both just 1 to 2 years ago and they are a must see every few weeks at least.

"Clockwise" with John Cleese is also a very funny movie. We got it on DVD.

Plus of course, Mr. Bean. I guess there is nothing more to say about him.

On the other side, I don't know which german comedians made jokes in english or without any verbal actions like Charlie Chaplin. Most of them are funny because what they talk about just like in the UK or anywhere else in the world. I don't know Henning Wehn you mentioned, he is not very famous I guess. I need to do more research about him.

A comedian with much deeper and sterile humor to mention is Loriot (which would have got his 100th birthday these days and there are a lot of documentaries recently about him in TV because of that). Here are two of his most famous sketch cartoons. Also available with english subtitles:



But that just as the extremest extent of that off-topic german english relations note here.

 

This is just me personally, but what it comes down to is mostly experience. The more you drive the route, the more familiar you become with it. This is why simulators are a thing with UK railway companies, to get drivers the experience needed to operate on their signed routes and rolling stock.

Drivers do have some aids on the lines in reality that I use when driving hudless. Mile posts, signals, passing loops, yards or other landmarks play a big part in route learning.

One of the most commonly used aids I use are signals. When I pass a specific signal, I'll start counting signals until the next section that requires a significant change in speed or even an upcoming station. Signal counting is used by IRL drivers and even helps in the dark when visibility is poor.

It is difficult to learn UK routes, but it can be done. I can drive the WCML North on TS Classic hudless and a few other routes too.

 

Ive started doing the signal counting thing for speed limit changes and it works a treat. East Coastway Ive pretty much nailed now and I have to say its transformative driving hudless. It feels much more immersive, involved and rewarding.

 

It should be said that route learning on a simulator is more difficult then in real life, because on a simulator there are fewer small, unique details in the world around you and there’s usually quite a bit of use of generic items to make up a scene. As a result locations are less distinctive than they are in real life, and it’s easier to confuse one location for another.

On the other hand, real life Drivers have to be able to drive the route in darkness and in thick fog, whereas on a simulator you can just choose not to do that if you think your route knowledge isn’t going to be up to it.

 

Allow me to disagree. Yes British railway are much safer today than during the late 80s to early 00s horror show (from Clapham Junction to Potters Bar, sort of) and its unacceptable number of casualties. Still, the British rail system is inherently less safe than many of those on the continent.

The first issue is signalling and associated protection systems. It's trivially easy to SPAD on British railways, and while TPWS was a welcome addition, it was the cheaper option selected because (at the time) BR didn't believe the extra investment into ATP to prevent the few risks not covered by TPWS to be worth it in a textbook example of what I'd call Pinto economics, the sadly still live and kicking art of putting a price on human life (ie: the settlement agreed on at the end of the corporate manslaughter trial). TPWS simply lets the driver do mistakes that wouldn't be possible under German PZB (which has its own issues, mainly regarding ergonomics, but won't let anything other than a speeding super-heavy freight SPAD) or French KVB, to only cite contemporary systems I'm familiar with.

The second, much more concerning issue is a return of dangerous H&S issues with driving, maintenance and testing (or lack thereof, in the latter's case). Below a few excerpts from a selection of recent RAIB reports (which are nearly all good reads, and anyone with an interest in railway safety should keep a copy of the Clapham and Ladbroke reports close to them) :

Spoiler: Two trains in the same signal section at South Wingfield, Derbyshire, 26 October 2022.

At about 07:02 hrs on 26 October 2022, a train travelling between Derby and Chesterfield unexpectedly encountered a signal displaying a red (stop) aspect. The previous signal had displayed a green (proceed) aspect. As the train was travelling at 100 mph (161 km/h), it was unable to stop before the red signal and passed it by about 760 metres. The train’s driver called the signaller straight away to report the incident. About 17 minutes later, the following train approached the signal which was now displaying a yellow (caution) aspect. After passing the signal, while travelling at about 20 mph (32 km/h), the driver of the second train saw the taillights of the first train stationary ahead of it and braked to a controlled stop. The second train stopped about 75 metres from the rear of the first train, with both trains now in the same signal section. There were no significant consequences and both trains were able to continue their journeys after obtaining permission from the signaller.

The signal had displayed incorrect aspects to the drivers of the two trains as the wiring controlling its red and yellow aspects was crossed on two terminals in a nearby equipment cabinet, which was where a cable running to the signal was connected to the rest of the signalling system. This cable had been disconnected and reconnected during track engineering work the previous night and this work had introduced the wiring cross, which was not identified when the signal was tested afterwards. The testing was affected by a combination of time pressure, tester workload and possibly by unfamiliarity with the configuration of the signalling equipment. An underlying factor was that Network Rail had taken steps to assure the signal maintenance testing carried out by its own staff but had not yet included testers employed by contractors. A second underlying factor was that no one was carrying out any signalling related assurance activities when this type of track engineering work was taking place.

Spoiler: Near miss between a rail grinding train and an empty passenger train at Sileby Junction, Leicestershire, 5 May 2021.

At about 05:29 hrs on Wednesday 5 May 2021, a train made up of machines used for reprofiling (grinding) rails passed a signal at danger (red) at Sileby Junction, between Leicester and Loughborough, resulting in a near miss with an empty passenger train travelling in the opposite direction. The passenger train had cleared the junction less than 10 seconds before the rail grinding train reached it. There were no injuries or damage as a consequence, but the incident resulted in delays to several trains in the area.

The incident was caused by two factors. Firstly, the driver did not control the train’s speed to be able to stop at the signal at danger, probably due to fatigue. Secondly, although the train’s systems made an automatic emergency brake intervention, this did not stop the train before it reached a point at which it could collide with another train. A probable underlying factor was associated with the fatigue risk management processes used by the train operator.

Spoiler: Wrong side signalling failure and derailment at Dalwhinnie, Badenoch and Strathspey, 10 April 2021.

At around 03:01 hrs on 10 April 2021, an empty coaching stock train derailed at around 33 mph (53 km/h) after being wrongly diverted from the main line onto a crossover south of Dalwhinnie station, Badenoch and Strathspey. No one was injured. However, the consequences could have been much worse; the train could have been travelling much faster and carrying passengers or encountered a train travelling on the line to which the crossover led.

The train was wrongly diverted because, even though the signaller had recently called the double-ended set of points to be in a position for the route along the main line, the points at the facing end of the crossover had remained set towards the crossover, while the points at the trailing end had moved to the correct position. The signaller was able to clear the protecting signal, which allowed the train to approach the crossover in this condition, because of a wiring error in the signalling system that was introduced when the point machine at the trailing end was replaced some nine months earlier.

Spoiler: Collision at London Waterloo, 15 August 2017.

At around 05:42 hrs on Tuesday 15 August 2017, a passenger train was leaving London Waterloo station when it collided with a stationary engineering train at a speed of 13 mph (21 km/h). No injuries were reported but both trains were damaged and there was serious disruption to train services until the middle of the following day.

The passenger train was diverted away from its intended route by a set of points which were positioned incorrectly as a result of uncontrolled wiring added to the signalling system. This wiring was added to overcome a problem that was encountered while testing signalling system modifications which were being made as part of a project to increase station capacity. The problem arose because the test equipment design process had not allowed for alterations being made to the signalling system after the test equipment was designed.

The actions of a functional tester were inconsistent with the competence expected of testers. As a consequence, the uncontrolled wiring was added without the safeguards required by Network Rail signalling works testing standards, and remained in place when the line was returned to service.

Regarding those accidents and near-misses linked to signalling maintenance, I have nothing to add to RAIB's own conclusion :

That is a serious issue, one that cannot be covered by safety systems, and if it is not remedied, we won't have to wait long for another triple-digit casualties accident.

I'm also not saying this is exclusively a British problem, of the top of my head there are similar situations happening in France (a crossover on the recent Bretagne - Pays de la Loire LGV being wrongly limited to 160 km/h by the TVM instead of 100, an issue that was only discovered after years of operations, the first time a TGV was routed over it instead of the usual freight services, and of course the Bretigny crash). There's Greece showing what late-stage lack of infrastructure investments looks like. There are probably many other such incidents, accidents and catastrophes-in-waiting happening all over what should be modern and safe rail networks, because everywhere the culture of railway safety loses ground to purely economical considerations.

To put it in the words of my first teacher in railway technologies, passing a signal at danger is murder. To elaborate on it, I'd add that any top manager cutting funds, any middle manager disregarding H&S and employee welfare, any technician calling it "good enough" and any tester signing it on are accomplices.

 

Good thing about PZB is it's pretty much fail safe. Magnets are active when unpowered (by either maintenance, outage or sabotage), so they'll stop the train in that case. Most accidents are down to dispatcher errors, and with the introduction of PZB90's restrictive mode all thinkable driver related errors were addressed. To fool the system you must be doing it on purpose - and will probably spend a lot of time in jail depending on the outcome.

 

The unfortunate matter of fact is that a price can and must be placed on human life. Otherwise we would have no transportation at all.

Regarding whether or not TPWS's deficiencies are serious, it must be noted that accidents that would have been prevented by ATP but not TPWS have been extremely few, and that generally Britain does not have a poorer rail safety record than the Continent.

 

Route signalling vs. speed signalling. Look it up.

That should answer OPs question.

 

Thankfully, "deenergize to trip" is essentially a universal design principle in any kind of signalling system.

I entirely agree, PZB90 is virtually foolproof, it however comes at a cost regarding line capacity and in a perfect DB-netz I'd want some way to, safely, release PZB supervision when the signal clears during a station stop or right after passing an active 500 Hz magnet. In France that's the difference between KVB and KVBP, the latter completing the former's punctual beacons (PZB-like) with a continuous information (carried by the rails, similarly to coded track circuit) on the final approach to the signal.

There is a significant difference between rail and other forms of transportation when it comes to avoiding accidents: the only course of action available to a train driver is stopping. There's no swerving around an obstacle like you'd do in your car. There's no going around like a plane pilot who messed up its approach. There's one single option, one single try.
Now that train driver will make a mistake some day. In fact if I look at technical guides produced by French transportation regulators for the design of light or secondary railways (and other permanently guided modes) signalling systems, it's expected that on average a driver will mess up once every 1000 hours (mainline signalling systems wrong-side failures are tolerated once every 100 million to 1 billion hours -i.e.: never- in comparison).
The only thing allowing railways to skimp on safety is their de-facto (and absolutely logical, imo) monopoly on infrastructure. If you're a driver unhappy with your Ford barbecue that seats four, you can go to GM for your next car purchase (it was an exaggerated issue btw, the Pintos didn't actually catch fire more than other cars of the time, what cost Ford in the end was the publicized cost-analysis of making the car safer vs. settling a few trials), if you're an airline operator unhappy with Boeing 737 more or less crashing themselves due to questionable software and poor safety culture, you can shop at Airbus for your next signle-aisle fleet renewal.
If you're a train operating company? Well in that case you're stuck with your railway infrastructure manager for better or worse. I'm a firm believer in spidermanism: with great power comes great responsability, and it's an RIM responsability to ensure that the train will always be stopped, no matter what voluntary or involuntary human errors happen in the driver's cab or signaler's box.
The systems to prevent trains crashing into each-other or speeding through points or other speed restrictions exist, they have existed for about half a century as a matter of fact. They're not even that expensive nowadays in regards to the admitted cost of life (because you are right in a way, we do have to put a cost on it at some point) and they're downright cheap compared to the societal and reputational costs.
To get back to my assessment of British railways safety record, Railtrack was an embodiment of criminal negligence. Network Rail isn't, It is still a respectable RIM but it must not ignore that things are deteriorating and wait for new regulations to be penned with the blood of avoidable victims.
My fear is that a company whose policy is to do without a near-absolutely safe system because there is a safe-enough alternative on offer is the kind that will settle for a constantly deteriorating "good enough" safety culture. There's no question where that road leads.

It's a false debate. Neither allows a driver to operate a train safely without line knowledge, it doesn't matter wether the signal tells you you're being routed on a diverging line (and you're expected to reduce speed accordingly) or if it tells you you have to slow down (at which point you'll reasonably expect to be routed on a diverging line). Modern European signalling systems mix both route and speed signalling, favoring one but completing it with the other (for instance, the British practice of approach release from yellow, where you'll meet in sequence a speed warning indicator, a flashing yellow and a yellow with feather is both speed and route signalling. Ditto for the occasional route indicators on German Hauptsignals)

 

Hard agree. In fact, the first test deployments of Indusi (PZB) were as early as 1927.

I think it does matter. The speed limit is always safety critical information, while the exact route you're taking usually isn't. Making the driver derive the safety critical information from the less important one instead of telling them upfront introduces an additional step and thus, additional opportunity for human error.

I don't mean to call out you specifically, as I've heard this said a lot of times in conversations like this, but I don't think this is a good argument.

First, because Germany's railways are, in fact, also very safe. I don't have any statistics that would show either Germany or the UK to have a safer railway than the other. However, I do find it interesting that this sort of debate usually goes the same specific way: someone points out a specific UK procedure or system they believe to be less safe than its UK counterpart, and they get the reply that British Railways are one of the safest in the world. That may be true, but it doesn't really answer the original question, does it?

Second, because the development of operating procedures for railways has historically taken place in parallel in different places that weren't really talking to one another, it is entirely possible that two countries may achieve safety records of the same high qualities in totally different ways from one another, and that both might be able to make their railway even safer by learning from one another. It's also possible that a country with a railway that is, on the whole, a lot less safe than the your own, might still have better systems or procedures in one specific area.

It's easy to make the assumption that every country is trying to do essentially the same one thing -- run a railway -- and that the safety statistics they achieve relate more or less directly to how good they are at that. But operating philosophies in different parts of the world are so different that this isn't really the case at all. Different operating philosophies achieve a very similar degree of safety in wildly different ways, but they also each have their shortcomings. If you never compare what you're doing to the way others do it -- and "don't forget Britain's railways are one of the safest in the world" often feels like an attempt to shut down or invalidate that kind of comparison -- it becomes very easy to accept and not even notice the issues with "your own" system.

This is not a purely British problem; Germans will react in pretty much the same way if you point out to them that almost no other country has anything comparable to the German Ersatzsignal...

 

…except for TPWS. Without power, TPWS grids are just lumps of oddly shaped metal between the rails. AWS, however, does fail safe in this sense.

I consider TPWS a big missed opportunity, because the Japanese already had a system that was equally inexpensive to deploy, but actually safer - ATS-Ps. I think this could have been adapted to British practice without very much difficulty. Some background is in order:

Japanese safety systems can be divided into three main categories. The most famous is ATC, which is required on the Shinkansen because the line speeds are too high to read lineside signals. The original version was later called "analogue ATC", based on a system of simple tones used as a combination of track-circuit current and signalling to trains, and has been replaced by "digital ATC" which does the same thing with a modulated carrier. As well as the Shinkansen, a few individual "conventional" lines have been fitted with ATC, notably the Yamanote and some underground metros. ATC has the virtue of promptly informing trains of sections clearing ahead, but is less specific as to the precise location of restrictions ahead. Analogue ATC can be compared directly with the Dutch ATB system, and Digital ATC with LZB.

The other "gold standard" in Japan is ATS-P (not to be confused with ATS-Ps which I mentioned earlier). This was rolled out on some high-traffic conventional lines shortly after the JNR-to-JR transition, after some high-profile accidents (eg. Amagasaki) which highlighted the need for an engineered safeguard against overspeeding. Mere procedural compliance was found to be fallible in the high-pressure working environment of a Japanese commuter railway. ATS-P is a "digital beacon" based system calculating safe deceleration curves, which is considered to be rather expensive to deploy - though the cost has reduced with improving technology - and thus is only installed (on both trains and track) when the traffic intensity justifies it. ATS-P has the virtue of staying firmly out of the driver's way (unlike PZB!), as long as he is driving within the safe envelope, and thus allows him to apply aggressive-but-safe driving techniques when required to maintain the schedule, but will intervene in time to save the train from genuine lapses. Because it is a beacon-based system, the train is only informed of signals clearing ahead when it passes the next beacon. In this sense it can be directly compared with BR-ATP.

The third category is the extensive family of "budget option" safety systems based on the "S-type beacon". Most of the members of this family are minor variants employed by the vast number of private-sector railways in Japan. The principal variants used on the JR network are ATS-Sx, ATS-Ps, and ATS-Dx. The "S-type beacon" is a very simple LC resonant-tank device whose frequency can optionally be changed by energising a relay, bringing a second capacitor into or out of circuit with the inductor. A transceiver on the train continuously sends an energising frequency down towards the beacon's installation position on the track (which is off-centre and thus specific to travel direction), and listens for the different response frequencies coming back. Thus this is a failsafe system from the point of view of the track equipment.

At the time of the JNR-to-JR transition, only ATS-Sx was deployed in this category. This is already equivalent in functionality to AWS plus TPWS. There is an "S long" beacon which warns specifically of a signal at Danger at approximately braking distance ahead; the driver must acknowledge the warning and then receives a continuous audible reminder. There is also an "absolute stop" beacon which is typically installed alongside signals. Pairs of speed-check beacons can also be provided, though since they only verify the train's instantaneous speed, the protection provided has the same limitations as TPWS, and consequently they are not comprehensively installed. In some locations, though, you can see a very dense sequence of these speed-check beacons followed by an absolute-stop beacon on approach to a stop hazard, such as a converging junction or a buffer stop - which in part illustrates how inexpensive an S-type beacon is. The on-train equipment is also relatively straightforward to implement using discrete electronic components.

After the practical installation costs of ATS-P were realised (in particular, the required on-train equipment was complex and bulky before the advent of sufficiently reliable microprocessors), a less expensive alternative was sought, which could provide just the most vital aspects of its protection. This resulted in ATS-Ps, which is "pattern-based ATS using S-type beacons". Additional beacon frequencies were allocated to the new functionality, which are ignored by ATS-Sx equipment. A sequence of five S-type beacons is sufficient to protect a stop signal with a 650m braking curve, including the provision of "S long" and absolute-stop beacons (retained from ATS-Sx). A pair of beacons can also be installed to protect a speed-limit hazard with a 550m braking curve, with an additional pair marking the end of the restriction. Up to six braking curves can be active simultaneously (for two consecutive signals, and one speed limit of each of four types).

In the 21st century, microprocessor technology has actually become cheaper than discrete analogue circuitry. This prompted the outlying JR regions, Hokkaido and Kyushu, to develop ATS-Dx. The new D-type beacons retain the resonant tank of an S-type beacon, and can thus provide ATS-Sx protection to trains still carrying older S-type on-board equipment. Overlaid on this is an additional carrier providing telegrams which primarily inform the train of its precise location, and the state of signals and junctions ahead. The on-board equipment correlates this with an on-board database and a continuous distance-travelled measurement to calculate the necessary braking curves. In essence the train itself now relies on route knowledge and landmarks.

 

But the fact of the matter is that you will always have to settle for "safe enough". The only question is what you consider safe enough.

 

Then at the opposite end of the scale, there are some railways in the world that still rely on timetable and train order variance to control traffic. Not sure how it’s done now but several times in Canada travelled on lines that relied on that or similar systems - CNR out to Prince Rupert, BC Rail (as it was then) from Prince George to North Vancouver and Algoma Central - barely a fixed signal in sight let alone any safety gadgetry.

 

nothing is easy here, everything takes decades of consultation & planning before the funding is cut and it never gets done. then we get a cutdown version of it later on; like the pacer instead of a good DMU, HST instead of an actual high speed train, or TPWS instead of ATP

 

Which is why I said TPWS was a huge missed opportunity. For very little extra cost, it could have been a significantly more capable system, providing more protection but with less interference with driving technique.

In fact, even at the same cost of ground infrastructure it could have been improved by defining the speed check as applying some proportionate distance in-advance of the actual grid position. This would have allowed the same sequences of grid pairs, operating on the same frequencies but positioned differently, to provide a braking curve from any speed without any protection holes in it. The on-board equipment would have needed to be a little bit smarter - which isn't a problem since reliable microprocessors were readily available by then - and to be linked to a speed/distance sensor on the vehicle, which doesn't seem to be a big ask. The Japanese already showed how to do it.

We can blame the Treasury for a lot of things. TPWS' limitations, however, are an engineering failure, not one of fiscal policy.

 

the treasury image was just for a joke
but what i was thinking is that if railtrack had never taken over then things might of been different, and instead of the current TPWS we would have something better under a fully funded british rail.

 

Shareholder dividend or slightly better safety system...
I wonder which one will win..

 

The choice is not between shareholder dividend and unlimited money to spend on improving safety. It's between shareholder dividend and expenditure being dictated by government, i.e. MPs primarily concerned with retaining their seats. There are very few votes in better safety (or other) systems, which is why BR ended in such a parlous state.

 

Who said anything about unlimited money...

 

Replace 'unlimited' with 'more' if it helps you understand my post. There's a simplistic argument that says "look at the money going out of this industry in dividends, if we nationalised it, that would all be spent on internal improvements". Experience teaches us this does not happen.

Dividends are analogous to interest payments on borrowed money. If you've identified a way to borrow money without paying interest, we'd all be interested to hear of it.

 

Is see in-cab signalling is coming to the ECML and a freight company (I forget which, Freightliner maybe?) has constructed a purpose built training centre for it. It’s a start I guess.

 

P

I understood it just fine, as well as the patronising tone of your second. You however clearly failed to understand my own. That's fine though.
Clearly dividends are going to be paid. Clearly investment needs to be attracted. Clearly a choice has to be made on economic grounds on the merits of safety systems.
You appear to have misunderstood my post as some sort of advocate for renationalisation.
As regards interest, you might want to look at Islamic banking.
I quote from the BofE-
"Linked to this way of thinking about money, is the idea that you shouldn’t make money from money. This means that wherever possible, getting involved in interest by either paying or receiving it should be avoided."

 

There’s nothing wrong with shareholders or dividends. The problem comes when management run the company for their benefit only, something that happens too much these days.

 

Well, for an in-thread example :

I do not consider that good enough and, frankly, am shocked that an energize to trip setup can be considered a safety system. That design would allow SPADs with only two concomitant failures:

1. Loss of power to the TPWS grid, which is a plausible failure mode (rodents nibbling at the cables, tripped breaker due to lightning or flooding...),
2. A fatigued, zoned-out or under the influence driver reflexively resetting AWS at every blare of the horn without actually observing the signals. The way 4-aspects block work, I'd argue that British railways are significantly more at risk for this to happen on busy lines as a driver following an other service may run into a lot of double yellows and a few yellows without expecting to be stopped, making "offense by habit" more likely.

Forget the ATP vs. TPWS cost-benefit analysis, I'd now really like to see the calculations that led TPWS project leads to favor their design over a similar but de-energize to trip one (which wouldn't be rocket science, as said above Germany managed that with the first iteration of Indusi, nearly a century ago, and it only costs a train borne frequency generator)

 

Ask Rail UK Forums, I'm sure there's someone familiar with the history there.

 

I'll give you my mum's phone number

 

Right now, what we have is expenditure being dictated by government and then some of that expenditure being siphoned off as profit/dividends - at least on the operations end of things. Even for the parts that really are effectively public-sector again, the revenue goes straight to the Treasury while the cost side is managed by the DafT, so there's no balance of one against the other as there would be in a normal business (and, indeed, as there was under BR). It's the worst of all possible worlds, resulting in a focus on reducing costs rather than on investing in revenue growth. The recent ticket office debacle is emblematic; BR would never have even considered such a drastic scheme.

The abandonment of ATP coincided with the privatisation of railway infrastructure and thus the creation of Railtrack. BR had been completely in favour of a comprehensive deployment of ATP; Railtrack decided that it was not worth the cost on a "price per life saved" projection - though the gap was not very large when a "deploy at high-risk sites only" model was projected. It was later noted that Railtrack was heavily focused on cost reductions in the name of profit, resulting in substantially reduced investment and increases in deferred maintenance compared to BR.

So Railtrack were looking for a cheaper solution, and came up with TPWS (with the defects I've already described). It took roughly a decade longer, however, to develop and widely deploy TPWS than a similar rollout of ATP would have done - and meanwhile several accidents that ATP could have prevented did occur, as well as several more accidents related to other aspects of Railtrack's cost-focused approach. The resulting maintenance debt resulted in Railtrack being renationalised as Network Rail, but the damage to the British railway R&D industry is permanent.

None of this was inevitable. Had privatisation not gone ahead, BR would have deployed ATP more widely, and possibly economies of scale would have helped to allow eventually deploying nationwide. If, on the other hand, ATP was indeed seen as not cost-effective on a national scale, then a less neurotically cost-focused BR might still have deployed it on the main lines (as a standard InterCity sector practice, for example), and then considered consulting the Japanese about what they did on their less intensively worked lines, incorporating that experience into some revised version of TPWS.

 

For me the way to judge a Railway in any country is to see the access to it and the safety record. Probably Japan is ahead of the pack but Britain's Railway also has a good safety record especially in the last Twenty years or so. If I recall correctly Germany had the most devastating high speed crash with the ICE1 no?

I won't delude myself by saying our Railway is the best but before you start singling out the UK there are many worse. Have you seen the state of the Rails in some US routes? Plenty on youtube but I digress.

I think the UK's problems started with Beeching in the 60's and lacking of investment since. Then you have the unions which are a pain in the arse and they are too expensive. Can't wait for Auto trains across the whole network to sort that one out, lol. But if you think Britain's railway is the only one that suffers these problems they are NOT.

 

I think it started sooner than.
After WW2, most of Europe and Japan had a relatively blank canvas from which to start afresh.
We, the UK still had our Victorian infrastructure more or less intact and so we soldiered on with what we had. Similarly the Rolling Stock was certainly war weary, but with coal mining still being a viable industry and we had it in abundance we continued with what we had. The make do and mend approach, certainly considering Government investment priorities where elsewhere(roads). Trains were considered 'yesterdays technology' to a degree.
Look at the shift to Diesel, all those war industries needing business and so we got the plethora of classes whether good or bad in all shapes and sizes. All designed for that nuances of that inherited infrastructure.
And I guess the attitudes of the day wouldn't have been particularly welcoming had the suggestions of ' a vigilance system' been banded about. You try telling a forties driver that and you'd probably find yourself eating your own teeth!!
We've always had a problem with government investment in the railways, WCML electrification finally completed in the 70's! ECML the 90's!
HS2 debacle in the 2020's!
And here we are in 2023 with our Victorian infrastructure still going strong!!

 

While the UK has had some tragic and high profile accidents in the last 30 years, surprisingly (to me as a Swede where cab signalling and "positive stop" equivalent systems are ubiquitous on railways) it has one of the lowest railway fatality rates. So the Brits are doing something right at least, even if that puts a high demand on driver vigilance

 

That was what I was trying to say, thanks cwf.Green. Even though undoubtedly the UK has problems with it's Railway the safety speaks for itself. My favourite Era's of our Railway was when it first started and then round the 60's - late 80's. It was starved of resources and crying out for resources but again I think it a tad unfair the UK is being singled out for this even though it is a great shame.

 

If I take anything from all of this it the respect I have for what our Drivers had and still have to put up with. How much emphasis is placed upon the Driver and his skills.

 

I understood your post to say that there's a choice between paying dividends and investing in safety (because that's what it said). If you wish to change your mind, then that's fine by me. Sorry if that sounds 'patronising' to you.

 

Yup you misunderstood my post. Disingenuous apologies are also not required.

 

If you wish to claim that means something other than what it actually says, that's up to you. But don't be too surprised if others find it a little confusing.

 

True enough; but I would observe that speed is something the driver CAN control, whereas routing is something he CANNOT control.

 

As much as Beeching is a four-letter word among rail enthusiasts, but for him the situation would be far, far worse: BR and its successors forced to stretch finite revenue/tax funds over a far larger quantity of trackage and stations which were a net drain on said revenue.

 

Can't speak for the whole of the UK but where I live the surrounding towns lost their stations which make no sense and easily be profitable. Beeching's closures wasn't just about profits it was politics as well. Easily the largest town in my area lost its station but is left with a pub called the 'Railway Inn'.

I can see a valid argument for closing down small stations that were not used but not bigger towns. I live next to a smaller market town which used to be an 'end' station but they closed that as well although there is a little steam Railway kept alive through donations. I think they have 3 Gronks, lol and they have special trains appear on the line from time to time, they had the 'Polar Express' last year I think.