Govia Thameslink Railway’s Dominic Morrow considers route knowledge retention in the 21st century.
Among other things, it underpins and supports many technical tasks, says Govia Thameslink Railway’s Dominic Morrow.
Route knowledge is an important part of the knowledge needed to perform the driving task. One of the many advances made over the last 25 years is its management, with formal learning plans and risk-based assessments to support us.
This in no small way has contributed to a reduction in SPADs and a significant reduction in speeding events, including derailments associated with speeding.
Route knowledge underpins and supports many technical tasks, and the Rail Industry Standard RIS-3702-TOM Issue 3 has been adopted across all Govia Thameslink Railway brands to use both non-technical skills and tech to support route learning and route retention.
The need for a driver to rely on the retention of key information to operate trains is far less frequent. While old rhyming reminders such as ‘during fog and falling snow to the signal box I must go’ are now consigned to history, route knowledge is not all about committing information to memory.
Less than 50% of signals are fitted with TPWS overspeed sensors or train stops. Here, the GSM-R radio is a driver’s ‘best friend’ in as much that, during rarely made movements or if clarification is needed for any movement, the driver can immediately contact a signaller or person in charge of the movement, from the safety and comfort of the cab.
The GTR Route School has been working in collaboration with an external supplier of track videos for nearly 10 years, producing route videos to facilitate the learning of the route and route knowledge retention. The route is filmed from the driving cab and the footage is submitted to the external company, which has the expertise to edit the footage. This footage is married to the route guides produced by the Route School and the result is a scrolling map that is synchronised to the cab video view.
This method supports drivers during their route learning and route refreshing. This resource is available to all GTR employees to use and proves valuable not only to drivers but to route controllers, driver managers, driver instructors, network rail signal sighting managers and anyone who has an interest in the routes we operate over.
The material has also been used throughout Sussex for drivers who operate autumn treatment trains to refresh on routes without having to ride in a GTR driving cab. It was also invaluable during autumn 2020 and 2021 when Covid restrictions applied.