Making that call
The latest RED looks at the importance of safety critical communications in rail ops and considers some of the pitfalls.
We all know that safety critical comms (SCC) is a vital part of running a railway safely and efficiently. Get it right, and everything runs smoothly. Get it wrong, and there can be damage to the infrastructure, injury, or even worse. Research has shown SCC to be a contributing factor to one-in-five accidents, and 17% of SPADs. Poor SCC can be confusing, and confusion is the enemy of safety.
All that said, some of us avoid using SCC, thinking it’s too formal or too robotic. And there’s no question that it can feel uncomfortable talking that way at first, or even silly. But it’s important to understand that SCC helps us make sure we say what we mean to and the person at the other end gets it. It’s also one of the things that makes us part of a wider community, part of the railway family. After all, SCC is the same whether you’re a shunter, signaller, driver, dispatcher, or director.
RED 69 takes a close look at what SCC is, what good looks like, and what can happen when things go wrong. We love an acronym in this industry, and SCC is no exception. As Claire Repeti, Operations Manager at Rail Partners, and Barbara Smith, RSSB’s Principal Rail Operations Specialist, remind us, it’s all about ABCP. So keep SCC: accurate, brief, clear, and professional.
This means cutting the slang and using the phonetic alphabet and the 24-hour clock.
The dramatisation in this latest RED uses a fictional trespass incident to help demonstrate safety critical communication errors by including several mistakes. See if you can spot them all. If you can, you’ll be less likely to make them yourself.
Rule Book module TW1 gives the procedures for reporting trespassers and making and receiving emergency calls. Each scenario is different, so drivers can decide what level of GSM-R call to make. Usually, it will be either an urgent call or a railway emergency group call (REC).
Urgent calls are between the signaller and one driver. They should be made when there is only one train involved in an incident. A REC is able to stop all trains within the cells around it. The call is broadcast to all of the GSM-R handsets in those cells. RECs should be made when all trains in that area need to be stopped immediately—like when there’s an obstruction on the line. If we’d had GSM-R and the ability to make a REC in 1984, the fatal collision at Polmont wouldn’t have happened. You can read the report into the Polmont by searching ‘Polmont’ the Railways Archive.
You can find out more information on when to use urgent calls and RECs in Rule Book module RS523.