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The future of train driving
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RBSN
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I read your initial post up to ‘Driverless Trains’
You’ll have a very good career way before this happens on the mainline. I’m a driver and I can tell you it would take an unforgettable amount of money and time for this to happen.
You’ll have a very good career way before this happens on the mainline. I’m a driver and I can tell you it would take an unforgettable amount of money and time for this to happen.
The same was true of aircraft systems in the 1960s, yet by the 1990s pilots were flying transoceanic sectors with the computer in control all the way.
RBSN
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30 years is a long paperound
Indeed. But significantly less than the "hundreds of years" mooted earlier.
Although I'm not expert on railway technology, I have to agree with this comment in relation to the wider rate of tech change across sectors and industries. Technology advances at an exponential rate and surely, with such a process driven activity such as train driving, you would expect technology to quickly reach the stage where no driver is needed.
On the other hand, as many have pointed out, it's not just the technology being available, but the investment by rail companies and the network to implement it. Once again though, in the main as technology advances it seems to become cheaper to produce and to implement.
I suspect that there will be a train driver for quite a long time but, much like pilots, their workload is largely going to consist of monitoring the automation, and taking over in situations that the automation can't handle. Those interventions will likely be frequent to start with, but increasingly rare as the technology develops.
There's a lot of driverless projects abroad such as the TGV in France and Australian mining trains. The latter is driving freight in such a hellish landscape no-one wants to drive there.
I think in one country humans were actually reinstated. Then there's the recent major failure of a Paris driverless Driverless onky operated metro train
I'm sure many in this Government would be smacking their lips at driverless but yea it is years away. I think we can all agree it won't be in the next ten years at least especially with a recession looking likely
I think in one country humans were actually reinstated. Then there's the recent major failure of a Paris driverless Driverless onky operated metro train
I'm sure many in this Government would be smacking their lips at driverless but yea it is years away. I think we can all agree it won't be in the next ten years at least especially with a recession looking likely
Tom Quinne
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Bare in mind significant sections of railway are still controlled by a man in a wooden cabin at rhe line side pulling a steel lever, via pulleys and more wires rises or drops a sheet of steel to tell the human driver in his train built in the 1960s to stop or go!
driverless trains are a distant, distant dream.
driverless trains are a distant, distant dream.
Tom Quinne
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The aviation industry is always looking to technical solutions and isn’t afraid to buy them, the railway is always done on the cheap.
Anyone remember moving blocking signalling mooted in 2000s for the West Coast?
Even the moving block on LU is REDUCING capacity at some locations, no increasing it.
RBSN
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A very, very distant dream. I have 30 years to work and I am more than confident that we won’t see driverless trains on the mainline, not a chance.
This is more of a red-herring than it initially appears to be. An automated train could, today, determine its location to within a couple of metres. It could also, today, know the location of every signal on a route also with an accuracy of a few metres. It could also, today, be taught what a semaphore signal looks like in the on and off state.
Putting those together, recognising and responding to semaphore signals is a trival task as compared to what self-driving cars are capable of. Today.
In the 1960s the Jubilee line opened with ATO. In the 1980s the DLR opened and has been “driverless” since its inception.
The issue isn’t the technology. It’s antiquated signalling and the vast expense of upgrading the Victorian railway network.
As a train driver in 2020 I’m less worried about my job being automated than I would be if I did certain roles in financial services, or the legal sector.
Tom Quinne
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Im not doubting it technical possible, but U.K. Rail does things as cheap as possible.
That's where the technology has caught up to the problem. Between artificial vision and accurate positioning it's conceivable that at least semi-autonomous trains (with the driver monitoring the systems) could be on the network within a decade, two at the most.
I am not saying this to wish anyone out of a job, but.... A train attendant will probably attract a lot lower salary than a train driver, and there will probably be a lot of trains that need replacing over the next thirty years or so.
Spend an extra million or two on a train, to save £100K a year on salaries? Sounds about right for UK Rail.
Again let me know exactly when this stuff comes along. I believe this OP has nothing to worry about for his career. I distinctly remember about 5 years ago on this very forum, members posting that within a decade that the role of a train driver would be redundant. Well 5 years on and well it's looking like the decade prediction was nonsense. So forgive me if I call nonsense on your predictions! No doubt in another five years time there will be yet another thread like this predicting automated trains etc etc in a decade or two.
I’d suggest it’s inconceivable.
A few years in this industry and I’ve seen how resistant to change and antiquated the railway is, in terms of embracing technology.
I was speaking to one of the rest day kings at my depot the other day - he did £95k last year. And ASLEF haven’t even sold out the guards where I am.... Yet.
Plenty of good, hard, cash money to be earned in this industry, for many years yet.
And most likely in another 20 years. Absolute block will still be a thing, even then
.The railway is not unique in having institutional inertia. However there will come a point where it will be forced to adapt or die. That may be ten years from now, or it might be thirty. But it *will* come.
The march of automation is an irresistible force.
I don't think that time will ever come. 'The Railway' is uniquely placed and exists out of necessity, rather than luxury. That gives the industry the upper hand. Its one that will never 'die' Even now where there is around a 97% reduction of services, the Government stepped in to prop up the industry and trains are still running. Granted this is a unique situation but there is a reflection of how important the railway is to the country.
I'm no longer convinced of that. Maybe in some industries but there is a lot of evidence to say that automation isn't the great saviour its deemed to be and that the best way forward is to have a mix of human and machine. Even the DLR still has the fleshy part on board.
At present, yes. But other industries have been too important to fail but have more or less disappeared (e.g. coal mining).
Which is why, as I've said at least a couple of times, the most likely future is train drivers being replaced by train operators - much like the modern day pilot who might only have hands on controls from pushback up to 1,000ft, and from landing roll to gate. Most of the time they are just keeping an eye on the automation.
I appreciate that it's a sensitive topic given that many posters in this section of the forum are drivers. And I don't think that anyone who is currently posting is likely to find themselves chased out of a job by automation. But by the same token I'm sure the longer in the tooth members will look back at the job role when they started and realise that as much has changed about it as has stayed the same.
irish_rail
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However, with Boris now looking a dead cert to be PM for however long he wants, it does very slightly up the risk of driverless. Remember he hates train drivers and tried (unsuccessfully admittedly) to make the Tube fully driverless whilst London mayor.
Before current circumstances I had assumed Boris would be sent packing in 2025 and with it any chance of doing away with train drivers for ideological reasons, however now, it looks like Boris will likely have 10 years or longer if he wants it to try and fulfil his vision. I only hope this wave of Boris love wares off once he is fully recovered and up and running, but I have a fumnynfeeling he will go down in history in the same breath as Churchill, such is the quirkiness of the British public......
Before current circumstances I had assumed Boris would be sent packing in 2025 and with it any chance of doing away with train drivers for ideological reasons, however now, it looks like Boris will likely have 10 years or longer if he wants it to try and fulfil his vision. I only hope this wave of Boris love wares off once he is fully recovered and up and running, but I have a fumnynfeeling he will go down in history in the same breath as Churchill, such is the quirkiness of the British public......
Maybe, maybe not. I think that overall the majority of posters, that are Drivers, see the reality of it.
For sure. I'm one of those long in the tooth and I've seen automation slowly come in and I know that ATO will be in operation through the 'Core Section' any moment and that automation is coming. I am also someone who supports technology and personally can't wait for the next new thing. The elephant in the room really is that the railway is awful at implementing any technology. Just look at GSMR. Its already out of date and needs to be upgraded. GMSR itself is far more capable of what it actually does. The technology is deliberately held back and limited because of how it interact with 'The Railway'
Technophiles like yourself only really see how wonderful technology is and often fails to see its limitations in real world applications. I still find it weird that my train still doesn't have automated wipers, yet they are pretty much standard on new cars. 'The Railway' does not embrace new technology. Glacial doesn't bring to describe how slow it moves forward. A post I made in a different thread was discussing why we need new trains. I was stunned that others are against the idea because the current stock, that is 25yrs old, is more than capable and doesn't need to be updated 'just because' The industry really are happy to have units that are pushing 30yrs old before the get scrapped and modern units are brought in. No matter how amazing technology is, you still need to deal with 'The System'
When it comes to technology and the railway, I am reminded of the task of Sisyphus :/
Most of those limitations can be resolved - but it needs to be implemented first! That's the only way to get the data to build the models. It's a chicken v egg situation.
Early autopilots were abysmal, but as the issues were discovered the technology was updated (or replaced). As a result aircraft can now autoland in zero/zero conditions, the only limitation is that in those conditions visibility is often too low to be able to taxi to the stand.
All it will take is someone to work out how much money could be saved...
They don't want to resolve them.
Let's look at GSMR.
Effectively its a mobile phone and has the capabilities of a mobile phone. It is possible to make a call to any number, pretty much in the world. The system was designed so that you could call anyone. Need your DM ? Ring them direct on their mobile. Need the ECO ? call them direct. Need to call your Mum... That was possible too. However; a block has been put on direct dialing and you can only call the numbers in the phone book. We have signals that have telephone numbers posted so they can be called direct from the GSMR but guess what... its not possible because they blocked the direct dial function !!
Another possibility is that it can send text messages. It has a 4 line display and can send and receive text. The old CSR was very limited and when you press 'SG' the message you got back was a simple 'wait' GSMR enabled the Signaller to send a more bespoke message directly to the Driver. Guess what they did. Because it was deemed to be a distraction, the GSMR will still only send back a 'wait' message.
GSMR is actually quite clever but because the powers that be have decided that some of the technology isn't needed, will cost extra, could cause a distraction, etc etc. The tech is deliberately limited.
Take Southeastern. There was a derailment at Chileham. The GSMR has the ability to have a battery backup. However, this was optional to the TOCs and Southeastern decided against it. In the RAIB report it detailed the issues with how the GSMR was used. In one part the Driver did not flip back the MCB that would have rebooted the GSMR but Southeastern policy is to NOT reset an MCB.
Poor implementation, deliberate limitations, cost implications, poor usability, lack of integration, and all round ignorance of what technology is capable of.
And that's just the GSMR :/
Tube driver
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salary savings are not quite as large as you may think. DLR passenger service agents are only about £10-15k or so behind a tube drivers salary (low forties if I remember correctly). They’d still have a lot of responsibilities and be paid accordingly.
A phrase I posted myself.
New units are quite rare. The entire railway has an aging fleet and will still be hanging around and gathering dust in many many years to come. All that tech people want to squeeze into trains will only come with a new fleet. Again, because of 'the system' rolling stock has a life expectancy of 25 odd years. So to get ATO into trains you need to upgrade the fleet. Where units have long life expectancy and there is no desire to change a fleet, it really will take decades before there is any significant change because of issues surrounding any changes to the rolling stock.
The railway is adverse to change. I find it quite shocking at times and too many people are happy with the status quo. The railway has many many walls to overcome. I love tech but still see ATO as many years away.
Tom Quinne
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And most likely in another 20 years. Absolute block will still be a thing, even then
Even when the fantasy plan to have 13 ROCs National the last AB boxes lasted well into the 2040s...
Considering that’s been kicking into the long grass AB will continue into the 2050s and probably beyond that !
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