Methods of door operation and despatch and staffing onboard trains.

[foggy69]

But having two people involved greatly increases the chance of mis-communication.

The only 'communication' during normal working is 2 on the bell from the guard to the driver for right away.
Although this has caused SPAD's in the past when a guard has mistakenly given 2 on the bell at a red and the driver has started the train, with changes to the rules book and the advent of the DRA, this reduced the risk of a SPAD.
Again, if one member of staff makes a mistake, it is more likely to be picked up by the other and mitigate it.

 

[TurboMan]

No, ASDO on 745 and 755s is a GPS based system it only knows that you have stopped in the location of the stationary what station it should be, if you stop at a signal just outside the station the ASDO system will engage and give you the option to release the doors, sometimes it doesn't know what station you have stopped at so you have to select it manually, checking is mandatory.

Regarding 3 it is also mandatory to check the ASDO has deselected doors on a platform shorter than the train, on what planet would you not check the ASDO screen to confirm the appropriate doors are locked out?

If it doesn't know what station you've stopped at, and can't be relied upon to release the correct number of doors then that's an appalling system and should never have been accepted, and/or has a database that has never been fully network tested and validated. It's anything but automatic - there's a very good reason why the relevant RIS strongly discourages any sort of manual intervention in the operation of an SDO system. I think I can guess at the manufacturer, which explains a lot (and if it is, then it'll be the system that GWR are fitting to the 16x fleet which is taking forever because of the need for numerous changes to the core functionality to make it work correctly).

The SDO system on 387s and anything else Electrostar is possibly one of the oldest systems around but just seems to work without any of the issues that newer systems seem to suffer from. I've never needed to check the door release pattern before releasing doors on any Electrostar.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 30 May 2024 ==

Shouldn’t, but then look at the late notices for Class 80x SDO alterations where they can offer you the wrong door release pattern.

In a perfect world everything works right every time, ASDO is a wonderful thing but checking it’s actually got the correct door release pattern for the correct station is just good practise as spending 1/2seconds confirming the information presented to you is better than having doors released off platform, even more so when you are doing an ad-hoc move.

387’s will of course just give you the default door release pattern for that station and then after pressing release tell you it can’t pick up the SDO information

800’s will ask you to reconfirm the platform if it isn’t sure where you are but I’d rather be 100% sure in the first place but checking what platform it thinks we are at before releasing doors

The system on the 800s was designed by Hitachi to work with Eurobalises. But when the fleets were introduced no-one wanted to spend money installing the balises. Hence the need for platform confirmation and all sorts of unnecessary manual interventions. It is instead reliant on a database, but there is no means of updating the database in anything approaching a timely manner - it takes months, which for a safety critical system is not good.

The problem with checking the door release pattern/station every time is that the TMS is on the right, which has given rise to several wrong-side door releases as it draws the driver's attention to what is usually the unplatformed side of the train. The poor system design/implementation has passed all the risk to the driver which should never have happened. That seems to be a common theme with newer traction that promises a lot but often fails to deliver.