LU Staffing arrangements

[Jim]

So I guess when all the lines are ATO and we get the drivers version of this company plan mark2 we'll be called something different like a train services agent possibly?

[railtechnician]

Nov 29, 2013 22:18:10 GMT Jim said:

So I guess when all the lines are ATO and we get the drivers version of this company plan mark2 we'll be called something different like a train services agent possibly?

Or how about ATM?

Automatic Train Monitor !

or perhaps PEO ?

Point End Observer

or for a really automatic system TP or even DP ?

Token Passenger or Default Passenger !!!!!!!!!!

However, you choose to look at it, with fully automatic trains a 'driver' will be predominantly a passenger.

Of course I have mentioned elsewhere in the past that 'driverless' trains might exist in future but not necessarily without a driver i.e. an off board driver in which case such a 'driver' might be an RTO or RTC

Remote Train Operator or Remote Train Controller

or more likely in an automated world RMTO 

Remote Multiple Train Operator

Thinking on, in a fully automated system one might merge the grade with Signal Operator and Service Controller as LSRCS or LSRCR

Line Service Remote Control Supervisor or Line Service Remote Control Regulator


What's in a title? 

 

[mrhappy]

When one man trains were due to come in, the provisional name was going to be one man operator (OMO). So glad that didnt happen! Ten years ago, TFL said automatic trains would be coming. But someone, a member of staff, would be somewhere on the train. Much like the docklands light railway.

[Nortube]

When the trains are driverless, they will probably name the person on the train "Cleaner"!

[railtechnician]

Nov 30, 2013 8:23:17 GMT mrhappy said:

When one man trains were due to come in, the provisional name was going to be one man operator (OMO). So glad that didnt happen! Ten years ago, TFL said automatic trains would be coming. But someone, a member of staff, would be somewhere on the train. Much like the docklands light railway.

Oh how I remember OMO ! When I began my LT service OMO signalling kit was installed but still wrapped up, plated off and covered up.

Some will recall the yellow emergency buttons plated up at all the Circle stations in the 1970s and drivers will surely recall the hessian sacking over the white lights with red cross and yellow diamond display board around the Circle line tunnels. Installed, never used and quietly removed as stations were 'modernised' in the 1980s. My recollection is that the last of the OMO signal heads in the tunnels came out in the very late 1980s and possibly as late as 1990.

Of course what followed in the early 1980s was the politically correct OPO and I had lots of work involving OPO cameras and monitors when we also began to extend to the line controllers black and white CCTV from the busier stations, Waterloo, Picc Circus, Oxford Circus, Tottenham Court Road, Baker Street, Euston etc. Initially the line controllers had all the PA controls too until Info Assistants were created. The first CCTV on the railway was a trial at Holborn in the 1960s, followed by the single channel Victoria line North and South (of Cobourg St) systems (the first service local and longline CCTV on the system) which incorporated longline PA on the same composite cable.

As for auto trains the technology was installed in the 1960s with the building of the Victoria line but history will suggest that no-one was willing to stick their neck out and trial it in service!