Tube strike

Train drivers are there for the protection of the passengers and maintenance staff.

Also the train is not fully automatic there is something called a deadman's handle which the driver has to hold at all times. This was introduced because of the Moorgate disaster when the driver possibly had a heart attack and sped up the train causing it to crash into the end of a tunnel. The train is automated to a point but the driver still has control. The DLR has automated trains but always has a person on board in case something goes wrong. Besides it also overground and doesn't reach the speeds that the tunnel trains can do.

Drivers have to slow down for maintenance staff on the track while it's live and stop if signals need to repaired quickly. The signal technician goes through the door at the front of the train. Stopping the train protects the signal technician from being hit by another train. This wouldn't be possible by someone sitting in an office or a computer making all these decisions.

The signalling system is currently automated and this in itself leads to problems almost everyday somewhere on the line that a problem has to be investigated by a signal technician so they can keep the service running. If the trains themselves were automated then this would lead to more failures and more delays.

48k is pretty small fry compared to what some others get on the network. But these people are essential to the system otherwise it would collapse. These people can't just be replaced with cheaper people either as they went through years of training as well as apprenticeships to be justified this wage.

 

Signal technician = Lamp changer
Driver = Feed the monkey sat next to you.
Dead mans handle, automatic as seen in Mercedes cars if you get too close to the car in front you stop automatically

Anyone needing years of training to do a manual job, should not be doing that job

Plate layers hand book, Hail,rain, wind or snow, to the Cabin you must go
Plate layers prayer Lord if it be in thy power, let it rain till half past four

Jack McH

 

My other half is a signal technician on London Underground (I should have perhaps mentioned this earlier) and they hardly ever change lamps. The signalling and points system is more complicated than you and most people realise which does require years of training, HNC qualifications in electrical engineering, 3 years in college before hand, also courses every year to keep them up to date on improvements on the track etc etc. Plenty of people think it's just someone changing a lamp and it would be nice to one day open the eyes of these ignorant people and drop them right in the thick of it as signal maintenance don't get the credit they deserve in my opinion.

 

I have a sneaking suspicion that the same is true of every industry.

In mine for example, we have a running joke that people think we press a few buttons and some magic happens.

My industry also has to live with all the jokes about the millenium bug. All that hype, and then nothing happened. Well yes, there is a reason why nothing happened. That reason is that I and many thousands like me worked like blue bottomed flies, for very long hours, often living off pizza and caffeine for weeks to ensure that when that clock ticked over at midnight on 01/01/2000, the machines didn't suddenly think it was 1900, everyone's bank accounts didn't automatically lock when integrity checks saw transactions in the future and assumed they'd been hacked, scheduled events were not missed because the computer thought it still had 100 years before it was supposed to do something etc etc. All goes unnoticed, unless you're directly involved.

 

I would never have guessed :-)
Where did I get the plate layers prayer from ?

Jack McH

 

Because he was coaching you for a career in the RAF

Jack McH