Cork Area Services

[Donal Quinn]

the question is - was this a fudge or have some of the crappy practices on both sides been sorted out?

[ThomasJ]

Originally Posted by Donalq

the question is - was this a fudge or have some of the crappy practices on both sides been sorted out?

I hope so! Too many times issues like these crop up again and again. Lessons need to be learned. Something needs to come out of the past week, hopefully the talks have done that!

[Mark]

I know its not as black and white as this but isnt it amusing that the drivers complain that they work too many days and that IE havent increased their numbers while refusing to train new drivers?

[Mark Gleeson]

They changed the training program compared to the one agreed back in 2000. The whole driver mentor thing

Had a driver been rostered specifically for the job on Thursday there would not have been a problem. That was the normal case

A large amount of the training requires the trainees to sit with a driver and simply watch and learn the road thats the biggest part of the training course, however a driver has the right to operate alone, indeed in the UK recently trained drivers are not allowed to have someone with them. The practical drive under supervision is actually a very small part of the job

[ACustomer]

Two points: the return to normal service does not seem to be exactly a matter of urgency: nothing restored to-day. And this coming from drivers who said a few days ago that they wanted to drive and were being prevented from doing so.

Also "a driver has the right to operate alone". That really made me laugh. Do you mean that hey are unwilling to have a trainee colleague sit alongside and learn the road. Any normal person should love to have someone along to whom they can pass on a few comments. Don't tell me they might be distracted: after all drivers in the UK used to go on strike in defence of double-manning in the (alleged) interest of safety.

There has been far too much mollycoddling of drivers in this descussion.

[Mark Gleeson]

One of the key causes of accidents is getting confused as to where you are,

Obviously in 99% of cases there isn't a problem to have someone else in the cab once they have the right pass

Since the line Cobh Cork, Cork Mallow and Mallow Tralee haven't seen a train in Thursday last a test train has to run to confirm the line is clear, also several of the trains need to be inspected since they have gone too long without a routine maintenance inspection obviously that can't be done if its not in Cork station, of course Cork was short serviceable trains anyway

There should be something running today, assuming there are trains in the right place to run the service

For Friday the 7:15 Tralee Dublin likely to be canceled or run only from Mallow

[dowlingm]

As a layman, I can understand why a driver would have to be "type-rated" to a specific train but not why the driver would have to be cleared on a given line. After all, buses can be chartered to anywhere you like without a prior visit, as can aircraft.

I'm sure there's a good reason for it - stuff like acceleration/deceleration profiles so you stop accurately on the platform, who to ring when the LC operator hasn't got out of bed, that sort of thing...

It just seems a lot like Mark Twain's book on apprenticing to be a Mississippi steamboat pilot. I mean, feck there seems to be more automatic guidance in private cars these days with all the GPSes being sold, you'd think Garmin could come up with an equivalent to assist train drivers