NXEC - 3rd Rate?

[O L Leigh]

OK, you appear to know what your talking about and claim to be a driver, but as far as I'm concerned, you could be anyone. I do not wish to divulge further information about myself for that reason.

Yes I suppose that is a reasonable observation, and I entirely understand your reluctance to say too much about yourself.

As a driver, you will be given lots of information from your control about the set you will be taking out, and yes you will be competent in safety critical systems relevant to your position. Because you may be "expert" in your field, you shouldn't dismiss other peoples expertise in other fields.

I most certainly would not, which is why I have been asking you to at least let me know something about who and what you are. I am not replying to you in order to pick a fight or win some contest, but to find out on what basis you make your claims. As much as I could be anyone, so could you.

Your control is or should be aware of every known defect big or small recorded on the set you are taking out. They must tell you about any safety critical defect that will affect your control of the train. They don't have to tell you about recorded defects that may become safety critical in the the next 6-10 days until it's next exam. For example, you could have 3 sets of isolated brakes because of disc fractures exceeding limits. You could also have x number of discs with fractures that are only mm's short of exceeding limits that then require brake isolations.

Control advising me of a potential problem with a train would be a very odd thing to do. I concede the point that perhaps I should be more interested in what might be about to happen to my train, but frankly that's an impossible thing to ask.

Besides, I'm not convinced of the difference it would make to me. If Control told me that I had only 2 day's worth of useable brake wear left on a unit but that it was due in for exam the next day I probably wouldn't be too worried. On that basis there is double the amount of required wear left to see that unit through no matter how marginal the wear rate was getting. If discs were fracturing, again I'm not entirely sure that I would be sweating it that much. I'm just a driver and wouldn't be expected to make a judgement on what is or is not an acceptable level of fracturing. My hope would be that my colleagues down at the maintenance depot know what they are doing in passing a unit fit for service and are monitoring the set to ensure safety. What I would be likely to do is to adopt a more cautious braking technique to ensure that I have plenty of space to stop should the train suffer an unexpected brake-related failure.

Brake disc fractures are a fairly new problem arising over the last 18 months, but it is becoming more and more regular. Without saying too much more, try asking your colleagues who work with NXEC what they know about sets running about with isolated brakes and for how long. You may be surprised if they tell you months? In my experience they are a company that take things to the limits and only act when they really have to and sadly it's about to get worse.

I haven't disagreed at any time with what you've been saying about brake disc fractures or brake isolations, and have no doubt that such things are happening to a greater or lesser degree. However, your experience of NX is slightly at variance with mine. We may get units pushed back out with half motors from time to time, but I have never experienced anything that would yet suggest that safety is being compromised or things pushed to the limit.

O L Leigh