RAIB Investigation into Unsafe Movement at Styal

[ainsworth74]

but that's at the expense of information and customer service (and other less urgent operational issues)

I don't disagree with your general point but, of course, lack of information and customer service can become an urgent operational issue if it eventually leads people to take matters into their own hands and detraining themselves or similar! This then makes the original operational issues even harder to resolve as a host of new ones appear.

 

[Surreytraveller]

I don't disagree with your general point but, of course, lack of information and customer service can become an urgent operational issue if it eventually leads people to take matters into their own hands and detraining themselves or similar! This then makes the original operational issues even harder to resolve as a host of new ones appear.

The trouble is, those putting out information to other staff/the public suffer from a lack of experience and training.
Operational staff do not have the luxury of time to explain to less experienced staff what is going on

 

[Dr Hoo]

There have been several recent posts referring to 'information/customer service' in relation to 'Control'. My reading of the report is that the driver was dealing with Maintenance Control rather than 'Operational Control'. The investigation found that conversation with Maintenance Control fell below that expected for Safety Critical matters and that the maintenance controllers weren't formally trained in safety critical communication protocols.

Is there any suggestion that information and customer service control matters were actually relevant to this incident?

 

[Horizon22]

Is there any suggestion that information and customer service control matters were actually relevant to this incident?

Almost certainly nothing to do with it.

There are generally 4 different types of roles within a TOC control;
1. Train service controler (making service decisions, dealing with disruption, liaising with all of the below)
2. Information controller (CIS, liasion with stations, other operators, inputting amendments etc.) & potentially social media teams
3. Maintenance controller (may not actually be the TOC, but the fleet manufacturer's staff e.g. Hitachi or Alstom)
4. Resources controller (may be crew or fleet or both).

It appears almost all communications were to do with maintenance controller and the train service controller was awaiting the outcome of this and potentially looking at the impact on the wider service group.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Thanks @Horizon22 .