Company Brief day (Training)

Well had 7 and a half hours of training today. These 'briefs' used to be called safety briefs as they used to contain training concerning our safety critical jobs. However they now contain all sorts as I will explain below. 

Having worked in a large healthcare trust prior to the railways, where training is often talked about but never really transpires due to 'budget constraints' it really surprises me as to how hard and what effort the privatised railways goto to keep staff up to date. But we train crew are out door dwellers and 7 hours in a small room with 9 others and dodgy air con is enough to tire anyone! 

Today brief contained reminders of the safety critical nature of our jobs.

Firstly - power operated door procedure failures, with CCTV footage of real incidents broken down for us to discuss as a reminder of just how serious these incidents can be. This lead nicely onto a brief regarding the outcome of the Liverpool, James Street incident, which as you would expect provoked a good debate. We then moved onto on train Fire training which was again a interesting reminder of procedures. 

We then moved onto something new the company are starting to assess us on called 'non technical skills' which very briefly concerns the ways in which we behave whilst performing our everyday tasks.  We had a 42ish minute lunch break and then went into the second session.

The afternoon consisted of a customer service refresh and then just basically went into silly mode with manual handling training and health and safety training. (Both videos played by some really dodgy actors).

It's my belief health and safety is 99% common sense and it drives me insane having it rammed down our throats! But hey ho we live in a nanny state and have to prepare to fail I suppose! 

We followed this with a interesting (ish) session on safety critical communications which involves 'playing' signallers and train crew to practice giving emergency messages. 

So I'm home now after nearly 8 hours of death by PowerPoint and media player! Tired and ready to go to bed for tomorrow's 0609 start which in fairness does start with a nice 1st class trip on Virgin to Stoke! 

Bye for now guys

Stay safe

The guard.

Disclaimer. Published in a rush without proof reading so please excuse any typos! 

Photo - Proper train at Piccadilly! I do miss 37's hauling passenger trains!