Class 345 Doors Open Wrong Side

While a train driver may be able to do the routine parts of their job from an office miles away, until trains are 100% reliable and isolated from all external influences (humans, animals, weather, vegetation) there will always be a need for a member of staff to be on-board or within a few minutes travel (by other means) from any point where the train can be.

There IS life after our generation, remember.

Sorry but comparing the level crossing keeper to a driver is fool hardly. A level crossing is a fixed point that's easier to check the two sides of the road with simple equipment, although that is not fool proof and its an ongoing development even for unmanned crossing. However there remains the need to have sight of many crossing which may be remote but local control will still exist in some form.

As for driverless trains, well that's a completely different matter. You need complete awareness 100% of the time of not just the track in front of you but also what's coming up ahead. Yes we have the technology to move trains on railway lines but at present its about the ability of a computer to see and work out any issues and we simply are not there yet. Even with all the computer power on the train now it's not powerful enough to do all the hard work. Then there is dealing with human behaviour that don't follow patterns and is hard to predict, think school kids messing about on the platform, small animals. Human's struggle to work out what is going to happen let alone a less powerful computer so how the hell do you think the train will magically work things out?

It's also worth noting that with ATO and automatic trains, a human is still required to have his hands on the brakes as they system cannot see any issues, they are simple follow the curve on a chart pre-loaded onto the system.

Now I raise the point of after an incident such as people jumping in front of trains, objects blown onto the line. These can happen away from stations and take the emergency response some time to reach the scene. You need someone who is trained in the system to take control, check the train and alert the rest of the railway. Oh and deal with the passengers.

Therefore even if we sorted all the issues of computers not being powerful enough to see threats, managed to shrink it down to fit underneath a train (currently anything like that would be bigger than a 12 car train), we still need a staff member on board with the knowledge and therefore will not lead to jobless. It will of course lead to major changes to the role but not the removal of someone from the train.

As present there is no expectation of doing away with a human up front on the national network despite our ability to run trains automatically because the actual issues are too big to sort out. Remember Moore's Law that said technology power doubles every 18 months has now ended after some 40 odd years of growth as the shrinking of technology now meets reality of atoms and the new way forward is building multiples means we won't fit the tech to trains anytime soon. With this, I wouldn't be surprised if we are in the same situation at the start of the new century.

Crossrail manages ATO only by separating passengers from the track with no infrastructure interactions. Thameslink has many level crossings (off the top of my head I think there is around 30), add in various foot crossing that aren't manned. To get around this is going to require billions to be spent to remove these (one example, Mitcham Eastfields has a level crossing through the middle of it and would require a tunnel to fix the issue causing a rebuild of the station to achieve). There are far more valuable things to be spending money on in the years ahead and it won't come quickly or easy.

At Stratford it is fully CD/RA so there is no video broadcast into the cab (the monitors remain blank). Same at Liverpool Street and Shenfield.

Correct, see here for examples:

www.railsigns.uk/sect20page1/sect20page1.html

My understanding is that RA can only illuminate when the associated signal is showing a proceed aspect. I would assume for ATO-type signalling there is a similar interlock.

No you can on signals I've dispatched from have RA on a red. It will only clear tho after a signal goes back. CD is not linked to the signalling however and is a simple light box.

They definitely don't and never have at Liverpool Street, Stratford or Shenfield. The monitors remain blank at those stations regardless of whether the doors are released or not and there is no way to get an image of the platform at those stations.

345s actually do not have DOO cameras as they take images from platform mounted cameras instead. This choice was made because of the use of PEDs in the core which would render train mounted cameras almost useless. As such, I assume that the lack of images at certain stations means that those stations are not fitted with cameras.

Can drivers not also be female or non-binary?

I'm not sure about 'non-binary', but I can't remember there being any gender restriction on LU drivers.

I'm interested to know why someone would pretend not to understand the meaning of fleetline's perfectly ordinary and everyday contribution to a railway-related thread on a railway based forum.
It's my guess that we have the grammatically self-obsessed equivalent of a vegan, who just 'has to let everyone know'.
What a bore.

Apologises as I deal with Bombardier stock built in the last two decades I had thought the 345s were like everything else Bombardier has built for the mainline (and funny enough since the 345s) have DOO cameras.

However the idea that PEDs mean you can't use DOO cameras seems a reason only for a few stations. I also believe then that the 345s are the first attempt to put the LU standard on the national network.

It does however in light of recent incidents that a driver has no images of a platform seem to be at odds of how everyone else works. On the mainline the driver still retains responsibility for his train and is supposed to use cameras to check his train as he starts to take power. Most stock the cameras stays on until 3mph (historically units have a hard time telling the difference between 0 and 3mph).

Are the staff on the platforms at Stratford LU/TfL Rail or GA staff?