TPWS to be abolished?

Hi Guys, It sounds like you are discussing the "Morpeth Rules" resulting from the 1969 crash.

aka: Dilemma over providing driver warnings of excess speed; leaving it to driver or forcibly applying brakes by train protection system; drivers can get overloaded with repetitive warnings to the point of "shutting them out"; and - bluntly - it's cheaper to pay victims compensation that spend the money making the system safer.

Masses of precedents and discussions - fortunately IMHO the age of the LU has a bit of a benefit in that if it works, don't try to fix it! Also, the arguments are largely irrelevant to LU as a local commuter system -v- high speed inter-city type operations.

The national railways lost out because only the GWR developed a viable system, and the money ran out to introduce the rest of the former private lines to a national standard system after grouping and WW2 that was anywhere near as good as the GWR.

Does that sum it up, folks? If so, it looks like the main discussion is about this country having lots of hills and tight curves, hence zillions of potential warnings, hence driver fatigue like the poor guys have most hours of their shifts doing Bournemouth-Waterloo (or wherever!) on single and double yellows.

I think our train drivers are wuunnnddderfullll - the concentration and distractions, let alone not much gets done when SPADs repetitively occur at notorious signals, year after year.

What price safety, but equally humans make mistakes.

Anyhow, not wishing to risk getting a Yellow Card for a "rant" on a *non* LU thread :-)

cheers,