IRSE Exam Practical Study Weekend 2024

I had the fortunate opportunity of joining a ‘hands-on’ study session last weekend. It was organised by IRSE Younger Members, and graciously hosted by Signet Solutions in Derby. Was it useful? Yes. What did I learn? Other than how to use the word boffins (clue: it is the antonym to buffoons and normally accorded to the bright people who made the SSI), a whole lot about signalling too.

Agenda

The idea for the weekend was to help people prepare for the IRSE module A/B/C and/or D through showcasing and, allowing participants to look at the ‘real’ equipment. ‘Real’ because the equipment are not on a live working railway, but they are from the industry and as one of the trainer put it, was either beg, borrowed or stolen reused from various railways. For people who have previously joined Signet’s Basic Signalling Technology (BST) course, the equipment are largely the same. What is not the same however the lessons.

There were four lessons or sessions.

Trackside equipment: Reuben describes all (the important bits) of the signalling equipment that lay on the trackside which is essential to make the trains move (well maybe not make that move, but allow them to move safely). He also went to describe how the equipment work, and WHY the equipment was designed in a certain way. For example I now know that the normal bulb for an aspect is 12V, because the design wants the light to be not too bright and allow the beam of the aspect to be focused. Due to that too, a transformer is needed inside to step down from 110V (I think), which is used to avoid power loss. Another presenter, Thomas also added other ways these seemingly standard devices can be implemented, which needs their own set of safety consideration and also operation and maintenance.

Train Protection (Safety Devices): Andrew Love describes how train are protected from itself, in the way that it doesn’t overspeed or overstep the limit it is allowed to move (Movement Authority). The devices or systems are mostly familiar, but what left my brain churning for the rest of the day was the consideration of how the devices/systems are going to work in the case of degraded mode. Kinda like asking yourself what would you do if the car in your brake doesn’t work; it is a hard question because the brake is supposed to work, right? But the session went further another level, where you have to imagine stopping a car without using a brake. Okay, end of analogy.

Wire and cabling: John Chaddock and Sean McCabe brought out drums of cable and allowed the participants to have a go at cable crimping. I liked it because although it seems simple, these physic(al) aspect can have a large impact in operation, and is less considered by designers. A wire on a diagram is just a line, while a cable on track can weigh tonnes, especially if it is kilometres in length.

Signalling Principles: Peter Woodbridge went through the principles, showing how it is (or was) implemented on the mainline through demonstration of ENEX panel for both Route Relay Interlocking (RRI) and Solid-state Interlocking (SSI), as well as the modern Maintainer’s Terminal (MTO4). I must admit this was the session that went mostly over my head, as it is the aspect that I am least familiar with. Peter did manage to imprint in my mind though that signalling principles have reasons behind them and as technology or time progresses, but these principles are not moving at the same pace, or people have lost the understanding of why the principles say something in the first place. I guess in essence what Peter was saying was parallel to what the whole study event was about, imparting the knowledge and understanding of how signalling works, so that decisions can be made wisely.

Takeaway

The technical takeaways are numerous and some are stated above. The ‘spiritual’ takeaways might be 1) signalling knowledge/understanding is huge and there is always things to be learnt (most of the brightest insight are when the presenters asking between themselves) 2) there is always sometime somewhere, where an exception to a rule or design exists. Point no 2 is a bit disheartening (and kinda relates to point 1), but I think the way to treat it is like learning chemistry. There’s always an exception (group 17 are reactive gases, except Iodine; molecules need to have octet electrons, except certain compounds etc) but at the end of the day you learn to distill the important bits.

And what better way to learn what is important, than to read an accident report? One might say that signalling engineers are ghoulish and has too much taste in macabre, since they always talk about accidents, but the truth is, only during accidents then you learn how to do things properly. Much like signalling, where only when it fails, would it get mentioned. So is the nature of most safety engineering discipline.
Listed belows are some of the ‘important’ accidents that have been kindly composed by Andrew Love and shared to the participants.

List of Accidents

• Ladbroke Grove – https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/eventsummary.php?eventID=142
• Grayrigg – points https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docsummary.php?docID=1716
• Southall – train protection isolated https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docsummary.php?docID=178
• Wootton Bassett – train protection isolated. https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docsummary.php?docID=4908
• Salisbury – train protection can’t help if there’s no adhesion! https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docsummary.php?docID=7888
• Chalfont and Latimer – irregular reset of train protection https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docsummary.php?docID=7824
• Moorgate – lack of train protection on approach to end of railway https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docsummary.php?docID=98 NB This report was “of its time” – this report would have investigated human factors more closely nowadays.
• Harrow and Wealdstone – double collision https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docsummary.php?docID=100
• Wingfield – wrong-side signal failure due to wiring error. https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docsummary.php?docID=7887
• Dalwhinnie – points wiring error https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docsummary.php?docID=7852
• Kings Cross Fire – read this considering the impact of communications on the incident response https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docsummary.php?docID=75
• Peterborough – driver didn’t reduce speed on diversionary route https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docsummary.php?docID=7891
• Ladbroke Grove – https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/eventsummary.php?eventID=142

Andrew has given links from https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/ for consistency; many of the more recent reports are available on the RAIB website – and you can sign up to receive the latest reports at https://www.gov.uk/email-signup?link=/government/organisations/rail-accident-investigation-branch.

What’s Next?

If the above sound interesting or you have registered and didn’t manage to attend, there is no more hands-on session this year, but there will be another classroom session next month. It will be held in University of Birmingham, IRSE Exam Theory and Question-based Study Day, Saturday, 13 July⋅10:00am – 4:00pm. If you’re interested, register at this link. See you there.

Thank you for reading.