Railway accidents

[PJW]

Here's another attempt at a question from 2015 paper-Q5- based on past railway accidents.
If you cannot decipher my scribbles, just ask and ill try and work out what I have written too.

Thanks

T

Only had the briefest of read through as I have much else to do, but it is certainly legible.

I suggest that in the description the text should have been more broken up to make easier to read and also think down to the essential stuff.  You need to focus on the causes so whereas it may well be relevant that

• the Down train was a Turbo (not fitted with ATP),
  
• it had actually been routed on one of the other 6 bi-directional running lines than it was timetabled to use (as a result of ARS and its short term planning horizon "2 greens ahead of a train" rather than long term strategic conflict management)
  
• the Up train was a HST (fitted with ATP which did actually apply brakes before driver could have seen aspect reversion) it really is not relevant to the causes of the accident where it had come from (affected the consequences in as far as what drivers/ passengers were killed and injured.
  

Often "less is more" because

1. You need to conserve your time for another question or part thereof
   
2. If you put a lot of irrelevant stuff down, then it looks like you are just regurgitating knowledge rather than using that knowledge to answer the question that was set
   
3. It is hard for reader to assimilate and find amongst it the things that they must guess you are claiming as the causes.
   

Hence a numbered list would have been better presentation- less words, more separation, greater clarity.

Overall though it looks a reasonable attempt and I did think presentation for the later sections was quite a bit better.   Did think you needed to put rather more about
a) signal sighting, Minimum Reading Time assessment, Obscuration diagrams
b) rapid reversion of signal aspects in emergency- ESOC, SGRC, POP Groups
c) GSM-R and Emergency Stop facility from signaler and from cabs
d) Layout Risk Assessment- SORAT etc
e) Driver and signaler simulators

 I am sure that the examiners would be pleased to see that someone chose something different from Clapham.