ABSTRACT
Network Rail own, maintain and continuously improve the entire UK rail network infrastructure, ensuring over 1 billion rail journeys can be made every year. Keeping the trains running to time is a major focus of the company and regulating the railways and station areas specifically are a vital part of keeping delays to a minimum. Railway signallers have the responsibility of managing these delays. Along with computerised train running systems providing real time train information, some signalling teams currently also use paper based tools (either lists or graphs) to manage delays and plan around them. This paper reports the findings from Critical Decision Method-based interviews and observations carried out at eight sites to investigate the planning strategies and techniques that operators use to manage station areas. Clear differences were observed between the strategies of the operators depending on whether they were using the list-based or graphical tools. The list-based tools required a high degree of interpretation on the part of the operators and mainly allowed them to deal with each problem as it occurred. The graphical representations show the movements within a station area and enable the signaller to see at least four hours of platform occupation at any one time. The signaller is then able to plan any knock-on changes well in advance, keeping delays to a minimum. This proactive management of problems arising in the station area could be a result of any computational offloading taking place due to the ‘at a glance view’ that the graphical representation provides.
