ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the Rail human factors in the light of past, present and future research. Rail human factors research has, to an extent, been the poor relation of transport ergonomics, at least in comparison to aerospace and road driving. The very environmental and internal factors which generate the need for thorough human factors investigation in the railway network also provide the very issues, difficulties and challenges for such research. The rail system is a classic domain for human factors contribution. It includes work of all types, from vehicle control, to monitoring, to planning to physical work with tools. An interesting consequence of the increasingly large human factors rail research agenda and programme may be advances in ergonomics/human factors theory and methodology. The future rail human factors research programme – in the UK from the direct knowledge of the authors but also in the Netherlands, Italy, and many other countries where the authors have colleagues – is very diverse.
