If 18 year olds can vote, drive a lorry, a bus and other jobs like that, they shouldn’t need to disqualify people at that age to drive trains.
For anyone who has knowledge of that stuff, what kind of training is required for driving a train? Like what’s involved with handling a giant machine on rails? I assume there’s more to it than the public sees at first glance.
I’m no expert but as far as I’ve understood it you need to generally have a very good understanding of the train you’re driving, equivalent to an actual engineering degree, because you’re the person who has to call central and tell them what’s wrong with your train when something happens and “It doesn’t go forward” isn’t useful.
In the event of a failure the train driver does some troubleshooting steps (like rebooting the control system or manual overrides) and informs the central of the issue. The most common issue on train service are door malfunctions, which can be solved by locking the door and putting a sticker on it.
The difficult part is recognising the problem correctly, which probably requires some critical thinking skills. But the control systems are getting better at helping the driver and giving information on the issue.
I imagine it’s learning the signalling and safety systems, the driving dynamics of trains, getting to know the lines and schedules and the corresponding train models. And then learning and practicing driving with a trainer. Also basic troubleshooting for technical problems.
why is there a shortage. where im at in the US driving a train pays well enough to attack people. usually any shortage are due to training time.
