In a recent article written by James Cooper, Head of Workforce Planning and Operational Training at Transport for Wales on LinkedIn, James explains how they have embraced Virtual Reality (VR) training to support their current transformational programme.

“As many of you across the industry will be aware, at Transport for Wales (TfW) we are currently in the middle of a transformation programme which will see our entire rolling stock fleet replaced.

A great challenge the railway has always had is keeping up with the pace of technology. As an industry we have had driver simulators for 15 years but have not explored the opportunities within the train manager (conductor) role.

Rail incidents are now more prevalent at the platform-train-interface (PTI) than in rail accidents/collisions yet we use little-to-no simulation/technology in training train managers up to allow trainees to practice in a ‘risk free’ environment to build up ‘muscle memory’ on repetitive procedures/tasks within the role.

Over the last 9 months in the Workforce Planning & Operational training team we have been working with Denova (based in Edinburgh) to develop a bespoke piece of kit which utilises virtual reality simulation for train managers which we intend on building into trainee courses in 2025.

The aim of this project was to focus on the learning outcomes, when trainees are developing on the programme, but also see benefits for ongoing competence too. Examples in its development are scenarios we cannot recreate such as fire on a train but also train dispatch and degraded/out-of-course situations. It aims to bridge the gap between PowerPoint and the practical. We hope this will help drive down operational incidents at the Platform Train Interface (PTI), thus improving safety and general operational performance of the network.

It has been built on the class-197 traction to start with, but we hope to expand to other fleet types as the transformation continues. Clearly the carry over to other operators could be of benefit to the industry as a whole and we are really pleased with the product.

Do not hesitate to contact me at james.cooper@tfwrail.wales if you’d like to know more.”

James Cooper
Head of Workforce Planning and Operational Training
Transport for Wales