A naturalistic study of railway controllers

Abstract

There is an increasing prevalence for work to be analysed through naturalistic study, especially using ethnographically derived methods of enquiry and qualitative field research. The relatively unexplored domain of railway control (in comparison to signalling) in the UK is described in terms of features derived from observations and semi-structured interviews. In addition, task diagrams (a technique taken from the Applied Cognitive Task Analysis toolkit) are used to represent controllers' core elements of work, i.e. to manage events or incidents, and to identify the challenging steps in the process. The work features identified, the task diagrams, and the steps identified as challenging form a basis from which future ergonomics studies on railway controllers in the UK will be carried out.

Keywords:

• Rail
• Control
• Ethnography
• Naturalistic
• Domain analysis
• Cognitive task analysis

Acknowledgements

This work was only made possible because of the efforts of the contacts at Network Rail and the cooperation of the controllers and their managers. The work was funded by grants from Network Rail and the EPSRC Rail Research UK, and was informed by our membership of EURNEX (European Rail Network of Excellence).