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| RIP Derby PSB 01/09/2018 at 05:31 #111726 | |
Chrisrail
384 posts |
After 49 years Derby PSB closes tonight with signalling moving over to the PSB. On behalf of SimSig I would like to thank the guys at Derby PSB for the support they have given us, many of whom are personal friends [attachment=9801]IMG_1008[1].JPG[/attachment] [attachment=9802]IMG_1015[1].JPG[/attachment] [attachment=9803]IMG_1018[1].JPG[/attachment] Post has attachments. Log in to view them. Log in to reply The following users said thank you: flabberdacks, jc92, postal, derbybest, HST125Scorton, BarryM, Steamer, VInce, mldaureol, TUT, Phil-jmw, andyb0607 |
| RIP Derby PSB 01/09/2018 at 18:01 #111751 | |
VInce
579 posts |
Hi all, 10 of my happiest years in the industry spent on the back desk in there (1984-1994) - can't help thinking about all of the colleagues I worked with, many of whom are sadly no longer with us. A sad day for me, but that's progress. Vince I walk around inside the questions of my day, I navigate the inner reaches of my disarray, I pass the altars where fools and thieves hold sway, I wait for night to come and lift this dread away : Jackson Browne - The Night Inside Me Log in to reply |
| RIP Derby PSB 01/09/2018 at 23:11 #111762 | |
TUT
507 posts |
VInce in post 111751 said:A sad day for me, but that's progress.I wonder why it is that every time I hear that word it sounds more and more like a euphemism. RIP Derby PSB Log in to reply |
| RIP Derby PSB 02/09/2018 at 02:14 #111764 | |
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VInce
579 posts |
TUT in post 111762 said:VInce in post 111751 said:Yes, I acknowledge that change is inevitable as technology advances, but I wonder if they will have the fun and camaraderie as we had in my time in Nottingham Control, Derby PSB, Trent PSB and in the early days of Sector/TOC/FOC controls.A sad day for me, but that's progress.I wonder why it is that every time I hear that word it sounds more and more like a euphemism. I'm not involved now, of course, and could well be wrong, but from the outside it all seems so soulless these days, something the manual signalmen would have said when Derby PSB robbed most of them of their jobs in 1969.... Its just the way life is... Vince I walk around inside the questions of my day, I navigate the inner reaches of my disarray, I pass the altars where fools and thieves hold sway, I wait for night to come and lift this dread away : Jackson Browne - The Night Inside Me Last edited: 02/09/2018 at 02:29 by VInce Reason: None given Log in to reply |
| RIP Derby PSB 03/09/2018 at 10:26 #111809 | |
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kbarber
1711 posts 
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VInce in post 111764 said:TUT in post 111762 said:I think that's about it. The job changes, sometimes beyond belief. (It's said that when a high-up saw the old powerbox at York in 1951, he exclaimed: "It's not a signalbox, it's a Control!" Nowadays, even that is just a small fraction of the York IECC area.) But railway people seem to be able to make a good workplace of it, no matter what.VInce in post 111751 said:Yes, I acknowledge that change is inevitable as technology advances, but I wonder if they will have the fun and camaraderie as we had in my time in Nottingham Control, Derby PSB, Trent PSB and in the early days of Sector/TOC/FOC controls.A sad day for me, but that's progress.I wonder why it is that every time I hear that word it sounds more and more like a euphemism. When I used to 'visit' Finchley Road (south of West Hampstead), I knew I was watching the end of something very special - the art of regulating fast expresses, suburban passenger and freight through the complexities of an old-fashioned manually signalled area, with all the camaraderie & fun that went with it. West Hampstead PSB, we knew, would be nothing like it. Yet 40 years on, the signalmen at WH do what we would, in those days, have thought of as a Controller's job, with just the same kind of fun and camaraderie. Soon WH will also be history and it will be up to the staff in Three Bridges ROC to create those qualities in their very different environment. RIP Derby PSB. Long live the railway spirit, wherever the work is! Log in to reply The following users said thank you: VInce, flabberdacks, BarryM |
| RIP Derby PSB 03/09/2018 at 10:29 #111810 | |
jc92
3629 posts
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It is progress though. The layout at Derby was archaic and needed more flexibility to better match the traffic flow. I'm sure progress was a euphemism when it opened and replaced scores of manual boxes too. "We don't stop camborne wednesdays" Log in to reply |
| RIP Derby PSB 03/09/2018 at 23:54 #111838 | |
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TUT
507 posts |
kbarber in post 111809 said:VInce in post 111764 said:If, of course, you're lucky enough to be one of the select few to make it into the ever reducing number of posts.TUT in post 111762 said:I think that's about it. The job changes, sometimes beyond belief. (It's said that when a high-up saw the old powerbox at York in 1951, he exclaimed: "It's not a signalbox, it's a Control!" Nowadays, even that is just a small fraction of the York IECC area.) But railway people seem to be able to make a good workplace of it, no matter what.VInce in post 111751 said:Yes, I acknowledge that change is inevitable as technology advances, but I wonder if they will have the fun and camaraderie as we had in my time in Nottingham Control, Derby PSB, Trent PSB and in the early days of Sector/TOC/FOC controls.A sad day for me, but that's progress.I wonder why it is that every time I hear that word it sounds more and more like a euphemism. Personally, if I had been alive at the time, I'm sure I'd have been pretty sad to see the manual boxes pulled down and replaced with circuitry and buttons, too. But the thing is, Derby PSB wasn't automated, was it? Aside from the auto buttons, of course, routes were set by hand. Every departure from Derby station had to be signalled by a living, fleshy, human hand, every day, every time, day or night. Derby's NX panel was tactile, it was physical, you could touch it, interact with it, enjoy it. You know, I grew up watching Star Wars and imagining that one day when I grew up I'd like to be in a futuristic control centre with all screens and displays and flashing lights. Yes, the SimSig IECC format is more what I imagined signalling would be like before I really learned anything about it. It's not that I hate computers on principle, mine is almost never off, but, you know, with a PSB, there was a balance. Derby PSB was all manual, there were three panels, weren't there? controlling how many miles of track? a few dozen? Of course, the National Rail network isn't a museum, there are heritage railways if you want to play with old signalling for its own sake. Of course a little bit of electronics, a little bit of circuitry, a little bit of technology is necessary and has to be accepted as a fact of life. I hate manual boxes being closed too, I think it's a tragedy, and I'd dearly love to spend a few years of my life pulling levers, but there it is. I accept power signalling for sure. But just because we accept that some improvement upon mechanical signalling was basically a good thing, I don't think it follows that any and all technological advancement has to be accepted - even welcomed - on the same basis. I mean, I'm sure generations of typesetters were very excited about the progress made in their line of work and all of the impressive new advancements that made their work better and their jobs easier. But eventually it stopped being about the job changing and started being about the job going away. Eventually they were made obsolete. I'm sure that the typing pools had every reason to be very excited about and accepting of the new machines that they had to work with, but eventually the technology got rid of them, didn't it? At the more extreme end, if ever someone comes up with a teleportation device, you know, that won't be the next exciting phase of railway development, that will be the end of railways, won't it? You know, there's a balance. And I know that everyone seems to think the perfect balance was roughly how things were when they were young, but it's not special pleading to argue that the change from mechanical signal boxes to Derby PSB was a bit of a better balance between man and machine that the change from Derby PSB to the East Midlands Control Centre will be and then one presumes more and more automation and electronics and screens in the future. Of course I don't think that 'primitive' is a synonym of 'good', but nor is 'new' and nor is 'automatic' and nor is 'technological'. I'm jolly glad that I'm not writing this to you with a quill and an ink well by the light of a wax candle, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a balance between new and old. You know, with the very best will in the world and the greatest respect to all of those who work and have worked in the railway industry, I think it's maybe quite easy for people who have had long, enjoyable, fulfilling careers on the railways to talk to a young chap like me who deeply and desperately wants to take part in that world about progress and the need to accept change as for the best, but you don't have to live with the consequences. You've had your fun, you got your hands dirty, you got to get out there and take part and this world has more people in it than ever before and I'm not sure how many of them well get the chance to do what you did because of all this progress. And you know what goes for the railways will go for everybody else too. When I was sitting my GCSE electronics exam, I dutifully wrote down my well-rehearsed answer to the question of why electronics and machines were a good thing: they could handle the tedious, repetitive, mechanical tasks, like cutting out a sheet of metal or screwing the exact same two pieces together thousands of times per day for us, freeing humans up to do creative and interesting tasks that required you to think and use your brain more. But now I look at this world. I look at this world where AI programs can shoot down top dog fighters, where there are algorithms that can teach themselves to master chess in minutes, where an interesting, cerebral job requiring mental agility and requiring you to think, like regulating the flow of railway traffic into and out of Derby station is handled by a computer program, I look at this world were traditional ARS isn't enough and where people want software that can do more and more and more, I look at this world where an exciting and challenging job like piloting an aircraft is seeing more and more tasks automated to the extent that a plane can pretty much fly itself from runway to runway now and I worry about young people who want to have careers like you had and I don't think the future is bright for them. I know that employment is very high right now, but I think that balance I was talking about earlier is being lost to progress, I really do. You would never get a human to perform really really precise cutting, or to do wiring on a really really small scale, would you? You'd use a machine. Are you sure that in 10 years' time, 25 years' time, 50 years' time anyone will trust a shaking hand of a sleepy, hungry, stressed surgeon who may have just split up with his wife for all you know with their brain or their heart? And why would anyone bother with all the time and money it would take to train a surgeon when you could just install a piece of software in ten minutes. Take this attitude too far and I'm not sure how many people will have jobs they need to get to in the mornings, and then there will surely be much less need for people to board trains and go places and frankly it probably wouldn't matter if the whole railway was absolute block because there'd be far fewer people needing to use it! To borrow a phrase from politics, I firmly believe railways should be (operated) by the people, for the people - otherwise, what's the point? And of course, I know that the East Midlands Signalling Centre is staffed by humans who I'm sure will be doing a lot of real signalling and having a lot of fun at least for the next few years yet. Of course I fully appreciate that IECCs and ROCs don't make signallers obsolete, that the closure of PSBs isn't what computer people call "the singularity", I'm just expanding on what I mean when I call 'progress' a euphemism. Obviously signalling isn't over yet, I know that, but I sincerely hope this species decides to find a balance between technological progress and jobs and careers and human operators and human occupation. And I'm not abashed to call the abolition of Severn Bridge Junction signal box an act of vandalism 
Last edited: 03/09/2018 at 23:59 by TUT Reason: None given Log in to reply The following user said thank you: VInce |
| RIP Derby PSB 04/09/2018 at 14:45 #111848 | |
bugsy
1695 posts |
I find this an interesting discussion. Although it’s nothing to do with signalling, it’s ironic that TUT mentions typesetters, because the same or similar technology that put them out of work affected my job back in the late '70s or early ‘80s. I used to hand-engrave printing plates for the packaging industry. The plates were made of canvas-backed rubber of varying thickness and hardness depending what type of fluted cardboard the printers were using. But then along came a photographic process and light sensitive photo-polymers. The hand engraving gradually became obsolete and the job that I loved gradually disappeared. People were still involved then, but in a different way. I sometimes wonder how things have changed since then. I didn’t wait to find out as my new role was not to my liking and I decided to change careers. Everything that you make will be useful - providing it's made of chocolate. Log in to reply |