10-12-2017, 09:35 AM
Doing some end of year tidying up and posting some mod 5 attempts from one of my candidates this year on which I made some comments before sitting down to discuss further with them. Hence they don't go into detail in those areas which were best dealt with face-to-face, but are still potentially useful for others to see the candidate's approach and the areas where I felt it could be improved. She is happy that I make these available in the hope that others will find useful.
Note that although fully automatic in usual operation, the type of crossing in the UK is referred to as a Manually Controlled Barrier - Obstacle Detection (because it is effectively very similar to the MCB and MCB-CCTV and crucially has interlocked protecting signals), but this can create confusion. The answer given referred to AFBC which I think may have been the name originally proposed and therefore the student found in some documents; the impetus to investigate use of RADAR followed the Ufton Crossing accident which resulted from a suicidal person deliberately parking their vehicle on the AHBC and waiting in it for a train to arrive, but the emphasis then shifted to better protection and less signaller workload for the MCB.
Note that although fully automatic in usual operation, the type of crossing in the UK is referred to as a Manually Controlled Barrier - Obstacle Detection (because it is effectively very similar to the MCB and MCB-CCTV and crucially has interlocked protecting signals), but this can create confusion. The answer given referred to AFBC which I think may have been the name originally proposed and therefore the student found in some documents; the impetus to investigate use of RADAR followed the Ufton Crossing accident which resulted from a suicidal person deliberately parking their vehicle on the AHBC and waiting in it for a train to arrive, but the emphasis then shifted to better protection and less signaller workload for the MCB.
PJW