A RAIL business is emplying virtual reality to ensure industry safety is improved.

Having witnessed one of the worst train crashes in British history - the Clapham Junction accident in 1988, in which 35 people were killed - Paul Martin of PM Training and Assessing in Crickhowell was motivated to ensure that engineers would be trained so that this would never happen again.

After a career working in rail engineering, he went into partnership with his wife Pam, an experience trainer and assessor, to develop a system which would give other railway engineers the skills needed to guarantee rail safety.

Having already developed a mobile unit, which could travel around the country to give engineers hands-on training on simulated systems used on the railways – among them a life-size mock-up of a set of railway points – the couple decided to expand their business, to take in virtual reality (VR).

Now, with the help of the Centre of Excellence in Mobile and Emerging Technologies (CEMET), based at the University of South Wales (USW), a VR training system has been developed to give engineers an understanding of what can go wrong if vital railway systems are incorrectly tested.    

Mr Martin joined the rail industry in the 1980s when he was just 16.

“I was an apprentice when the Clapham Junction accident happened in 1988, when 35 people were killed," he said. "I was on site, and I never want to see anything like that ever happen again, or anyone to go through that.

“If you can show people the consequences of their actions, in a training environment, then that’s a way of shocking them into realising what can happen if they get things wrong.”

With this experience in mind, Mr Martin contacted CEMET for support in developing a virtual environment, where the trainees can see what could happen if they didn’t successfully complete the training.

“CEMET created the next step - a virtual environment," he said.

Clayton Jones, programme manager at CEMET, said: “Working with Paul and Pam at PM Training and Assessing is what CEMET is all about, helping small businesses which need specialist tech support, but may not have the funding available, get their ideas off the ground."