From our High Speed Correspondent:
Route knowledge is something it is very hard to describe to people without starting to sound a little defensive! I suppose a crude analogy might be to imagine driving around in your car at high speed, but with only a weak handbrake to stop you, then complicated by having a timetable to pressure you into not going too carefully so as to lose time, adding into the mix that there are places where you have to arrive at at a substantially reduced speed compared to what you were doing a minute before, again without slowing prematurely so as to lose time, but not arriving at the speed reduction at too high a speed, and having no notice of the said speed reduction except your route knowledge, then you have to do the same in thick fog or the dead of night, at the same speeds, and generally with very little external illumination. (No street lights on the railway!)
Adding into the mix is the ability to name every little area of the route, so if, for example, the signalman brings you to a stand at a signal, then tells you you'll be doing a reduced speed through Paxton due to kids on the line, you'll have a chance of knowing where they are, without doing 15 mph for 3 miles because you weren't sure where he meant!
An added complication on an N of L [Ed: North of London] Eurostar is knowing where the back power car is when brought to a stand, because you don't want the pan[tograph] bridging double wire strands at booster sections, and stuff like that, because it can create problems with either the train or the infrastructure. Then you have to know the areas where it is likely to have leaf fall - or invisible industrial contaminent - that reduces your ability to make a slide-free brake application, bearing in mind the whereabouts of any red signals or short signalling sections, so as not to give yourself a heart attack should you happen across a double yellow in an unexpected location.
Something that's a bit of a problem initially on a new route is working out when the back of the train is clear of speed restrictions, such as leaving Leeds with 16 coaches on at 15 mph: you want to know where you can start accelerating up to new line speeds without wasting time or getting caught with the back of the train speeding! Something that I'll be a bit nervous of on [his first run from] King's Cross to Leeds is not spotting the correct route indication at Doncaster. It sounds easy, but for the last year and a half I've always taken an M for York; now I have to take either no route indication whatsoever or an L for Leeds. 999 times out of a thousand, it's just something you do unconsciously, but you can guarantee, when you get it wrong, a thread all to yourself in this newsgroup, and possibly in the papers too.
Most of the time, when you're driving along a route, the knowledge you have of it is all locked away somewhere and is never really called upon until something goes wrong. Take Andy at Potters Bar, for instance. He comes to a stand, doesn't know why, looks out of window, sees a coach on the platform, counts his train's coaches, realises he's blocking lines. He's got two track circuit actuating clips in his cab, but 3 lines to protect. Which lines does he do first? Where does he tell the signalman that he is? As it happens my mate Pete was about 3 miles away at linespeed in the Up Eurostar near Marshmoor when the road goes back to red on him, and he stops. I don't know what actually put the road back, probably the bobby, but it could have been Andy, and if he'd been wandering around protecting the Down Slow, then that might've lost valuable time. As it happens, the radio in use for the driver-only trains in that area is very effective, with a one button press to send out an emergency stop message, so chances were good that the protection was superfluous, but it has to still be done by a knowledgable driver in case the incident happened somewhere where the driver's route knowledge would have been more crucial.
Then you have gradients. Most railway gradients - unless you count the high speed lines - are very slight by the standards we're used to on roads, but they do make a great deal of difference to a train's performance. For example, pull away from Wakefield with a normal amount of power on and you'll be rolling backwards before you know it! On the railway, rolling backwards just a few inches could mean a track circuit suddenly re-showing occupied, causing premature hair loss for the driver who gets an unexpected red signal and a bollocking for you! It can also damage traction equipment on rolling stock, and it can have a bad effect on a Eurostar, with motors getting locked out, and bollockings from the inspector when the black box is downloaded to see what you've done.
There's loads more stuff that I could give you examples of, but I guess I've already done too much.
RossRail, the new driving farce