2018 Mock Exam Paper for mod 1 & 7

[PJW]

Candidate 2's attempt

Question A2
On occasions the safety that is provided by signalling and operational telecommunications installations may be degraded, usually due to failure or intrusive maintenance.
Different methods of railway operation are frequently used as an alternative in these circumstances.
Describe three such methods of degraded working, indicating how an acceptable level of safety is maintained and state the residual risks when compared to normal working.                [25 marks]

I felt this was a good answer and worth at least a Credit.
It was of a good length and definitely worded to address the question.
There were three significantly distinct scenarios and I liked the fact the last one was not a failure but involved migration and the engineering fleet had yet to be fitted with the new system.
It might have been better if the first scenario had affected a single non-communicating train that needed to be removed from the system as opposed to an area of trackside affected as this would have been more different from scenario 3 (that seems to have been a late substitution for another idea which became rapidly rejected).
There was no explicit comparison of Residual Risk with the normal method of working, but otherwise certainly addressed all the question.
Candidate certainly came across as knowledgeable and experienced and reinforced the view that the [25 marks the lot] type of questions are best for the strong candidate who can exploit them as they wish, but perhaps best avoided by the weaker candidate who runs the risk of not covering all that the examiners expect and so might end up getting far fewer marks for their effort than they anticipated.