This is how work is done in a train control center like the one in Atocha

Barcelona / Madrid"To use a simile, it's like an airport control tower," describes a source in the railway sector who has visited the Atocha railway control center numerous times. A gigantic screen, from one side of the wall to the other, and in the middle the different workstations. And a lot of silence. That is what the Adif room is like, from where those responsible for railway circulation work, which since Wednesday has been under the media spotlight. A few hours after the accident between two high-speed trains in Urda, in Toledo, the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, publicly stated that the problem had been a human errorcommitted from one of these rooms. Specifically, he pointed to the order that a circulation officer gave to the driver of the AVE that later collided with the Iryo train: "Resume travel as normal".

But what happened inside that room? How do they work there? And how can it be that during the more than 15 minutes that the AVE was traveling and approaching at full speed towards the stopped Iryo, no one foresaw the collision that was starting to become evident on the screens?

In Atocha, there are actually two control rooms. On one hand, the CRC (the train circulation regulation center) and, on the other, the H24, which responds more to a function of control and monitoring of incidents and the general state of the network. Neither Minister Puente nor the initial investigations have publicly clarified in which of the two rooms the problem occurred. On the other hand, the audio that was leaked to the media does evidence a moment of stress and contradictory orders following the computer failure of the LZB, the safety system, which ended in the fatal outcome.

Inside the control rooms, each operator or circulation officer occupies a place at a workstation. These are tables surrounded by screens showing the tracks and trains in circulation for a specific area or section. For example, the line affected by this tragic accident, the Madrid-Sevilla line. There is also a telephone to communicate with the drivers if necessary. Often –although not always, according to the sources consulted– the team is completed with an assistant, who performs support tasks for the circulation officer. And there is also a supervisor, who generally oversees a small number of workstations at a time. Then there are the room managers and, above them, the management teams.

Three shifts and a lot of pressure

Inside, pressure and silence dominate the space. "There are three work shifts. To be there, you have to like emergency and crisis management," reflects a source from the sector. "Since there is no special category, whoever gets a position ends up working there. It is a workplace where you work continuously under pressure," they add. And so it goes for hours. "The shifts are from six in the evening to three in the morning; from three to eleven in the morning, and from eleven in the morning to six in the evening.

The most intense shift is the morning one, with more traffic and, therefore, with more incidents," recounts a former employee. "We cannot leave the workplace until the relief arrives. There are 13 people and sometimes there is a backup, in case any of the operators is unwell, but it is not always there," they continue. Each worker self-regulates their screen break time individually. The same source reports that there is a high staff turnover.

Professionals who know how the railway sector works warn that the Urda accident is a "systemic failure" and not just a "specific operational negligence" derived from human error. This is defended by Ramiro Aurín, a member of the Spanish Association of Civil Engineers, who warns of a "beyond normal" workload at the Adif control center with "22 trains in charge of one person." "It's outrageous, half would be more than enough," he said in statements to the ACN. The expert also reflects on the degree of responsibility that a single operator can have: "The moment they have the ability to be decisive, it means the whole system has failed along the way.

The same atmosphere of pressure is repeated in all CRCs, as ARA has been able to verify from inside the Barcelona control center, which is very similar to the one in Atocha but controls conventional trains and not high-speed ones. Unions have denounced multiple times the working conditions and the pressure to which workers are subjected. Normally, the LZB safety system does most of the work. But on Wednesday it failed. And voice-activated protocols and direct communications between operators and train drivers came into play. Instead of keeping all trains stopped, the control room decided to have them resume their journey. Thus, the computer failure and the human decision to resume are two of the key points that the investigation will have to address more intensely to clarify the origin of this railway tragedy.

Aurín points out that even though supervisors may have "the necessary training" to carry out the job, there is a "lack of experience for critical situations" among the staff. "In a crisis, you need experience," he stresses, noting that the retirement of long-tenured workers may have left gaps in this area. The expert adds that the task of these operators does not have the technical qualification that, for example, an air traffic controller might have, "who tells the plane exactly what it must do to land".