GB Railfreight – training the drivers keeping Britain’s economy moving.

Every day, GB Railfreight keeps Britain’s economy moving. Aviation fuel to Heathrow, biomass to power stations, steel for HS2. For the drivers doing that work, the margin for error is zero. The pass mark on assessments is 90%. That’s not a target. It’s the floor.

Bradley Moore is GB Railfreight’s Training Development and Innovation Manager. His job is to hold that standard for a shift-based workforce spread across the country. And training can’t be another burden on people who are already carrying plenty. Bradley decided there was a better way to build competency.

Using simulations and VR technology, he brought locomotives to life and to the frontline workforce. And it’s all powered by a single engine – Confirm’s [formerly Learning Pool] platform.

What he built turned heads and caught the attention of the American rail industry. Here’s the story.

The platform came first

Before any headline-grabbing technology, Bradley needed something more fundamental: one place where everything lived. Courses built and delivered in the same system. Assessment results coming back automatically. Document control, permissions, records – all of it, for 1,000 people who are spread across the country, managed by a small team.

The training school at Peterborough has three classrooms, each with an 85-inch interactive monitor. Courses are built, uploaded to Learning Pool’s platform, and taught directly from it – trainees pressing hotspots, playing videos, answering quizzes together in the room.

Automating those all important assessments

The five-week program used to lose an entire week to marking handwritten papers. When Bradley used Confirm’s [formerly Learning Pool] platform to roll out automated assessments, some regions pushed back hard. Bradley turned the automated ones off. Let those teams go back to paper.

Within weeks, they asked for the automation back. Now trainers across the country are the ones asking what else they can move to the platform.

The problem that resulted in a change in direction

Becoming a driver takes fourteen weeks in a classroom, two weeks in a simulator, and 225 hours beside a mentor before you’re cleared to go out alone. When GB Railfreight invested in a new class of locomotives, called the 99s, 760 drivers needed training. There’s one problem: there are virtually no class 99s available for training. Plus, the existing simulator is based on the old fleet.

So how do you train a shift-based workforce spread across the country, on a locomotive that’s hard to get access to?

Where the VR simulation idea came from

Working with spatial computing company JigSpace and Apple, GB Railfreight built a full 3D model of the class 99 – accessible through Apple Vision Pro headsets. Or for those who’d rather, through a standard iPad. Both routes run through Confirm’s [formerly Learning Pool] platform. If the real locomotive isn’t available mid-course, training doesn’t stop.

Of course, virtual doesn’t replace real. Theory still happens. Practical handling on the actual locomotive is still essential. But the virtual model means that trainees arrive already prepared. 

The result

Gaining back a week in five through automated assessments is just part of the picture. Thanks to the new simulations, familiarization training is down by two days on every course. More qualified drivers, lower cost, same standard.

GB Railfreight is reportedly the first organisation in the world to use Apple Vision Pro this way. Other rail operators have come to find out how. In fact, the American rail industry invited them to present.

What Bradley built to solve a British fleet problem turns out to be a model for technical frontline training anywhere. And powering it all?