The Transpennine Route Upgrade (TRU) TRUST centre, the first purpose-built rail safety training facility of its kind in the North of England, has reached a major milestone with more than 10,000 visitors passing through its doors.

Opened in Huddersfield in 2023, the TRUST centre provides a unique, immersive learning experience for rail workers, allowing them to explore safety-critical situations in a controlled environment. The centre combines realistic scenarios with opportunities for open discussion and reflection, helping teams better understand the human factors behind incidents and near-misses on the railway.

Developed in partnership with Active Training Team (ATT), the programme uses professional actors to recreate the kinds of workplace and domestic situations that can contribute to unsafe behaviour. These dramatic scenarios form the basis of group workshops designed to challenge attitudes and improve safety culture across the rail industry.

Adam Christopher, Director at ATT, explained: “The training that we’re involved in is exploring attitude and behaviour and an actor’s job is to replicate attitudes and behaviours in a believable way on stage and screen. So in many regards, who better to bring that into a training environment? You start with a story, something concrete, and you make the behaviours in there recognisable, but you also make them emotional because that’s going to resonate with people – spark the neurons in your mind that aid memory retention - the language, the emotion, all your senses are going to be triggered and that aids memory retention, then the workshops that follow the story equip people with the confidence to challenge effectively and accept challenge graciously.”

Every TRU employee takes part in a one-day interactive training programme at the TRUST centre, helping to embed safety at every level of the project. With major engineering work underway across the 70-mile Transpennine route, the milestone reflects the programme’s continued commitment to putting health and safety first.

Craig Perry, TRU Head of Health, Safety and Wellbeing, said: “With the programme now firmly in the delivery phase and a multitude of engineering work being undertaken across the entire 70-mile route, safety is embedded in everything we do. This is a great milestone for the programme, with over 10,000 people now more aware of the dangers our work may carry thanks to this approach. The TRUST centre is a remarkable facility that has provided our teams with an interactive experience in safety training, with TRU ‘Safety First’ principles at the forefront. Thank you to everyone who has made such an important facet of the programme so successful and to all participants who engage in the day.”

As the Transpennine Route Upgrade continues to progress, the TRUST centre stands as a flagship example of how innovation and engagement can enhance safety culture across one of the country’s most significant rail modernisation projects.

Image: Network Rail