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 Authorities caution that training programs for high performance skills must not overload trainees' attention capacities One Amtrak coordinator for OJT activities said he was not comfortable with combining the two phases, and evidence indicates that some engineers from recent classes did not believe the program allowed them to learn the territories adequately. Since the training program has not been evaluated, no evidence is available to establish that the accelerated physical characteristics familiarization produces the same long-term retention of territory information that traditional familiarization did. According to current training theory, after apprentices learn the territories and master basic operating skills, they should have an opportunity to combine the activities, they would normally do so after learning the physical characteristics but before beginning OJT.

Safety Board investigators believe that Amtrak does not necessarily assign apprentices to routes for territory familiarization in a manner consistent with apprentices' learning needs. For example, some apprentices did not know how long they had to learn their routes, some apprentices believed they needed more time to learn their routes, and the length of the assignments did not necessarily correspond to the difficulty of the routes. The Safety Board believes that Amtrak should administer the program so that the time allocated for physical characteristics training and the scheduling of related examinations allow apprentices to pace their learning tasks and to develop confidence in their proficiency.

To promote a meaningful integration of the various learning experiences, the Safety Board believes that the objectives of all major learning activities, including the riding of trains before the classroom phase, should be clearly defined. When apprentices have no guidelines to use in pacing their learning tasks within an activity, their motivation, as well as their stress coping mechanisms, suffer. Recognized authorities recommend that training of high performance skills be provided under conditions of "mild stress"

The Safety Board is also concerned about the lack of documentation relating to apprentices' progress and development. Although Amtrak officials stated that two managers regularly observe and evaluate apprentices operating trains during OJT, no recently trained engineer who was questioned recalled such observations during his training. Of two experienced engineers questioned, only one recalled ever being asked to provide management officials with either a training item checklist or an oral account of how apprentices were doing. The Safety Board is concerned that because of this deficiency, some apprentices may have progressed