>>1698701long story short, no
long story long, conductors don't have proper ground to touch anything besides tickets (they're already whining if they have to get in the cab if they have to act as watchmen during bad weather), their retraining would be a nightmare and possibly most of them would fail it, and they're so understaffed that such a move prolly would increase the number of those who leave the railway
and that's only the human part, technologically you can't even throw switches by hand on a station that has local operation but motorized or distanced (push-pull rods) switches, which is like two thirds of all switches in my country, without the aid of a technician who makes it possible, who is present on locally operated stations, but not on centralized control ones
also also, automated trains require pre-sent signals: it's pretty common on manned main lines too, you have a big flashing box over your head with the projected signal ahead, and the big flashing light on the signpost is just the confirmation of it; however, while manned trains can easily get past of it not working and just concentrating on what the post will say, automated trains basically die without it
i think that frequent and less complex systems, like metro lines do have a future in automatization, but i seriously cannot imagine the hell that an automated national system would cause
