As is often the case this time of year, there was a wee bit of fog about yesterday evening which made for a new experience.

Unfortunately, due to railway lines having to be fairly flat they were often built in the bottoms of river valleys close to water, making them prone to becoming fog-bound. Our route is no different, following, as it does, the course of the Lea and Stort all the way from Clapton to beyond Bishops Stortford. So thick was the fog that you couldn’t see one end of Broxbourne station from the other, and anything that wasn’t illuminated was totally invisible. Braking points were obscured and stations only loomed out of the murk at the last minute, which made stopping at stations a hit and miss affair. Imagine holding a sheet of grey paper 6 inches from the end of your nose and then running at the world at 85mph, and you’ll get a fair idea of what it was like. However, in my case I was running at the world in 250 tons of train with several hundred people on board. Even so, I still managed to complete a run down to the Airport in 42 minutes, observing all speed restrictions.

I was at least lucky enough that the job started with several trips on the Stansted Express. Not having to worry about stopping at places meant that I could check out how bad conditions were and how visible (or otherwise) my braking points would be if I were stopping. I was glad of having had that opportunity for when I had to finish the job with a round of slow stopping services to the airport. On the flipside, I did have a worry about station duties which I hadn’t encountered before: It can be quite hard to judge when to close the doors when the rear of the train is partially obscured by fog.

I’m pleased to report that my regular minder was back yesterday, and managed to complete the job without falling off his chair.

Boy, what an interesting evening. I have counted myself quite lucky that everything so far has gone well and I’ve not had to deal with any problems. However, all that went out of the window today.

It all started innocuously enough, with a pulled passcom (communication cord) on my first run up to London . Thankfully it was at a booked station stop and was almost certainly done by a group of teenagers in the rear coach as they got off the train. This was simple enough to rectify, but it still lost a couple of minutes.

After that it all went quiet until the last trip of the evening down to Hertford. We got cautioned by the signaller out of Cheshunt because a train a couple of slots ahead of us had hit a sofa that had been placed on the mainline. Even when we got to the location, there were still cushions and tatters of fabric littering the lineside, but nothing much resembling furniture. Once onto the branch we managed to pick up a group of hardened door-pullers who proceeded to make my life a misery. My minder then had an entertaining ten minutes chasing them away while I changed ends. With a bit of maneuvering, some technical shenanigans with the unit and the sound of an emergency service vehicle siren nearby (nothing to do with us), we managed to get away and leave the little (ahem) whatsits behind.

All of this got the old adrenalin going and has left me wondering if I’m cut out for that side of the job. Because we don’t have guards or conductors on our trains, everything is down to the driver. Problem is that there’s enough in the driving to keep me busy without having to worry about keeping the peace also. Without an imposing minder I’m not sure how I would have coped with this situation on my own, as I’m quite a timid person and slightly built which leaves me wary of confronting trouble head-on. In some perverse way, it would be good to expose myself to more experiences like this while I have the back-up of a minder so that I can develop strategies of my own. However, I could quite happily manage without the aggro.

Either way, I’m pretty certain that I wouldn’t have tackled tonight’s problems the same way as my minder did. It’s just not my style.

I am very pleased to report that I and my colleagues have finally finished the last part of classroom training that our job requires. From here on, we are no longer under the auspices of the Hornsey training school.

This last part was a SPAD Awareness and Route Risk course. I was initially worried how they were going to make this last a whole week without resorting to saying “Don’t go past the red ones” really slowly. However, it was quite in depth and looked at all manner of factors that can affect a driver’s performance and could contribute to an incident. It’s not just about poorly sited signals and the like, but could be environmental (e.g. sun affecting a signal), external (e.g. something more interesting happening just off the railway) or internal (e.g. mental and physical preparedness). From studying some actual incidents, it’s quite sobering to realise how something with the potential to cause major havoc can have its root in something so small and minor that it could easily be overlooked. It certainly gave me food for thought.

Today was supposed to be back at the pointy end putting all the theory into practice. It’s been four weeks since I’ve been with my regular minder, so I was quite looking forward to picking up from where we left off. Sadly, we didn’t get very far through the job before the wheels fell off that particular wagon. After leaving Tottenham Hale on a ‘Down’ Stansted Express service my minder was taken ill. After a quick conflab with the depot we called a halt at Broxbourne, turfed all the punters off and sat blocking the ‘Down Main’ until my minder was carted off in an ambulance and I was met by a driver manager so that I could take the train back to London . Given all the other things that were going wrong this morning, it was just one more thing to be dealt with. On the downside it does mean that I’m going to be back to square one in terms of getting any driving in the coming weeks, especially since another group of trainees have started with minders taking up all the spare men. I guess I can but wait and see.

Hope he’s alright…

Given today’s date, I would have thought that we would have been well into the throes of autumn by now. However, when I look out of my window all I can see are ranks of trees covered in lush green leaves. Even today’s high winds have failed to dislodge very many. We’re supposed to be deep into “silly season”, and yet there’s hardly been any problems.

Although the leaves are resolutely staying put, there has been quite a bit of slipping going on caused by wet rails. This isn’t helped much by Network Rail treating the tracks with high pressure water jets to blast the leaves off the railhead. I suspect that I was following one of these treatment trains yesterday evening while driving an ‘all stops’ service to Stansted Airport . All was fine until after we had left Broxbourne (a known starting point for treatment trains), but I had awful trouble getting going again at every stop after that. In fact, I would be lucky to get 50mph before having to brake for the next station, even where the stations were well spaced apart.

That said, it was much better today. I even took advantage of being in charge of an empty train to practice some “panic stops”. There wasn’t even the merest hint of a slip, even when braking hard in step 3 (which we are encouraged not to use for routine braking). There was even plenty of grip to get away from station stops. I don’t expect this situation to last for very much longer but, while the weather remains mild, the leaves won’t be much of a problem.

In other news, punter power came to my rescue the other day. I’d been lumbered with an 8 car Stansted Express train which had a set of dodgy doors on both sides, meaning that they needed to be shut by hand before leaving every station. This wasn’t too much bother at the airport or at Liverpool Street where there were plenty of platform staff to assist, but at Tottenham Hale there was no-one to help us. Thankfully, on one trip, I was just considering whether to get out and sort the doors myself when I saw a passenger step forward and do the honours, allowing us to get on our way. What a lovely man.

Actually, there are only ‘treats’ to report so far.

Last week, the wife and I had ourselves a little holiday in a cottage in the Highlands of Scotland. The idea was that we would rest, relax and recharge our batteries after what has seemed a very long and busy year so far. From my own perspective, it was just the tonic I needed.

Today’s turn was my first one after our break, and I was feeling a little nervous. However, I didn’t need to worry as the job was a nice gentle one to ease me back into driving. A round each to Chingford and Hertford East, then empties to Ilford. It was the same job that I observed from the secondman’s side a few weeks back (see Funky Moves: Friday 9th September) but, from the driver’s side, it wasn’t quite as hard as I’d expected. With the exception of one that is hidden behind a bridge, it was actually quite easy to see which signal applies to which line and where everything goes. They are even nice enough to throw in an extra double yellow aspect to compensate for the tight signal spacing between Stratford and Ilford. Even so, there is still plenty going on that can cause distraction and a fair bit to learn before I could ever ‘sign’ that route, especially with all the possible moves that can be made around Stratford and the length of line signalled for bi-directional movements.

I’m still not back with my own minder though, as he’s now on leave. Still, this week’s minder seems nice enough and pretty much just left me to get on with things, which I’m taking as something of a compliment.

Having had the ‘treat’ I think the ‘trick’ comes later in the week, as it looks like I’ll be rushing about on airports and suburbans.

Well, it’s finally happened. I’ve failed a train. Given my previous ‘Jonah Complex’ I’m surprised it’s taken this long. It was actually something of an anticlimax when it finally happened. Predictably it had to be a door fault on a Class 315 rather than anything more spectacular, but safety first…!!

We were at Hackney Downs on our way down to Hertford East when I noticed that people were having trouble getting into the leading coach and that the orange hazard light on the side of the carriage was not coming on. Given the number of times you have to shout “Press and hold” at punters because they can’t operate the door buttons correctly and the frequency with which hazard lights fail, I initially though nothing of it. However, the minder I was with jumped out at the next stop to investigate and found that there was no door release on that coach at all. A phone call to control later, and I’m turfing everyone out at Seven Sisters, changing ends and heading back to London empty as the unit cannot continue in service.

Ironically, I’d just been speaking to another trainee before setting out who was telling me that he had lost all his main air after hitting a large bird between Ware and Hertford East (he wasn’t sure whether it was a swan or a goose). Perhaps I should have taken that as an omen and gone to somewhere less risky, like Enfield Town . Still, it meant that I got a nice early finish to round the day off. What a result!!

Things have been fairly quiet of late, so there hasn’t been much to report. I’ve been shuttling up and down the West Anglia routes at the control of various services, making my stops, doing PA announcements and generally keeping out of the way. It’s been quite nice. There was one day last week when the (ahem) excrement hit the airscrew which resulted in some impressive delays and one of our trips to Enfield being cancelled, but that’s about it.

Unfortunately, this week I have been chopped and changed around a fair bit because my minder is unwell. In the last three days I’ve had two different minders and will have yet another tomorrow, this time from a different depot. At least it’s kept me out there driving, as I had feared that I’d be bumped back down to front-end turns again, but it’s meant that I’ve had to get acquainted with new minders and they with me. Still, it’s quite nice to have my driving assessed by other people as well as my regular minder so that I can get a balanced view on my progress.

Hopefully by the time I get back from my week off (to which I am very much looking forward) my minder will be well again.

Apologies once again, dear reader, for not updating the blog over the last couple of weeks.

I have been busy racking up the hours at the controls, which I am still pleased to report is going well. As I’m getting familiar with the actual driving of trains I’m having to concentrate less on it, which means that I’ve been able to gradually add in extra bits, like PA announcements. As all of our services are driver-only operated, making announcements is part of our job. I’m beginning to get into the swing of it, although I’m having to think about the best time to make them so that they don’t distract me from the more important job of driving safely.

Stopping at the boards is still causing some problems, though. I feel like I’m making progress on this and am developing my own braking technique, but my minder is concerned that I make too many adjustments to the brake on the run up the platform to the stopping point. Maybe so, but I’m getting more accurate with my stopping points and am able to keep to time, and don’t necessarily see my technique as being bad. I understand what he’s saying, but I still feel like I’m learning and getting a feel for what’s what. For example, I’ve learnt now that a heavily loaded train behaves very differently from a lightly loaded one and will adjust my braking accordingly. When I get to a point where I know with some level of confidence exactly how any given train will behave and where it will stop, I won’t have to make so many adjustments. However, until I get that experience and confidence I am either overestimating or underestimating and need to adjust for that accordingly.

Last week I got my first look at Hornsey depot from the driver’s seat. I’m sure that it’s actually quite straightforward, but there are a number of traps to catch out the unwary such as “stop” boards that are faded or missing altogether. It doesn’t help when the shunters’ handsignals are not always clear. I had one chap signalling me off the wash road in the depot with an unlit bardic lamp. Needless to say I couldn’t see him and sat there like a prune for some little while until he spotted what was amiss.

One other miscommunication that caught us out was the altered workings. It turned out that the arrangements that had been published for drivers was a complete work of fiction which caused us some confusion over our stopping patterns on two of our trips. It worked to our advantage on the first affected trip, as we weren’t actually booked to stop at some of the stations shown a stops in the notices. However, on the second trip the notices said that we had a fast run back up to London , even though the station information screens at various intermediate stops suggested differently. We got a few odd looks and exasperated waves as we blatted through non-stop, but we were just doing what we had been told. Thankfully nothing has been said about it since.

I’m very pleased to say that my minder driving is going very well indeed and that I’m enjoying it very much. The initial nervousness has now all but gone, and even two return trips out to Enfield Town in a Class 315 hasn’t dampened my spirits.

Being on late turns this week, I’ve had my first experience of driving in the dark. From road driving experience I knew that it would be totally different to driving in the light, but it’s even more dodgy on the rails. A particular problem is differentiating between what is and what is not a signal. Indeed, quite a large number of lights in the vicinity of the lineside appear to have been erected and sited without any thought to how they might appear to drivers. Thankfully real signals tend to stand out pretty well against the background by virtue of being dazzlingly bright, although this in itself caused me a few headaches as they blot out everything else in their immediate vicinity (including stop boards and DOO monitors). Obviously, with some practice and experience, I should get a better idea of the layout of places and have to rely less on actually seeing something in order to judge how to stop at it. Still, it’s still early days.

On a more amusing note, there appears to have been a few mix ups at Liverpool Street box this evening, which left my minder and I looking like chumps. Firstly, we were routed wrongly onto the ‘Down Fast’ line at Bethnal Green rather than the ‘Down Suburban’. When we stopped and queried it and advised the signaller that we would not be able to make our booked stop at London Fields from the ‘Down Fast’, we were told that the correct route had been set due to a problem at London Fields and that we would have to miss out that station. We couldn’t see any problem when we went past, but we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt on that one.

The second blooper that affected us was at Seven Sisters. We’d just run empty down from Cheshunt and had run onto the chord at Seven Sisters Junction to reverse back into the station before running down to Broxbourne. We’d just changed ends and set up the cab when the signal came off early. Thinking that the signaller knew what he/she was doing, we took it and pulled into Seven Sisters platform some 12 minutes early. Big mistake, as we’d been pulled out ahead of an Enfield Town service we should have been following. Many PA announcements and impromptu visits to the cab window later, and we left on time with a train groaning with punters. The last I saw of the Enfield Town service was that it was being advertised as being about 15 minutes late at Edmonton Green.

Although we were the butt of other people’s mistakes today, I wouldn’t want people to get the impression that I think I know it all. I made my own share of mistakes. I forgot to announce London Fields as a station stop on our first trip down to Enfield Town and had to deal with people coming to the cab window to ask whether we were stopping there. I also moved the master switch to “off” by mistake rather than selecting “neutral” when waiting at a red signal and had to set up the cab radio again. I’ve also got a less than perfect record at stopping on the mark or pulling up to other units at Liverpool Street .

But then, I am still learning…

Today is a day to remember, as it was our first day driving with our minders. Never mind shuttling up and down a siding or getting a brief drive, this was a full turn of duty with stops, passengers and a timetable to keep.

It would have been nice if they’d broken us in gently, but instead I drew the short straw. An intense 9 hours and 42 minutes of stopping suburban services with tight turnaround times was not an ideal introduction. Still, at least it gave me plenty of opportunities to practice stopping at stations and carrying out station duties. Eighty-three to be precise.

I was glad that I got on well with the Class 315 yesterday, as almost the entire job was driving one. Once they’re up and running they are quite a nice train to drive, with good acceleration and braking. On the downside they do require a higher degree of organisation and dexterity than the Class 317. Just to get into the cab and prepare for departure requires no fewer than four keys, none of which operate more than one lock. Then there’s having to coordinate the local door control switches, egress cocks and door key switches to ensure that the cab vestibule doors don’t fly open at inopportune moments; not to mention having to hold the power controller down before moving the master switch so that the brake doesn’t go straight in. I know that I’ll get there eventually, but it can be a bit of a palaver and I felt like I was all over the place for a while.

All of this has left me feeling absolutely knackered. As it’s all new I was concentrating entirely on driving to the exclusion of everything else. This wasn’t helped in any way by the first part of the job being virtually non-stop with little turnaround time at each destination.

On the other hand, I’ve already had my first problem. The signaller was unable to clear a faulty signal, which meant that I had to call him up and be given authority to pass it at danger. Not bad for my first day.

So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off for a kip. Tomorrow it’s all airport runs, which should be a less frenetic.