Having spent all yesterday looking at the dirty underside of a Class 317, we spent most of today inside the unit looking at cocks. It all sounds a little bit sordid but, in order to pass our traction training, we need to know all about them. The cocks in question related specifically to the pantograph and the other equipment up on the roof that carries out the job of collecting juice from the overheads.

It all seemed fairly straightforward when the trainer was there to explain everything, but it is beginning to dawn on me the extent to which traction is much more abstract than the rules course was. For example, there are quite a few different things that could prevent you raising the pantograph and not many indications to help you track down exactly where the problem might be. At least with some of the rules questions if you didn’t actually know the answer you could deduce most of them. Unfortunately it seems that, at this point at least, I’m going to have to put in a lot of effort to learn each part.

At least I’ve managed to get my first train fault out of the way quickly. Once we’d all had a go at cutting in the auxiliary power and raising the pantograph under supervision and been shown the whereabouts of the various MCB’s and isolating cocks, we were all going to have a go at doing this unsupervised. Being nearest the cab I went first. All went swimmingly with the pantograph going up and giving power until *phutt*, and out went all the lights. At first I thought I’d been stitched up but tried again anyway with the same result. I realised later what I should have done (press ‘Aux Set’ and ‘Pan Up’ together), but by then it was too late. The others wouldn’t let me off the unit until last in case I broke the steps as well. I have a nasty feeling that this might have been a reputation forming event.

It seems that I was right about my reputation within the group as a train breaker sticking. Although I’ve had no further incidents, I’m still referred to as a Jonah.

In fact, this particular title could just as easily apply to one of our number who got a bit keen when exploring the differences between the Mark 1 version of the Class 317 and the slightly less old Mark 2. Despite warnings that the units we were exploring had been prepped for service and that we should leave them exactly as we’d found them, he noticed that the passcoms were different and decided to pull one. Cue several minutes of consternation as his group tried to work out how to reset it. Unfortunately, being the first I fear that this is not going to be enough to shift the attention away from myself.

Away from the diverting subject of breaking trains, we’ve been getting down to the minute details of our units. As a commuter I’d always dismissed them as being old, basic and a bit naff but, as a trainee driver, I’m learning a new respect for them from their hidden complexities. For example, I’d never known that the air suspension could sense the weight of each coach and automatically adjust the brake pressure in each brake step accordingly. That this is all done by air without any electronic intervention is quite amazing.

The flip side to this is that there are some daft design touches, particularly in relation to the positioning of air isolation cocks. Some units have an internal and external cock for some air systems, but these are in different places in the circuit for each system. Some parts of the air system don’t have an isolating cock at all which would require the isolation of the entire coach from the rest of the train in the event of an air leak (e.g. the supplementary main air reservoir on Mark 2 units). A bigger headache is the positioning of a passenger bulkhead inside refurbished Mark 2 units which makes access to the isolation cocks all but totally impossible.

Still, it’s nice to be outside in the fresh air after all those weeks stuck inside a classroom all the time. It certainly makes things a lot easier to understand when you can go out to a unit and see the systems and practice the procedures (or “play”, as our instructor would have it).

Yesterday was the day that I and my classmates had been waiting for all these months. Almost four months after starting employment with the company we got our first taste of driving.

OK, so the journey only lasted about 300 yards and did not exceed 5mph, but it still felt like a major milestone to us all. I can’t say that I was too worried or overawed by the experience as it was in the safe confines of Hornsey depot. The first time out on the mainline will be a different matter, though. Naturally we all made our fair share of silly learners mistakes like forgetting to reset the DRA and getting muddled up with the directions in which the brake and power controllers move, but no-one dropped the DSD (except at the instructors prompting) or bashed into anything. The other thing that we also all failed at was correctly picking braking points to correctly stop at chosen landmarks, but that will come with experience.

Today’s driving exercises were a bit more practical as we practiced coupling and uncoupling, or “controlled collisions” as the instructor called them. Hopefully with practice the various stages of each operation will gradually sink in and the elementary errors will stop.

Since last week’s entry there’s not been much to report. It would seem that we have now covered all of the required knowledge on our basic traction and are spending our time mopping up any points that we feel we don’t fully grasp and endlessly practicing things like coupling and uncoupling units, train prep and fault finding.

Although the practice is good and helpful to get the various procedures set in our minds, I’m just beginning to get a little bored with the course. I guess I’m just getting a bit impatient now. Maybe I’m overdue a break. We’ve all started talking wistfully about the possibility of taking some leave so that we might be able to have a holiday. If there is one criticism that I could level at the structure and administration of the driver training programme it is that each element of the training follows hard on the heels of the one before and there’s no chance to stop and have a breather. There’s an awful lot of hard work involved in taking on board and understanding all this new information, and I know that I’m beginning to feel tired.

Hopefully there will be an opportunity for some time off once we get to the minder driving stage, but that isn’t due to start until mid-September. Until then we’ll keep soldiering on.

Apologies for the lack of recent updates. I haven’t vanished off the face of the earth (well, not yet anyway).

It would seem that the endless practice that we had earlier this month has stood us in good stead, as we all passed our traction assessments (and not before time). Thanks to the excellent preparation that we had received at Hornsey, the biggest challenge facing us was how to avoid getting sunstroke or, for those who had their assessment on the Friday, getting soaked to the skin.

Unlike all the other assessments we’ve had so far, the traction assessment is a two part affair with a written and a practical part. The other difference was that, while the written part was administered at the Hornsey training school by our instructor, the practicals take place at the driver depots and are carried out by driver managers. Even so, both parts were fairly relaxed affairs.

Now that the traction course is complete, we have reached the end of the main classroom phase of the training. Although there are a couple more courses that we need to take, the emphasis is now on getting some hands-on experience. For two weeks starting from today we are allowed out with an empty train to play on the mainline between Cambridge and Stansted Airport . At last, we have started to actually drive trains. It was quite a weird experience being able to drive at up to 90mph with other trains around and having to obey signals and speed restrictions when all we’ve been used to so far is pootling about in the depot.

My own driving turn was fairly unspectacular. Taking over the train at Newport on our way up to Stansted Airport , I was only able to attain a maximum of 70mph. However, I did make a pretty good fist of stopping at the 8 car board at Elsenham and only ran a few feet past the DOO monitors. It’s going to take a little while to get used to the way that the train handles and how to control it, but I feel we’re well on the way. The only small fly in the ointment was a sour-faced Central Trains driver who was waiting for us to clear Stansted North Junction so that he could get the road up to Cambridge . He couldn’t have been there for very long, but he certainly made sure I was aware that he wasn’t a happy chap. I shall have to look out for him tomorrow.

At least I don’t have to buy the cream cakes tomorrow, unlike two unfortunates who failed to cancel the AWS in time.

Once again, sorry for the lack of updates. My PC decided to die an unpleasant death and I had to wait for a replacement which only arrived a couple of days ago.

Well, the two weeks with an empty unit is now up and we all seem to have done very well. As well as getting some practice in of controlling a train, we practiced station stops and station duties at various points and with varying degrees of success. Perhaps somewhat uncharitably, other drivers have seized on our train as an excuse to explain any delays they had accrued and “late running of crew training train” featured heavily on the delay reporting sheet. I guess some of this was justified, as the various signallers either wouldn’t allow us to depart on time or would take decisions in our favour (which included holding a southbound freight service so that he could show us the bi-directional movements at Audley End).

It would have been nice to have had the chance of a bit more practice, but we were only diagrammed for two return trips before the train was needed again for the evening peak. Once these had been split between the seven of us, it meant that on most days each trainee only got between 15 and 20 minutes at the controls. In between turns, we passed the time by playing cards, reading, sleeping and chatting. Although this meant that the atmosphere was nicely chilled, it also made the days seem very long. Still, I successfully managed not to put on too much weight from eating cakes (although, to be fair, they weren’t required to be bought very often).

Next week should be a traction conversion course to cover Class 315 EMU’s but, because of a miscommunication between the various parties involved, this isn’t happening until later this month. In fact, it took several of us phoning various people to get even that organised, as each thought it was the responsibility of the other. Sadly this is not untypical and won’t be sorted until all driver training is finally taken in-house. So, instead of traction conversion we have an extra week of front end turns.

Oh goody.

What looked like being a rather dull week actually contained a few little nuggets of interest. OK, sure I was stuck up the front of a Stansted Express unit looking at the same old scenery for far longer that I would have liked, but it wasn’t all bad.

Monday’s job was a nice easy one which ended up at Hornsey depot. This is a move I’ve already seen once and, having been at the training school there for a number of weeks, I was already quite familiar with the depot layout. The same could not be said about Ilford, where we ended up on Tuesday. That is one complicated looking place, and the run along the ‘Down Electric’ line from Liverpool Street was rather daunting. Although I’ve travelled along this route many times as a passenger, I had never seen the line ahead and never quite appreciated quite how scary it is to drive. The signals along that stretch come up thick and fast and for every one signal on the ‘Main’ lines there were two on the ‘Electric’ lines. In fact, it was typical to find a signal at each end of every station platform. On top of that, one particular signal at Manor Park has an OLE (overhead line) neutral section on the run up. Stopping at that signal (as we almost had to) with the 8 car EMU formation we were driving would have had the pantograph of the rear unit in the neutral section meaning no traction power from that part of the train to assist in starting. I’m sure with time and practice I’ll get the hang of it, but in the half-dark on Tuesday night it had me worried.

A day spent on the Stansted Express was an anticlimax after all that, but yesterday’s job ended up with a little gem. Because of an engineers possession between Harlow Town and Audley End our last train terminated at Harlow Town and, to facilitate it’s return to London, was crossed over onto the ‘Up Cambridge’ at the ground frame and ran wrong road into the station.

Now all this is completed, I’m quite looking forward to getting on with the job. From next Monday we shall all be back at Hornsey for a week and have had our Class 315 conversion confirmed for the following week. What happens after that I just don’t know. I’m hoping that we will start with our minders about then but something tells me that it’s unlikely.

I guess we shall just have to wait and see…

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.

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…

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.