Happy New Year to everyone!!

The festive season turned out to be a fairly quiet time. Although I worked up to a pretty eventful Christmas Eve, I managed to wangle plenty of leave so that I didn’t have to go back to work until Tuesday of this week. However, I still managed to fill most of that time off with visiting family, over-eating and exchanging gifts. It was almost a relief to go back to work and drive trains just so that I had something constructive to do.

Now that I am back in the saddle, I have decided that I really ought to start revising all the things that I learned on the Rules and Traction courses that I attended a lifetime ago. I feel pretty confident that most of the more regular things are still floating around quite close to the front of my head, but I know that there’s an awful lot that I’m now worryingly hazy about. For example, the question that I most dread my minder asking is “Name the MCB’s in the PMOS electrical cupboard”, as I really can’t remember more than about half a dozen.

The trouble is that I’m not entirely sure how long I’ve got. Given the amount of time that I’ve now been out driving with a minder I had thought that my final assessment might be sometime in the next month or two, but I’ve yet to hear anything definite. I can’t even make an educated guess, as the number of hours they have recorded for me appears to be somewhat short of the total I had been expecting. Having looked more deeply into the situation, it appears that there is a four week gap in my record. While I can confirm that I was not driving over two of these weeks, it seems that someone somewhere might have mislaid some record sheets or failed to add the hours to my total. Either way, it could make quite a bit of difference.

Looks like a mystery fit for Hercule Poirot…

It’s 1:15am and I’m just in from one of our later jobs.

To be honest I don’t much look forward to these Saturday late night turns, as there always seems to be something happening. On Friday night our train was hit by a missile of some sort resulting in a broken window, so I was expecting tonight to have been as eventful. At weekends, there tends to be large numbers of kids hanging about stations and riding on trains. For the most part they are just a bit loud and boisterous, but from time to time you get a group that just wants to cause trouble. Thankfully, most of the kids out and about tonight fell into the former group and, in spite of a whole evening up and down one of our more troublesome lines, we got nothing worse than a door being briefly pulled.

Following on from my previous entry, I’ve done a bit of digging around and managed to track down my missing hours. It would seem that six days worth of hours have not been recorded, which leaves my record about 25 hours short. Added to my current total, I reckon that it will only be another week or two until I will have completed my hours. One of the others in the same group as myself has already completed his and sits his final assessment next week.

I’m still not sure what all the MCB’s in the PMOS cupboard are, though…

Perhaps not unreasonably, there is an expectation from members of the public that, if you wear the uniform, you must know everything. Unfortunately, I was totally ill-equipped to fulfill the role of “Know-er of All Things”.

Regrettably there was another fatality on our patch this evening just as the peak was subsiding. Whenever such things happen it takes time to get things up and running again, particularly if there are no diversionary routes, as was the case tonight. Predictably, this didn’t cause us any problems until our last run when we were due to take a slow train from Stratford down to Stansted Airport , being relieved by another driver at Bishops Stortford. This should have been a nice little run without any incident but, starting from Stratford , we had obviously been overlooked. By the time we had got to Tottenham Hale our train was being announced as going only as far as Bishops Stortford. First we’d heard of it…!! I had to shout down the platform at the station staff to get this confirmed.

So, that was where we were going and it would be up to our relief to worry about what happened after that. We made the necessary announcements and off we went. Eventually we arrive at what we still believe is our destination and open the doors only for a group of passengers with suitcases to get on. Funny, thinks I. It didn’t take long for the questions to start. “‘Scuse me, mate. This is going to the Airport, isn’t it?”, Is it? “It’s just that we were told it was”. Oh, well if you say so.

Such problems are evidently not restricted to the frontline staff either. Even though the office are aware of my progress, they hadn’t twigged that I would complete my required hours by the end of this week. When I mentioned this to them they went into a flap. The result is that I start my final assessment next week, although it might not be until the week after that I complete it due to other demands on the Assessor’s time.

Well folks, the end is almost upon me. I have finished the required hours with my minder and am now facing the final assessment to prove my competence (or otherwise) as a train driver.

The euphoria was almost spoiled on Friday night when a fight broke out on our train. I’d only just started rolling down the platform at Liverpool Street with the last train of the day to Hertford when there was the sound of shouting and clumping around from the front coach. We stopped the train pretty sharpish and opened the doors to deal with the situation before we were happy to continue. Turns out that an abusive passenger decided that he was going to have a pop at an off-duty Special Constable (after having been shown his ID). If that wasn’t enough to qualify him for the “Twit of the Day” award, he chose to do it on one of only two trains currently fitted with CCTV. Needless to say he was forcibly ejected from the train by station security and did not get home that night.

The other fly in the ointment stems from my upcoming assessment, part of which is to “sign” our depot’s core route. Having spoken to the chaps in the office, it would seem that I’m also going to be expected to “sign” an additional diversionary route at the same time. I was a bit annoyed as I hadn’t been warned about this in advance, but it seems that they’ve got me over a barrel. I was intending to tell them that I’m not ready and request a couple of extra days to learn the route, but they’ve made it clear that doing this will delay my passing out as a qualified driver. What rankles the most is that they’ve done it in a rather underhand way. While they haven’t said that this extra route is part of the core requirement, they have said that I won’t be assessed until I’m ready to “sign” both routes and that requesting extra days for route learning will mean that my assessment will be rescheduled for a later date.

I can understand why they expect this, especially if the main route is blocked for whatever reason (as it was today). Plus, as it’s not such a tricky route to learn, I’m half inclined to just do it. However, I do feel that it’s extremely cheeky of them to spring this on me at very short notice. I think that a chat might be in order to clear this one up. Either way, I might be able to blag an extra day or two depending on how things pan out for the rest of this week.

Well, my ordeal starts tomorrow afternoon with as assessment of my knowledge of PTS (remember that…?) and the core route, and will last several days. Hopefully by the end of next week I shall be passed out as a fully-fledged driver.
Wish me luck!!

As a driver, it’s not very often that you get the opportunity to mix with or talk to any of the many professions that keep the railways running. As a result, each grade tends to have a slightly jaundiced view of everyone else. Therefore, it was rather nice to dispel some of these myths today.

Because of the way that things have worked out with my assessment, I have indeed managed to wangle an extra day’s route learning so that I can “sign” the diversionary routes. However, there are no scheduled passenger services over one of these routes, which meant that it had to be walked. Given the biting cold of the wind I guess I couldn’t have chosen a better day, so I was glad that the route to be walked was only a mile or so long.

It also benefited from a lovely warm signalbox at about half distance in which we could shelter and pick the signaller’s brains. Although the precise workings of the signalbox are still as arcane to me as they were when we visited Cambridge IECC and Kings Lynn box all those months ago, the signaller himself was friendliness personified and a mine of useful information. It almost made me feel bad for all the nasty things I’d said and thought about his colleagues at Liverpool Street IECC. He talked me through all the possible shunt moves and signal indications while skillfully juggling passenger and freight movements coming through his patch. He didn’t even mind answering lots of questions that probably all came at the most inconvenient of times for him. What a lovely man.

Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said about a look-out for a worksite we passed. Just as we drew up to him he started firing off lots of daft questions about why we weren’t wearing hard hats and didn’t have a look-out. He didn’t seem to understand who we were (even though I was wearing the uniform coat) and why we were out there. He even earned us a reprimand from the site supervisor who yelled at us to “Stop distracting the look-out!!”. So I yelled back to make clear that it was him talking to us and not the other way around.

Other than that, the assessments so far have been OK. I’ve had the written assessments for PTS and the core route together with a few hours driving. This still leaves the biggies of rules and traction, together with the additional diversionary routes and yet more driving. Still, I now have a nice long weekend in which to relax (although I fear I may spend a significant amount of that time fretting).

Today is the day that I have been waiting for. A little over ten months ago I walked in off the street knowing absolutely nothing about what being a train driver involved. At every stage along the way I was sure they would tell me that I wasn’t good enough to make the grade, and yet they kept asking me back. And now, having completed my final assessment, I am no longer a trainee.

Obviously I’m really pleased to have finally passed out, there is a sense of anticlimax about it. After all these months of work leading up to this point I was expecting to feel more elated, but I guess that this is just the start of my career as a driver. As good as the preparation has been to bring me to this point and as helpful and knowledgeable as the various instructors have been, I still feel that there’s so much more that I don’t know and will only start to learn once I’m out there having to rely on no-one but myself. However, I would like to publicly thank everyone who has provided me with even the least bit of information, advice or encouragement. At the risk of turning irretrievably mushy, I feel very privileged to work with such a great bunch of people from whom I will no doubt continue to learn.

So, where does it all go from here? Well, in the true tradition of chucking people in at the deep end, I have my first solo turn tomorrow morning. As I’ve only passed on the core route, it will be a fairly bland day of airport services. However, being the first time out on my own it won’t be dull. I would imagine that “terrifying” would be a more accurate description. I’ll have twenty of these solo turns before I then learn the rest of the routes. Once all that’s out the way, I shall be fully into the roster and have a more varied workload.

As for this weblog, I intend to continue to add to it as it would be a real shame just to end it here. I hope that it has been interesting and possibly even amusing on occasion. Above all, I hope that it has inspired other would-be drivers out there that it is possible to achieve your ambition.

Heck, if I could do it, what’s stopping you…?

Well folks, I survived my first solo turn.

It was a bit weird being in the cab all on my own. I found that I kept looking over to the secondman’s seat expecting a comment or remark only to find it empty. It wasn’t just the cab that seemed empty, as the messrooms had a similar feel too. I also seemed to spend an awful lot of time talking and singing to myself, which is worrying. Then again, when there’s no-one else around you can’t feel embarrassed about it.

At the risk of sounding immodest, I didn’t feel as nervous as I thought I might. I made sure that I didn’t rush about and gave myself plenty of time to change ends so that things didn’t get forgotten or otherwise overlooked, and I drove as I always had done when with my minder (but then, I know no other way). This, combined with being in my own little bubble insulated from the rest of the world, actually made for a surprisingly relaxing day. That said, I did have a scare on my second trip when the cab radio went wonky and I had to stop and get instructions from the signaller via a signalpost phone. That certainly got the old heart pumping as I mentally scrabbled around trying to remember if I was doing the right thing.

All in all I had a really great day and I’m looking forward to my next turn of duty on Monday. I don’t expect that every day will be as cushy, so I’m enjoying it while it lasts.

Although it’s now been over a week since passing out, I’ve still only completed three solo driving turns. This is mainly down to me taking the last of my annual leave left over from 2005 (which also explains why I’ve not updated the weblog recently). However, today was a veritable cornucopia of happenings.

Because of engineering work I was let off the Stansted Express duties and put onto the London to Harlow shuttle. Some of these trains would have been Cambridge or Bishops Stortford services, which meant that I spent the first couple of trips sliding around trying to get my eye back in for braking at stations that the faster Stansted Express services don’t call at. It all came back to me eventually, although I did manage to give myself a bit of a scare first time into Roydon and Ponders End stations. Fortunately, I managed not to go skating past the stop board.

I also had the opportunity to do something for the very first time.

When our routes were resignalled a few years back, no-one thought to put in any bi-directional signalling at Harlow Town station to allow for trains to be turned back to London . This means that trains terminating there have to make an unsignalled wrong direction movement at some point to be crossed back onto the correct line through manually operated points. This means taking instructions from a handsignaller. Fortunately, as I had to travel as a passenger up to London before taking my first train out, I got to see the movement being done by an experienced driver before I was expected to do it myself. It wasn’t actually as difficult as I thought it might have been, but it was nice to know that I wasn’t going to make a fearful mess of the thing when it came to my turn.

As if that wasn’t enough, Spurs were playing at home this afternoon which meant that I got my first experience of a football train. I am continually amazed at the number of people that can squeeze themselves into a train when they are motivated to get somewhere. I thought that weekday peak loadings were impressive, but commuters have got nothing on football fans. I can only assume that they must have been wedged into the overhead racks and sitting on each other’s laps for everyone on the platform at Northumberland Park to have managed to get onboard. The train certainly felt fatter as a result, but on a positive note all the extra weight gave amazing grip on the rail in drizzly conditions and cancelled out all the slipping that I’d been experiencing up until then.

Unfortunately, today looks to have been a glimmer in an otherwise dull week. From tomorrow I shall be back on the Stansted Express. While these runs tend to be fairly routine, they are at least quite easy with few stops and a train host to deal with the punters and the PA. On the downside, it does mean that I am likely to come back into contact with my Nemesis. The same unit that suffered the faulty cab radio on my first day decided to take a “sicky” while I was driving it on day two. I had sensed that the traction power was ebbing away until the train felt like it was on half power. Unfortunately, there were no fault indications on either unit to diagnose what the problem was or even which unit was suffering from it. It was only when I handed the train over to a colleague that I realised what was wrong. As he was pulling away, I couldn’t hear any noise from the traction motors on one unit. It’s a good thing it was working in multiple with another unit or I would have been stuck somewhere with no power and no hope. I’m sure that unit doesn’t like me. If it looks like I have to drive it again I shall probably just go straight home again.

Who says train driving is dull…?

I notice from my last entry that I was bemoaning the fact that this week was going to be rather dull. Well, I have been proved wrong in spectacular style. Still, according to some of my colleagues I am now a proper driver.

Unfortunately, I don’t feel at liberty at the present moment in time to go into any details on such a public website just at the moment. However, it does mean that I won’t be doing any driving for a little while during which time this weblog probably won’t get updated very often. So, apologies for that. Don’t worry though, dear reader. I will be back very soon.

They do say that you should be careful what you wish for.

In case any of you were wondering, I am still alive and well and have not been abducted by aliens.

The reason for the lack of updates is that I was involved with a railway incident on the day before my previous entry. It was only my fifth solo driving turn and a day given over entirely to Stansted Express services and, surprisingly for me, started without incident. Unfortunately, it didn’t last. As I was driving through Clapton station on my way back down to the airport, a person ran out from behind the steps to the ticket office and jumped off the edge of the platform directly in front of my train. Even though I sounded the warning horn and applied the brakes, there was no way that I could avoid running the person over.

I had thought that my reaction to having a fatality would be very different and that I would be more emotional than I was. Apart from the expected rush of adrenalin and the shock of the event, I managed to stay quite calm about the situation. In fact, even while sitting there waiting for the emergency services the whole thing seemed most surreal that I wondered for a moment whether or not I had just imagined the whole thing and was stopping the job for no reason. This impression was reinforced by the other people on the platform who must have seen the incident still just standing there impassively as if they were waiting for their train. However, I had already decided that I would not go back and look if I was ever involved with a fatality, and I wasn’t about to change my mind on that. I could quite happily live with someone else doing the checking for me.

When they arrived, the emergency services were brilliant. They took control of the situation and made sure that I was OK. They really couldn’t do enough for me and even made sure that I didn’t see the recovery process or the body itself. The same goes for the managers and colleagues at work who showed great concern for my welfare and helped me through all the necessary paperwork required after an incident such as this.

Naturally, such an incident triggers the “Chain of Care” procedure, which is intended to assist me back to work. Consequently, I have been booked off work since the incident and taking counselling sessions to help me deal with the memories of the incident and the emotions that they generate. Fortunately, there hasn’t been any emotional reaction yet. I guess that this is partly down to the fact that railway fatalities were never shied away from throughout training and it is a subject that I had already devoted an amount of time to think about. I pretty quickly went through the rational process of thinking that “it wasn’t me that killed this person, it was the train”, “if it hadn’t have been me it would have been the bloke behind me” and “if they hadn’t jumped under a train they would have found some other means”. If anything, the counsellor is happy that I’m dealing with events well but is concerned that I am perhaps a little too rational about it.

I think that my lack of reaction probably stems also from the way in which the incident happened. While no fatality is good, it was for me at least quite “soft”. If it had been more gruesome or appeared not to be that person’s deliberate action I’m certain that I would have been more affected by it.

Of course, this all means that it is almost a month since I last drove a train, which is going to affect my progress a little. However, I am going back to work tomorrow and have agreed a staged return to work so that I have the opportunity to get back into a good cab routine and build my confidence back up. If anything, I’m feeling more nervous about how rusty I’ve become than I am about going back over the route where it happened. However, none of this has dampened my feelings towards driving as a job and I’m looking forward to getting back into the seat again.