Christine

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...?