Funky moves

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 neutral section on the run up. Stopping at that signal (as we almost had to) with an 8 car EMU formation (as 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...