I'm not entirely sure exactly where to begin, as this week has been a bit of a rollercoaster. Fortunately my bad luck has held off for the duration, although I have been victim of the misfortune of others.
Monday started quietly enough, although I was treated to an unusual and slightly comical sight on my last run up to London. As I was approaching Tottenham Hale I noticed that a train was sitting stationary at an unusual location. As I got a bit closer, I could see that the driver was speaking on the radio to the signaller and looking upwards out of the cab window. It was only as I followed his gaze that I noticed what he was looking at. There, snagged in the overhead lines, was a bright orange toy balloon. As odd as it looked, I quite understood why he stopped. Even something as innocuous as this can bring down the overhead lines if it gets caught by a passing pantograph, so we have to keep an eagle eye out for such obstructions and stop short of any that we see. I had thought that this might mean a trip around the Southbury line for the first time since passing out, but the obstruction had been dealt with by then and I travelled along the booked route instead.
Someone else wasn't quite so lucky on the following evening, as whoever was driving one of the last trains of Tuesday evening managed to bring down a large section of overhead lines at Hackney Downs. When I booked on the following morning I was informed of this and the fact that services were being diverted via Stratford, but I wasn't aware of the impact of the event until I went to take my first train. Even though it came in at the expected time, it transpired that it wasn't my train after all but the one fifteen minutes ahead. I did wonder why the driver seemed adamant that he wasn't due for relief at that point, but a quick comparison of headcodes soon revealed the cause. The train that I eventually took over rolled in twenty minutes later. As a newly qualified driver I don't yet sign all the routes we cover, which meant that I needed to be accompanied by another driver to guide me through Stratford. Sharing the cab again after getting used to being on my own took a while to adjust to, but it was nice to have someone to chat with while waiting for red signals to clear.
Disruption such as this has other pluses and minuses. On the minus side, each trip took far longer than was booked which meant having to deal with awkward passengers. However, so that a semblance of a service could be run the timetable got severly cut back which resulted in cancellations and fewer trains to be driven. By the end of my turn, I worked roughly the same amount of hours as I would have under normal circumstances, got home at the same time and yet did less driving. All in all it wasn't a bad way to celebrate my birthday and certainly gave plenty to talk about.
Things got back to normal by Wednesday afternoon which meant that Thursday should have been a straightforward day. Unfortunately, I was the victim of other infrastructure problems. A failed signal on my first run cost me a hefty delay, and a points problem in the afternoon meant that I got the trip around the Southbury route that I missed on Monday. I was offered the Stratford alternative, but I was alone so had to decline. Even so, it worked out well. The train in front of me took the Stratford option and arrived at Liverpool Street more than ten minutes after me. As a result, I made my booked slot for my last run whereas I would have missed it if I'd gone by Stratford.
Unforunately, the average of one incident per week resulting in a fatality is continuing. It started out as a bit of a joke, but it's rapidly become a curse. It's particularly poignant that the latest incident which happened this afternoon involved one of the drivers I trained with. If anything, I find this more shocking than having been directly involved in a fatality myself. Out of the five of us that qualified, two of us have already had a fatality in the two months since qualifying. These are staggering statistics that I am totally at a loss to explain. While such incidents are random in their nature, the number and frequency has got people wondering and asking questions.
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