Well folks, it's the early hours of Wednesday morning and I've had a very rare occurrence. Today's shift went almost entirely without hitch. I say almost entirely, as things didn't go precisely as planned. However, given the dramas that I've suffered recently, being swapped off one pair of units and onto another was hardly dramatic.
The same couldn't have been said about Sunday evening's job, though. The first pair of units I took over were dreadful. The London-end unit was on half power only due to a traction motor fault suffered earlier in the day, while the country-end unit leaked like a sieve into the driving cab. Because the driving desk was awash with water and contains circuits energised at 110 volts DC, I refused to take the units back to the airport on the grounds of safety. Being a Sunday I had hoped that this would get me out of a round, but they had other ideas for me and asked if I could shunt the units seperately into a vacant platform so that the formation would be reversed and the leaky cab "boxed-in". This was all new to me, but the signaller talked me through the move so that it went smoothly. Sadly, I only managed to get halfway through the shunt when I was asked to take just the single unit that had been at the London end for my next working rather than completing the shunt. I agreed to this, but informed them that the unit was only on half power to which their response was "half power is better than no power". It was by far the slowest run to the airport that I've ever done, which wasn't helped by a lack of grip due to wet rails.
It seems that the spate of fatalities on our lines has not impressed on people just how dangerous the railways are. I had a terrible feeling of foreboding yesterday that there would be another one that evening, and that it could happen to me. This wasn't helped any when I saw two young lads on the Up side cess by Sawbridgeworth not more than a few metres from my train. Although I'm pretty poor at judging ages, I would have to guess that they couldn't have been aged more than 10 and 8, and were probably brothers. Imagine what their mother must have felt if the Police had to go and break the news to her that her two boys had been killed because they had been trespassing on the railway. This, together with the number of fatalities and other mischief that we have experienced of late, is why I have chosen to display prominent links to the excellent Track Off website which aims to educate children and young people about the dangers posed by the railways.
The same couldn't have been said about Sunday evening's job, though. The first pair of units I took over were dreadful. The London-end unit was on half power only due to a traction motor fault suffered earlier in the day, while the country-end unit leaked like a sieve into the driving cab. Because the driving desk was awash with water and contains circuits energised at 110 volts DC, I refused to take the units back to the airport on the grounds of safety. Being a Sunday I had hoped that this would get me out of a round, but they had other ideas for me and asked if I could shunt the units seperately into a vacant platform so that the formation would be reversed and the leaky cab "boxed-in". This was all new to me, but the signaller talked me through the move so that it went smoothly. Sadly, I only managed to get halfway through the shunt when I was asked to take just the single unit that had been at the London end for my next working rather than completing the shunt. I agreed to this, but informed them that the unit was only on half power to which their response was "half power is better than no power". It was by far the slowest run to the airport that I've ever done, which wasn't helped by a lack of grip due to wet rails.
It seems that the spate of fatalities on our lines has not impressed on people just how dangerous the railways are. I had a terrible feeling of foreboding yesterday that there would be another one that evening, and that it could happen to me. This wasn't helped any when I saw two young lads on the Up side cess by Sawbridgeworth not more than a few metres from my train. Although I'm pretty poor at judging ages, I would have to guess that they couldn't have been aged more than 10 and 8, and were probably brothers. Imagine what their mother must have felt if the Police had to go and break the news to her that her two boys had been killed because they had been trespassing on the railway. This, together with the number of fatalities and other mischief that we have experienced of late, is why I have chosen to display prominent links to the excellent Track Off website which aims to educate children and young people about the dangers posed by the railways.
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