Yesterday was the day that I and my classmates had been waiting for all these months. Almost four months after starting employment with the company we got our first taste of driving.
OK, so the journey only lasted about 300 yards and did not exceed 5mph, but it still felt like a major milestone to us all. I can't say that I was too worried or overawed by the experience as it was in the safe confines of Hornsey depot. The first time out on the mainline will be a different matter, though. Naturally we all made our fair share of silly learners mistakes like forgetting to reset the DRA and getting muddled up with the directions in which the brake and power controllers move, but no-one dropped the DSD (except at the instructors prompting) or bashed into anything. The other thing that we also all failed at was correctly picking braking points to correctly stop at chosen landmarks, but that will come with experience.
Today's driving exercises were a bit more practical as we practised coupling and uncoupling, or "controlled collisions" as the instructor called them. Hopefully with practice the various stages of each operation will gradually sink in and the elementary errors will stop.
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