Actually, there are only 'treats' to report so far.
Last week, the wife and I had ourselves a little holiday in a cottage in the Highlands of Scotland. The idea was that we would rest, relax and recharge our batteries after what has seemed a very long and busy year so far. From my own perspective, it was just the tonic I needed.
Today's turn was my first one after our break, and I was feeling a little nervous. However, I didn't need to worry as the job was a nice gentle one to ease me back into driving. A round each to Chingford and Hertford East, then empties to Ilford. It was the same job that I observed from the secondman's side a few weeks back (see Funky Moves: Friday 9th September) but, from the driver's side, it wasn't quite as hard as I'd expected. With the exception of one that is hidden behind a bridge, it was actually quite easy to see which signal applies to which line and where everything goes. They are even nice enough to throw in an extra double yellow aspect to compensate for the tight signal spacing between Stratford and Ilford. Even so, there is still plenty going on that can cause distraction and a fair bit to learn before I could ever 'sign' that route, especially with all the possible moves that can be made around Stratford and the length of line signalled for bi-directional movements.
I'm still not back with my own minder though, as he's on leave. Still, this week's minder seems nice enough and pretty much just left me to get on with things, which I'm taking as something of a compliment.
Having had the 'treat' I think the 'trick' comes later in the week, as it looks like I'll be rushing about on airports and suburbans.
Monday, 31 October 2005
Thursday, 20 October 2005
I'm a failure
Well, it's finally happened. I've failed a train. Given my previous 'Jonah Complex' I'm surprised it's taken this long. It was actually something of an anticlimax when it finally happened. Predictably it had to be a door fault on a Class 315 rather than anything more spectacular, but safety first...!!
We were at Hackney Downs on our way down to Hertford East when I noticed that people were having trouble getting into the leading coach and that the hazard light was not on. Given the number of times you have to shout "Press and hold" at punters because they can't operate the door buttons correctly and the frequency with which hazard lights fail, I initially though nothing of it. However, the minder I was with jumped out at the next stop to investigate and found that there was no door release on that coach at all. A phone call to control later, and I'm turfing everyone out at Seven Sisters, changing ends and heading back to London empty as the unit cannot continue in service.
Ironically, I'd just been speaking to another trainee before setting out who was telling me that he had lost all his main air after hitting a large bird between Ware and Hertford East (he wasn't sure whether it was a swan or a goose). Perhaps I should have taken that as an omen and gone to somewhere less risky, like Enfield Town. Still, it meant that I got a nice early finish to round the day off. What a result!!
We were at Hackney Downs on our way down to Hertford East when I noticed that people were having trouble getting into the leading coach and that the hazard light was not on. Given the number of times you have to shout "Press and hold" at punters because they can't operate the door buttons correctly and the frequency with which hazard lights fail, I initially though nothing of it. However, the minder I was with jumped out at the next stop to investigate and found that there was no door release on that coach at all. A phone call to control later, and I'm turfing everyone out at Seven Sisters, changing ends and heading back to London empty as the unit cannot continue in service.
Ironically, I'd just been speaking to another trainee before setting out who was telling me that he had lost all his main air after hitting a large bird between Ware and Hertford East (he wasn't sure whether it was a swan or a goose). Perhaps I should have taken that as an omen and gone to somewhere less risky, like Enfield Town. Still, it meant that I got a nice early finish to round the day off. What a result!!
Wednesday, 19 October 2005
Pillar to post
Things have been fairly quiet of late, so there hasn't been much to report. I've been shuttling up and down the West Anglia routes at the control of various services, making my stops, doing PA announcements and generally keeping out of the way. It's been quite nice. There was one day last week when the (ahem) excrement hit the airscrew which resulted in some impressive delays and one of our trips to Enfield being cancelled, but that's about it.
Unfortunately, this week I have been chopped and changed around a fair bit because my minder is unwell. In the last three days I've had two different minders and will have yet another tomorrow, this time from a different depot. At least it's kept me out there driving, as I had feared that I'd be bumped back down to front-end turns again, but it's meant that I've had to get aquainted with new minders and they with me. Still, it's quite nice to have my driving assessed by other people as well as my regular minder so that I can get a balanced view on my progress.
Hopefully by the time I get back from my week off (to which I am very much looking forward) my minder will be well again.
Unfortunately, this week I have been chopped and changed around a fair bit because my minder is unwell. In the last three days I've had two different minders and will have yet another tomorrow, this time from a different depot. At least it's kept me out there driving, as I had feared that I'd be bumped back down to front-end turns again, but it's meant that I've had to get aquainted with new minders and they with me. Still, it's quite nice to have my driving assessed by other people as well as my regular minder so that I can get a balanced view on my progress.
Hopefully by the time I get back from my week off (to which I am very much looking forward) my minder will be well again.
Sunday, 9 October 2005
Getting the hump
Apologies once again, dear reader, for not updating the blog over the last couple of weeks.
I have been busy racking up the hours at the controls, which I am still pleased to report is going well. As I'm getting familiar with the actual driving of trains I'm having to concentrate less on it, which means that I've been able to gradually add in extra bits, like PA announcements. As all of our services are driver-only operated, making announcements is part of our job. I'm beginning to get into the swing of it, although I'm having to think about the best time to make them so that they don't distract me from the more important job of driving safely.
Stopping at the boards is still causing some problems, though. I feel like I'm making progress on this and am developing my own braking technique, but my minder is concerned that I make too many adjustments to the brake on the run up the platform to the stopping point. Maybe so, but I'm getting more accurate with my stopping points and am able to keep to time, and don't necessarily see my technique as being bad. I understand what he's saying, but I still feel like I'm learning and getting a feel for what's what. For example, I've learnt now that a heavily loaded train behaves very differently from a lightly loaded one and will adjust my braking accordingly. When I get to a point where I know with some level of confidence exactly how any given train will behave and where it will stop, I won't have to make so many adjustments. However, until I get that experience and confidence I am either overestimating or underestimating and need to adjust for that accordingly.
Last week I got my first look at Hornsey depot from the driver's seat. I'm sure that it's actually quite straightforward, but there are a number of traps to catch out the unwary such as "stop" boards that are faded or missing altogether. It doesn't help when the shunters handsignals are not always clear. I had one chap signalling me off the wash road in the depot with an unlit bardic lamp. Needless to say I couldn't see him and sat there like a prune for some little while until he spotted what was amiss.
One other miscommunication that caught us out was the altered workings. It turned out that the arrangements that had been published for drivers was a complete work of fiction which caused us some confusion over our stopping patterns on two of our trips. It worked to our advantage on the first affected trip, as we weren't actually booked to stop at some of the stations shown a stops in the notices. However, on the second trip the notices said that we had a fast run back up to London, even though the station information screens at various intermediate stops suggested differently. We got a few odd looks and exasperated waves as we blatted through non-stop, but we were just doing what we had been told. Thankfully nothing has been said about it since.
I have been busy racking up the hours at the controls, which I am still pleased to report is going well. As I'm getting familiar with the actual driving of trains I'm having to concentrate less on it, which means that I've been able to gradually add in extra bits, like PA announcements. As all of our services are driver-only operated, making announcements is part of our job. I'm beginning to get into the swing of it, although I'm having to think about the best time to make them so that they don't distract me from the more important job of driving safely.
Stopping at the boards is still causing some problems, though. I feel like I'm making progress on this and am developing my own braking technique, but my minder is concerned that I make too many adjustments to the brake on the run up the platform to the stopping point. Maybe so, but I'm getting more accurate with my stopping points and am able to keep to time, and don't necessarily see my technique as being bad. I understand what he's saying, but I still feel like I'm learning and getting a feel for what's what. For example, I've learnt now that a heavily loaded train behaves very differently from a lightly loaded one and will adjust my braking accordingly. When I get to a point where I know with some level of confidence exactly how any given train will behave and where it will stop, I won't have to make so many adjustments. However, until I get that experience and confidence I am either overestimating or underestimating and need to adjust for that accordingly.
Last week I got my first look at Hornsey depot from the driver's seat. I'm sure that it's actually quite straightforward, but there are a number of traps to catch out the unwary such as "stop" boards that are faded or missing altogether. It doesn't help when the shunters handsignals are not always clear. I had one chap signalling me off the wash road in the depot with an unlit bardic lamp. Needless to say I couldn't see him and sat there like a prune for some little while until he spotted what was amiss.
One other miscommunication that caught us out was the altered workings. It turned out that the arrangements that had been published for drivers was a complete work of fiction which caused us some confusion over our stopping patterns on two of our trips. It worked to our advantage on the first affected trip, as we weren't actually booked to stop at some of the stations shown a stops in the notices. However, on the second trip the notices said that we had a fast run back up to London, even though the station information screens at various intermediate stops suggested differently. We got a few odd looks and exasperated waves as we blatted through non-stop, but we were just doing what we had been told. Thankfully nothing has been said about it since.
Monday, 26 September 2005
Comedy of errors
I'm very pleased to say that my minder driving is going very well indeed and that I'm enjoying it very much. The initial nervousness has now all but gone, and even two return trips out to Enfield Town in a Class 315 hasn't dampened my spirits.
Being on late turns this week, I've had my first experience of driving in the dark. From road driving experience I knew that it would be totally different to driving in the light, but it's even more dodgy on the rails. A particular problem is differentiating between what is and what is not a signal. Indeed, quite a large number of lights in the vicinity of the lineside appear to have been erected and sited without any thought to how they might appear to drivers. Thankfully real signals tend to stand out pretty well against the background by virtue of being dazzlingly bright, although this in itself caused me a few headaches as they blot out everything else in their immediate vicinity (including stop boards and DOO monitors). Obviously, with some practice and experience, I should get a better idea of the layout of places and have to rely less on actually seeing something in order to judge how to stop at it. Still, it's still early days.
On a more amusing note, there appears to have been a few mix ups at Liverpool Street box this evening, which left my minder and I looking like chumps. Firstly, we were routed wrongly onto the 'Down Fast' line at Bethnal Green rather than the 'Down Suburban'. When we stopped and queried it and advised the signaller that we would not be able to make our booked stop at London Fields from the 'Down Fast', we were told that the correct route had been set due to a problem at London Fields and that we would have to miss out that station. We couldn't see any problem when we went past, but we'll give him the benefit of the doubt on that one.
The second blooper that affected us was at Seven Sisters. We'd just run empty down from Cheshunt and had run onto the chord at Seven Sisters Junction to reverse back into the station before running down to Broxbourne. We'd just changed ends and set up the cab when the signal came off early. Thinking that the signaller knew what he/she was doing, we took it and pulled into Seven Sisters platform some 12 minutes early. Big mistake, as we'd been pulled out ahead of an Enfield Town service we should have been following. Many PA announcements and impromptu visits to the cab window later, and we left on time with a train groaning with punters. The last I saw of the Enfield Town service was that it was being advertised as being about 15 minutes late at Edmonton Green.
Although we were the butt of other people's mistakes today, I wouldn't want people to get the impression that I think I know it all. I made my own share of mistakes. I forgot to announce London Fields as a station stop on our first trip down to Enfield Town and had to deal with people coming to the cab window to ask whether we were stopping there. I also moved the master switch to "off" by mistake rather than selecting "neutral" when waiting at a red signal and had to set up the cab radio again. I've also got a less than perfect record at stopping on the mark or pulling up to other units at Liverpool Street.
But then, I am still learning...
Being on late turns this week, I've had my first experience of driving in the dark. From road driving experience I knew that it would be totally different to driving in the light, but it's even more dodgy on the rails. A particular problem is differentiating between what is and what is not a signal. Indeed, quite a large number of lights in the vicinity of the lineside appear to have been erected and sited without any thought to how they might appear to drivers. Thankfully real signals tend to stand out pretty well against the background by virtue of being dazzlingly bright, although this in itself caused me a few headaches as they blot out everything else in their immediate vicinity (including stop boards and DOO monitors). Obviously, with some practice and experience, I should get a better idea of the layout of places and have to rely less on actually seeing something in order to judge how to stop at it. Still, it's still early days.
On a more amusing note, there appears to have been a few mix ups at Liverpool Street box this evening, which left my minder and I looking like chumps. Firstly, we were routed wrongly onto the 'Down Fast' line at Bethnal Green rather than the 'Down Suburban'. When we stopped and queried it and advised the signaller that we would not be able to make our booked stop at London Fields from the 'Down Fast', we were told that the correct route had been set due to a problem at London Fields and that we would have to miss out that station. We couldn't see any problem when we went past, but we'll give him the benefit of the doubt on that one.
The second blooper that affected us was at Seven Sisters. We'd just run empty down from Cheshunt and had run onto the chord at Seven Sisters Junction to reverse back into the station before running down to Broxbourne. We'd just changed ends and set up the cab when the signal came off early. Thinking that the signaller knew what he/she was doing, we took it and pulled into Seven Sisters platform some 12 minutes early. Big mistake, as we'd been pulled out ahead of an Enfield Town service we should have been following. Many PA announcements and impromptu visits to the cab window later, and we left on time with a train groaning with punters. The last I saw of the Enfield Town service was that it was being advertised as being about 15 minutes late at Edmonton Green.
Although we were the butt of other people's mistakes today, I wouldn't want people to get the impression that I think I know it all. I made my own share of mistakes. I forgot to announce London Fields as a station stop on our first trip down to Enfield Town and had to deal with people coming to the cab window to ask whether we were stopping there. I also moved the master switch to "off" by mistake rather than selecting "neutral" when waiting at a red signal and had to set up the cab radio again. I've also got a less than perfect record at stopping on the mark or pulling up to other units at Liverpool Street.
But then, I am still learning...
Wednesday, 21 September 2005
Eyes like saucers
Today is a day to remember, as it was our first day driving with our minders. Never mind shuttling up and down a siding or getting a brief drive, this was a full turn of duty with stops, passengers and a timetable to keep.
It would have been nice if they'd broken us in gently, but instead I drew the short straw. An intense 9 hours and 42 minutes of stopping suburban services with tight turnaround times was not an ideal introduction. Still, at least it gave me plenty of opportunity to practise stopping at stations and carrying out station duties. 83 to be precise.
I was glad that I got on well with the Class 315 yesterday, as almost the entire job was driving one. Once they're up and running they are quite a nice train to drive, with good acceleration and braking. On the downside they do require a higher degree of organisation and dexterity than the Class 317. Just to get into the cab and prepare for departure requires no fewer than four keys, none of which operate more than one lock. Then there's having to coordinate the local door control switches, egress cocks and door key switches to ensure that the cab vestibule doors don't fly open at inopportune moments; not to mention having to hold the power controller down before moving the master switch. I know that I'll get there eventually, but it can be a bit of a palaver and I felt like I was all over the place for a while.
All of this has left me feeling absolutely knackered. As it's all new I was concentrating entirely on driving to the exclusion of everything else. This wasn't helped in any way by the first part of the job being virtually non-stop with little turnaround time at each destination.
On the other hand, I've already had my first problem. The signaller was unable to clear a faulty signal, which meant that I had to call him up and be given authority to pass it at danger. Not bad for my first day.
So, if you'll excuse me, I'm off for a kip. Tomorrow it's all airport runs, which should be a less frenetic.
It would have been nice if they'd broken us in gently, but instead I drew the short straw. An intense 9 hours and 42 minutes of stopping suburban services with tight turnaround times was not an ideal introduction. Still, at least it gave me plenty of opportunity to practise stopping at stations and carrying out station duties. 83 to be precise.
I was glad that I got on well with the Class 315 yesterday, as almost the entire job was driving one. Once they're up and running they are quite a nice train to drive, with good acceleration and braking. On the downside they do require a higher degree of organisation and dexterity than the Class 317. Just to get into the cab and prepare for departure requires no fewer than four keys, none of which operate more than one lock. Then there's having to coordinate the local door control switches, egress cocks and door key switches to ensure that the cab vestibule doors don't fly open at inopportune moments; not to mention having to hold the power controller down before moving the master switch. I know that I'll get there eventually, but it can be a bit of a palaver and I felt like I was all over the place for a while.
All of this has left me feeling absolutely knackered. As it's all new I was concentrating entirely on driving to the exclusion of everything else. This wasn't helped in any way by the first part of the job being virtually non-stop with little turnaround time at each destination.
On the other hand, I've already had my first problem. The signaller was unable to clear a faulty signal, which meant that I had to call him up and be given authority to pass it at danger. Not bad for my first day.
So, if you'll excuse me, I'm off for a kip. Tomorrow it's all airport runs, which should be a less frenetic.
Monday, 19 September 2005
Spot the difference
The end finally seems to be in sight. Having spent all last week on a Principles of Route Learning course which was as dull and pointless as a 10W light bulb, we are into what promises to be the final stage before being allowed out with a minder. Yes folks, it's the long awaited Class 315 conversion course.
Quite a few drivers and instructors have said that there really isn't that much difference between these and the Class 317 units we have already driven, but I didn't quite appreciate how similar they were until today. Almost every system is exactly the same, and just a few are in different places. This makes things nice and simple and easy to grasp, which is a nice relief given that our basic traction course now seems so very long ago. The only real differences are that there are fewer fault indications than on a Class 317 and more things that will bring you to a embarrassing halt. Of particular concern is the DSD, which works like the deadman's handle of yore. On the Class 315 this operates instantaneously and requires a fair bit of pressure to keep it in, unlike the Class 317 which allows the driver a couple of seconds grace.
Having spent today looking around the inside and outside of a unit (well, as best as we could given that it was in a platform at the time), tomorrow we will have to drive one. However, given that these units normally only work suburban services, it isn't as easy to diagram a brake handling train. Therefore, our train tomorrow morning will have passengers on, which means that we will all have to be much more careful and concientious about stopping on the mark, completing station duties, running to time and generally doing everything properly than we were with out empty Class 317. So, no pressure then.
Commuters of Chingford; you have been warned.
Quite a few drivers and instructors have said that there really isn't that much difference between these and the Class 317 units we have already driven, but I didn't quite appreciate how similar they were until today. Almost every system is exactly the same, and just a few are in different places. This makes things nice and simple and easy to grasp, which is a nice relief given that our basic traction course now seems so very long ago. The only real differences are that there are fewer fault indications than on a Class 317 and more things that will bring you to a embarrassing halt. Of particular concern is the DSD, which works like the deadman's handle of yore. On the Class 315 this operates instantaneously and requires a fair bit of pressure to keep it in, unlike the Class 317 which allows the driver a couple of seconds grace.
Having spent today looking around the inside and outside of a unit (well, as best as we could given that it was in a platform at the time), tomorrow we will have to drive one. However, given that these units normally only work suburban services, it isn't as easy to diagram a brake handling train. Therefore, our train tomorrow morning will have passengers on, which means that we will all have to be much more careful and concientious about stopping on the mark, completing station duties, running to time and generally doing everything properly than we were with out empty Class 317. So, no pressure then.
Commuters of Chingford; you have been warned.
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