While I was off work following my incident, I received a text message from my minder in which he called me “probably the unluckiest bastard on the railway”. I’m beginning to think that he’s right as, thinking back, I’ve had at least one thing happen every shift since passing out. Prior to that my luck had been pretty good, so I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this. It’s almost as if I’m walking around with the cosmic equivalent of a piece of paper with “kick me” written on taped to my back. I guess I should have been in for a bad time when I relieved the depot’s resident Harbinger of Doom off the Unit of the Beast (317 666) on Monday for my first drive on my own since my fatality, but things went so well. Perhaps the Fates were just lulling me into a false sense of security.

As mentioned in the previous entry, I had the same job twice in a row this week. It was actually quite a nice one with plenty of time allowed to carry out a thorough train prep before the unit was needed in the platform and I was needed
on the Stansted Express. However, it was a case of contrasts and similarities.

Train Prep

On Tuesday the unit to be prepped was full of litter but fault free, while Wednesday’s unit had at least been cleaned of litter but was labouring under a number of minor faults.

First Train

The first set of Stansted Express units I drove didn’t seem to want to go London, as they were down on power heading towards the capital but went like stink going back towards the airport. Even though I checked both units out at Liverpool Street , I couldn’t find a single thing wrong with them. Strangely this happened both days, even though I checked that they weren’t the same pair of units.

Second Train

The second pair of units driven after my break were fine, although I had to fail the train near Cheshunt on the way down to Stansted on Tuesday after losing traction interlock due to what later turned out to be a door fault in, you guessed it, the eighth carriage. I don’t think the punters were best pleased with facing the prospect of missing their flights, but I must have made a good enough show of looking exasperated and trying to get things moving again as they mercifully chose not to lay into me about it, even when I went past them the second time. I got given a different set of units for my final run down towards Stansted which behaved themselves, as did the set I had on Wednesday. However, I was keeping a beady eye on the interlock light the whole way just to be sure.

At least I can say that I’ve clocked up another first. On Wednesday I arrived at work to find my very first “please explain” in my pigeon hole asking for more information about the nature of the failure. I had guessed that this was coming, so I had already written a driver’s report form. In fact, I had written it while still on the unit that had caused me all the problems in the first place while waiting for the signaller to give me the road back to London .

Please let next week be incident free.

Well folks, I’m now back at work properly and have completed my first full job which, I’m pleased to report, passed without incident. It was quite odd being back at the pointy end after such a long time off, but I’ve had plenty of opportunity to settle back into the routine before being allowed out on my own. In addition to the front-end turns that I did last week, I had the pleasure of a driver manager for company for the first half of yesterday’s job. I was due a ride anyway as part of my post-qualification assessment as well as a post-incident ride, so the two were combined and both dispatched at the same time.

Although I feel that I’ve dealt with the after effects of the fatality quite well, it has still left a discernable mark. I noticed yesterday that I have become very sensitive to and aware of people on station platforms, level crossings and footbridges. Consequently I was getting quite “horn happy” and blowing up at anything (including a plastic bag blown across Windmill Lane Crossing). I’m hoping that I’ll get used to people being around the railway the more that I drive, but at the moment I shall continue to employ a “better safe than sorry” approach and will continue to whistle whenever I feel the need.

It doesn’t help that fatalities are currently a hot topic of conversation among my colleagues at the moment as, unfortunately, there have been quite a few on our lines. In the five weeks since my incident we have averaged one incident per week with six people losing their lives, which is an incredibly high number for such a short space of time. We’ve also been under the media spotlight again as a direct consequence of the double fatality at a crossing near Angel Road . Since that particular incident, a number of drivers have reported seeing people loitering on the crossing and on the lineside which only increases the risk of another incident at the same location.

Today and tomorrow I have the same job, which includes a train prep in the carriage sidings. In one respect I’m quite looking forward to this, as I haven’t done a full train prep since the traction course last summer. I’m just glad that it’s on the beginning of the job, so I shall be going in early to make sure I’ve plenty of time.

In case any of you were wondering, I am still alive and well and have not been abducted by aliens.

The reason for the lack of updates is that I was involved with a railway incident on the day before my previous entry. It was only my fifth solo driving turn and a day given over entirely to Stansted Express services and, surprisingly for me, started without incident. Unfortunately, it didn’t last. As I was driving through Clapton station on my way back down to the airport, a person ran out from behind the steps to the ticket office and jumped off the edge of the platform directly in front of my train. Even though I sounded the warning horn and applied the brakes, there was no way that I could avoid running the person over.

I had thought that my reaction to having a fatality would be very different and that I would be more emotional than I was. Apart from the expected rush of adrenalin and the shock of the event, I managed to stay quite calm about the situation. In fact, even while sitting there waiting for the emergency services the whole thing seemed most surreal that I wondered for a moment whether or not I had just imagined the whole thing and was stopping the job for no reason. This impression was reinforced by the other people on the platform who must have seen the incident still just standing there impassively as if they were waiting for their train. However, I had already decided that I would not go back and look if I was ever involved with a fatality, and I wasn’t about to change my mind on that. I could quite happily live with someone else doing the checking for me.

When they arrived, the emergency services were brilliant. They took control of the situation and made sure that I was OK. They really couldn’t do enough for me and even made sure that I didn’t see the recovery process or the body itself. The same goes for the managers and colleagues at work who showed great concern for my welfare and helped me through all the necessary paperwork required after an incident such as this.

Naturally, such an incident triggers the “Chain of Care” procedure, which is intended to assist me back to work. Consequently, I have been booked off work since the incident and taking counselling sessions to help me deal with the memories of the incident and the emotions that they generate. Fortunately, there hasn’t been any emotional reaction yet. I guess that this is partly down to the fact that railway fatalities were never shied away from throughout training and it is a subject that I had already devoted an amount of time to think about. I pretty quickly went through the rational process of thinking that “it wasn’t me that killed this person, it was the train”, “if it hadn’t have been me it would have been the bloke behind me” and “if they hadn’t jumped under a train they would have found some other means”. If anything, the counsellor is happy that I’m dealing with events well but is concerned that I am perhaps a little too rational about it.

I think that my lack of reaction probably stems also from the way in which the incident happened. While no fatality is good, it was for me at least quite “soft”. If it had been more gruesome or appeared not to be that person’s deliberate action I’m certain that I would have been more affected by it.

Of course, this all means that it is almost a month since I last drove a train, which is going to affect my progress a little. However, I am going back to work tomorrow and have agreed a staged return to work so that I have the opportunity to get back into a good cab routine and build my confidence back up. If anything, I’m feeling more nervous about how rusty I’ve become than I am about going back over the route where it happened. However, none of this has dampened my feelings towards driving as a job and I’m looking forward to getting back into the seat again.