Looking back over the past few entries, it seems that all I’ve done is whinge about how rotten my luck is and all the things that have gone wrong. Since then, things have been very quiet and I’ve just got on with my booked jobs with little in the way of incident. The problem with this (if it can be called such) is that there’s very little of interest to report.

That said, today was another one of “those days”. A fire overnight at Hackney Downs had knocked out the signalling in the immediate vicinity of the station which meant similar arrangements being put in place to when the wires came down at the same location a fortnight back. As I still don’t “sign” the Stratford route, I was almost left on the sidelines after the first part of my job was cancelled. This deficiency on my route card means that when such diversions are in force I am, as the supervisor put it, “as much use as mudflaps on a tortoise”. So, for the first hour or so I sat spare in the messroom. Unbelievably this was the first time ever that I’ve had to do this, and I was looking forward to getting away early. Typically, this state of affairs didn’t last as I was called on to relieve another driver and, by the time I’d got to London , there was enough signalling back on for me to continue with my booked job.

Prior to all this excitement, I have been getting stuck in with the punters. Mostly it’s been pointing out which train goes where or just confirming that the train with the orange “Stansted Express” branding is in fact the Stansted Express and that, yes, it does indeed go to London. However, there have been a few more challenging queries that I despatched with aplomb. Although it isn’t really part of my job I actually enjoy the contact with people, especially as the driving itself can be fairly solitary experience. If only the managers who took my induction last year could have seen me, their little hearts would have burst with pride.

My workload should be getting more varied soon, as I’ve been informed that I have almost completed my twenty solo turns and will be out route learning next week. In some respects, I’m surprised that I’ve not yet done the twenty turns as it seems to have taken ages. Admittedly, taking a little leave after qualifying plus the previous unpleasantness at Clapton has padded things out a fair bit, but even so…. By the summer I should have completed my route card and will be a fully fledged driver, albeit still a probationer. However, route learning does mean that I shall be away from driving for a little while until it’s completed. I shall just have to make sure I make the most of the last few core route jobs while I’ve got them.

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 rain into the driving cab like a sieve. 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 separately 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.

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 severely 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 .

Unfortunately, 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.