Since last I wrote, I’ve been engaged in almost continual route learning and one by one ticking off each of the routes that I shall be required to drive. Unlike some of my colleagues, I’ve not been taken off from time to time to cover driving jobs, which is both good and bad. On the good side, it means that I can concentrate on the job in hand without any distractions and will hopefully be able to rattle off all the routes in short order.

On the negative side, I am beginning to feel that the pace is perhaps a little too fast for my own liking. My preference would be to learn a route and then, having “signed” it, get a chance to drive over that route a few times on my own so that I can start to become properly familiar with it before moving onto the next one. Admittedly I do already have the advantage of having driven almost all of our routes several times when out with my minder. In addition, not everyone feels the same way as me, with a few mentioning that they are perfectly happy with the pace of learning.

Even so, I have raised this as an issue with the managers and, to their credit, they are taking my request seriously. I have already had one day next week when I was rostered to be learning the line north to Cambridge changed to a driving job which will see me out on my own at Hertford East and at Ilford depot, and I have been promised that there will be more before I have to knuckle down again to learn Cambridge.

Beyond that, there’s not been much to report. I’ve only had a handful of driving jobs since my last entry, and those that I have had have passed relatively uneventfully. That’s not to say that things have been quiet on our lines. Our unlucky streak has continued over the past few weeks with repeated issues affecting the overhead electrification. By my reckoning there have been four cases of “de-wiring” and one failed booster transformer, all of which have required the current to be isolated for varying periods of time. There has also been a freight train derailment to contend with, together with the usual problems that plague us from time to time. Thankfully there have been no further fatalities.

It’s gratifying to say that things have been very quiet of late. I completed the last of my twenty solo turns without incident and am now out learning the rest of the routes that will eventually make up my workload.

So far I’ve been learning the Enfield Town and Hertford East branches, which are both pretty straightforward. However, from Monday I shall be starting to learn the routes around Stratford which will culminate the week after with the hefty stretch of line from London Liverpool Street to Seven Kings, which I’m assuming will include Ilford depot. However, on Wednesday of next week I shall have the mother-of-all route exams, as I attempt to sign three routes in a single day. Admittedly it’s far from ideal, but it’s just happened that way because of the way that my rest days and annual leave have fallen.

In the meantime, I’ve been kicking back and enjoying the sunshine whilst on my rostered week of leave. It’s a bit inconvenient that it’s fallen where it has, but it’s been nice to have a long lie-in and catch up on those niggling little jobs that I’ve been studiously ignoring whilst at work.