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This weekend was the second of two thus far, Saturday being Diversity Training, and today being Track Safety, which basically involved being told about the many varied and exciting ways in which you could die on the railways. The training weekend last fortnight as been lost to the annals of history, mostly because I couldn’t spin how I learnt the caution and ran around arresting my trainers into a decently long blog.
I’m not going to pretend that I had no idea that railways were dangerous, but when sitting down and having how the 25,000 volt overhead line can arc over a considerable distance explained in detail does make good food for thought, or at least consideration to where you swing your lovely metal baton. More interesting is the brilliant idea of a third rail, carrying a nice voltage, which anyone having the need to traverse the railway must step over. That said, the essential message is don’t ever go anywhere near thinking that you need to go anywhere near the railway, unless something fairly major, such as the Queen giving birth in the ten foot, as it seems the consequences of a balls up are fairly major and usually result in you dying. We usually need someone to hold our hands, which is fine by me, and I do get the slight impression Network Rail don't like us playing about on the rails as a matter of course. Its their toy.
Speaking of balls ups, getting to the training itself turned out to be a challenge since the driver took a slight wrong turn. Not a major issue on the face of it, but I was travelling by train at the time. Instead of heading towards London, as I had rather hoped we would, we were sent towards Woking, after which there isn’t much track thanks to “major engineering works”. Pulling up at a station the train shouldn’t be at, the guard was variously harassed by the confused passengers clawing at the door trying to get in and the annoyed passengers who were curious as to when, if ever, we were going to get to London, while the driver sprinted to the other end of the train. Ok, it was more of a meander down the platform. Anyway, drives don’t actually steer the train and this was a “signalling error on leaving Guildford”, which had escalated into an “Operational Incident” by the time we had reached Waterloo, and quite probably “A catastrophic cock up” the next time the guard explained it; a bit like how those stories develop from fighting one small guy to battling 50 fully armed ninjas. I digress.
Moving on then, but doing this entirely out of order, this was today. Yesterday we had diversity training, which was certainly interesting, but all confidential operational information. Ok, it wasn’t operational, but that’s the usual excuse for this forum and I’ve wanted to be able to say it for a while. At any rate, I was particularly happy with the pork and stuffing (with apple sauce) baguette I had at lunchtime. Being a complete country bumpkin, it was quite entertaining to experience the market experience London style, which seems to be go in one end, shuffle around like penguins, and appear at the other without actually being able to see, let alone buy anything from, any of the stores and stalls, and without your wallet, mobile phone and iPod (or so the big yellow “WARNING, YOU’RE GOING TO BE ROBBED” signs claimed. I was bitterly disappointed at missing out on this particular part of the London experience, as you might well imagine.)
I’m now looking forward to next weekend, where I’m reliably informed that we will be given a lot of shiny new kit. Of course, I’ve jinxed it now.
I’m not going to pretend that I had no idea that railways were dangerous, but when sitting down and having how the 25,000 volt overhead line can arc over a considerable distance explained in detail does make good food for thought, or at least consideration to where you swing your lovely metal baton. More interesting is the brilliant idea of a third rail, carrying a nice voltage, which anyone having the need to traverse the railway must step over. That said, the essential message is don’t ever go anywhere near thinking that you need to go anywhere near the railway, unless something fairly major, such as the Queen giving birth in the ten foot, as it seems the consequences of a balls up are fairly major and usually result in you dying. We usually need someone to hold our hands, which is fine by me, and I do get the slight impression Network Rail don't like us playing about on the rails as a matter of course. Its their toy.
Speaking of balls ups, getting to the training itself turned out to be a challenge since the driver took a slight wrong turn. Not a major issue on the face of it, but I was travelling by train at the time. Instead of heading towards London, as I had rather hoped we would, we were sent towards Woking, after which there isn’t much track thanks to “major engineering works”. Pulling up at a station the train shouldn’t be at, the guard was variously harassed by the confused passengers clawing at the door trying to get in and the annoyed passengers who were curious as to when, if ever, we were going to get to London, while the driver sprinted to the other end of the train. Ok, it was more of a meander down the platform. Anyway, drives don’t actually steer the train and this was a “signalling error on leaving Guildford”, which had escalated into an “Operational Incident” by the time we had reached Waterloo, and quite probably “A catastrophic cock up” the next time the guard explained it; a bit like how those stories develop from fighting one small guy to battling 50 fully armed ninjas. I digress.
Moving on then, but doing this entirely out of order, this was today. Yesterday we had diversity training, which was certainly interesting, but all confidential operational information. Ok, it wasn’t operational, but that’s the usual excuse for this forum and I’ve wanted to be able to say it for a while. At any rate, I was particularly happy with the pork and stuffing (with apple sauce) baguette I had at lunchtime. Being a complete country bumpkin, it was quite entertaining to experience the market experience London style, which seems to be go in one end, shuffle around like penguins, and appear at the other without actually being able to see, let alone buy anything from, any of the stores and stalls, and without your wallet, mobile phone and iPod (or so the big yellow “WARNING, YOU’RE GOING TO BE ROBBED” signs claimed. I was bitterly disappointed at missing out on this particular part of the London experience, as you might well imagine.)
I’m now looking forward to next weekend, where I’m reliably informed that we will be given a lot of shiny new kit. Of course, I’ve jinxed it now.
