Basic training – Induction Course at Redhill

On 3rd October 1983 I stopped doing platform duties and was sent on what was called an Induction Course. This was held at Redhill station, which required a commute for which we were all issued with special tickets. We soon got to learn that everyone travelling by train needs a ticket apart from guard and driver, even a ticket inspector has a ticket allowing him to travel everywhere. 

And here’s a photo of the pass issued to get me to and from Redhill.

The Induction Course lasted a week and was held in Room 9 of “Terrapin Buildings”, an ancient redbrick railway buildings that had seen better days.

The “lessons” were from 09:00 to 16:00 and we were paid while doing the course, however our hours were meant to include the travelling time between our home depot and Redhill, and to get there in time I had to catch the 07:57 from London Bridge and change at East Croydon add in the timing of the return journey to London Bridge at the end of the afternoon and you actually had an 9 hour day instead of an 8 hour one. My total door-to-door commuting time was therefore two hours each way, despite Redhill and Greenwich not being that far apart.

Several people were on the course at the same time as me as it was for all new non-management rail staff on the Central Division of the Southern Region, and as nearly the only people being recruited at that time were guards about fifteen of the twenty or so people on the Redhill course were trainee guards, and those same fifteen then also turned up on the guard’s course with me when that started. Only four people had applied to be guards at London Bridge, far fewer than the number of vacancies. One of the four disappeared without trace at some point during my training period with no explanation, and another, a fellow from Australia, who was actually Greek, left the course after not doing well enough and went to work for London Underground. And as I left within a few months that meant only one in four of those recruited at the same time as me actually did anything towards alleviating the chronic staff shortages.

A good degree of friendship built up between us, as we were thus flung together for a number of weeks. There were a couple of ex-servicemen who were still in the TA and who planned to work on Army trains in that capacity too, the train crew manager at London Bridge was also in the TA. (The army had quite a lot of rail operations in both the UK and Germany, and it was not that long before this that Teresa and I had been living in Southampton and seen all the trains from army depots loaded with military equipment arriving at the docks to be shipped asap to the Falklands.) There were people who’d been builder’s labourers and drivers was one guy who’d been a prison warder, several had had no real jobs or like me had been unemployed, most people were in their thirties and married, but two lads were straight out of school and one guy was my age and single. (the guy my age, who always wore different coloured socks, was a fanatical socialist.)

The Redhill course was given by senior manager as no new instructor was appointed till our final day there. The manager was nonetheless an excellent lecturer and teacher, though I think I annoyed him by treating him the way a public school boy would treat a public school master, whereas he was just treating us like lowest of the low, very much part of the old BR order when managers were described as officers. I thus got told off like a little school boy for talking in class at some point. I had said something like “Ask Shirley” to the guy at the desk beside me and was told to discuss my private affairs in my own time. What I should have said was “Please Sir, you know he just asked you where we have to go to see about new uniforms and you said that you didn’t know. Well, I do know, so I was just telling him that he needs to go to the office at London Bridge and ask Shirley.”

The course taught us about BR as a whole: the Regions, which cities and towns were served by which London Termini, with even more detail about the SR routes etc. we learnt about which Department was in charge of who or what:

Traffic (running trains, guards, signalmen);

Motive Power (drivers);

Chief Mechanical and Electrical Engineer (Rolling stock and electrical Power);

Chief Civil Engineer (track fencing);

Signalling;

Buildings;

Accounts;

Medical and

Transport Police

We learnt about ranks and hierarchies (Junior Railmen, Railmen, Senior Railmen, Chargeman, Supervisor, Assistant Station manager, Station Manager, Area Manager, Divisional Manager, Regional Manager, General Manager, Board Chairman and Secretary of State.) I did not think it would be helpful to mention just how senior my sister’s father-in-law had been. It was very apparent that the philosophy was still that the Regions ruled; the railway had not yet even been split up into businesses: Intercity, Regional, Network-South-East, Freight etc. let alone privatised!).

We learnt about conditions of service from the basics like being entitled to a new uniform once a year and a certain amount of dry cleaning, to sick pay and travel concessions and disciplinary procedures and unions (I had already joined the NUR).

We were told about what the various parts of the tracks were called and how to walk near the railway. The space between the two rails of a track is the “Four Foot”, the space between two track is the “Six foot” at the space at the side of the tracks is the “Cess”.

Here are some pictures of one of the safety leaflets:

There was special instruction about electricity and electrocution and first aid and safety and procedures in emergencies, there was a long list of which materials are insulators and which are conductors, so as to be able to assess if it was safe to touch things or not - if in doubt Don’t!

Hence lots of things around the railway (like ladders) are made of wood. And I’ll mention one example to show that it’s not always obvious:

Don’t try and lift a person away from a live cable, rail or whatever by putting your hands under their armpits because sweaty clothes conduct electricity!

The 750volt DC third rail is nasty. It’s a lower voltage than the 25,000volt overhead wires, but involves very high currents; I remember being in a cab watching the dials when a train was accelerating and seeing it go to 900 and realising that that I was looking at an ammeter! 900 AMPS! Contact with the third is thus almost always fatal. There are certain things that certain people can do to make the third rail safe, drivers have a lot of knowledge and tools in this regard, but we were told to treat it with extreme caution and that the safest option was always to contact the person in charge of Electrification in the event of an emergency to get them to shut off the whole thing at the “mains” before approaching the third rail. (Putting it as simply as I can: You’d get to the nearest BR phone, phone up whoever was at the other end and say you were declaring an “Electrical Emergency” and needed to speak to the Electrical Control Operator, you’d get put through a.s.a.p. After identifying yourself, and the location of the emergency, this person would know how to isolate the appropriate section at the push of a few buttons, though someone said that initially they might just shut down everything. The ECO would then inform you that things were safe, and they would not, could not then switch the power back on until all manner of procedures had been gone through.

The emergency procedures were also explained in the First Aid booklet:

If you’ve been near trains running on the third rail then you will have seen sparks, especially at night, well don’t look, it can damage your eyes same as a welding flash can. It often happens when a train switches from a section supplied by one transformer to a section supplied by another, and if there is too much difference in the voltage the flashover can also damage the train.

At some point I recall anyone with bad eyes being told to wear spectacles rather than contact lenses as the flashes could cause problems for lens wearers! 

A quick anecdote: During my time as a guard I was travelling back up to London from Axminster after a visit to my parents and when the train was near Woking I noticed bright flashes coming from under the train. This was, however, a train made up of carriages pulled by a diesel engine and there should have been no conductor rail involved in it what it was doing. I went and found the guard, and he too had just noticed it and was trying to look out of his window to find the source. We were unable to ascertain what was wrong, so he got the driver to make an emergency stop and then after the driver phoned the signalman they walked back along the train on the ground to see if something was hanging off the train making contact with the live rail. It was dark so they could not see anything, and we resumed our journey, but the issue was of course reported so that the train could be examined once at Waterloo. It could easily have turned into a major problem, if either something made the third rail short out, or if something vital was falling of the train, perhaps even something big enough that it could derail the train.

One of the guards’ instructors also warned us of the horrors of the third rail: he’d seen a man fall over, get electrocuted and die; his head had been burnt beyond identification. Another instructor had previously been a fireman in the days of Steam (it was that long ago). One time he’d accidentally dropped a very long steel shovel and it had fallen from the footplate and landed on the third rail causing a massive flash. When he climbed down to look at what had happened he could not find the shovel as it had been melted away into small blobs of metal.

The third rail is thus usually positioned between the track and the “cess” so as not to make the space in the “six foot” any smaller than it already is, as that’s then a very small space to have to put your foot if you are forced to cross the tracks. Where it’s known that staff may have to walk about on the tracks, e.g. at depots the sides of the conductor rail are usually protected by wooden boards, which makes things a lot safer. In stations the third rail is usually in the “six foot”, however, to keep it as far away as possible from the platform edge and members of the public. In tunnels and on bridges the third rail is usually also put in the “six foot” as the “cess” is so small there. And at junctions the position of third rail switches from side to side all over the place so as not to get in the way of the points or a train crossing over the points. Sometimes the track layout is so complex that a section of track will not actually have any third rail next to it at all, and then, if a train, especially a locomotive, stops in the wrong spot none of the collector “shoes” may be in contact with the third rail and it will find itself without power: this is known as “Gapping”. Gapping would for example be a reason why a train might need to be rescued by the train behind it. In such circumstances the signalman would give the okay for the train at the rear to advance slowly and couple up to the front train and be able to move it. Hence during the guard’s course we’d get taught about how to join two trains together!

Safety was paramount. Even simple things like having loose clothing could be fatal, as it might catch in something sticking out of a passing train and drag you to your death. Be tidy, use safety equipment, don’t work when you are ill, don’t drink at work(!). Pass on knowledge of danger (e.g. I once called the signalmen when I saw a fire at the side of the line near Bermondsey.)  Use your eyes and ears when near the track, move out of the way if a train comes. If a driver sees you they will hoot their horn and you must wave an acknowledgement so he knows you’ve seen him. Stand still. And remember to look away when a train passes to avoid getting things in your eyes.

Clarity in all matters at all times was emphasised, for example something that required there to be no ambiguity was the BR internal emergency number. BR had a massive number of phones connected to its own exchanges and lines rather than the outside world and while in the outside world the emergency number is “999” on BR it was “19” (And I never received a satisfactory answer as to why it was not also “999” on the internal phones, other than that to change it would be confusing and thus in itself dangerous). However, a big thing was made of the fact that the BR emergency number was to be referred to as “Nineteen.” and not “One. Nine.” Because if you told someone to dial “one nine”, then they might simply dial “a nine”.

We learnt a lot about signals: red for danger is not so obvious when it’s a semaphore signal when horizontal means danger. Colour light signals come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and may have just two “Aspects” or four, and have a variety of lights, they can also be accompanied by lights showing code letters or numbers or by lines of (lunar)lights indicating a direction used to indicate that the points at a junction are set a particular way. And there are shunting signals (position light signals) and ground signals and hand signals and flags etc.; controlled signals, automatic signals semis. And distance signals that tell you what the next signal says, or repeaters that only tell you what a signal you can’t see says!  

We learnt about tickets: there were a number of highly visible aspects of the old paper tickets that helped you see at a glance if the might or might not be valid or not. For example, if the destination was underlined or in a box it was valid via London; if a season ticket had a large “W” on it, then it had been issued to a woman and should not be being used by a man! Off peak return has large “OP” on it and not valid to London before 09:30!

One afternoon at Redhill we had a firefighting course and received instruction about water, powder, CO2 and chemical extinguishers, and saw them in use. We all had a go at putting out a fire that was made with a thin film of diesel floating on water. The visiting fireman also set fire to a pile of cardboard boxes and I was selected to put it out with just one bucket of water. The trick was to splash water on it with your hand and not toss the whole bucket at it as that would simply make the pile spread out. The only problem that day was that one of the guys had a slight accident putting out the diesel fire, he bent down to low and held the nozzle too close to the flames so that the first squirt made the flames flare up before putting them out. It took all the hairs off his arms and he spent half an hour in the gents running his arm under a cold tap.

Main thing to know is that fire requires, Heat, Fuel and Oxygen: the fire “Triangle”, and if remove any one of the three, then the fire will go out. More information was added to this basic principle, of course, when we learned about the carriage of dangerous goods during the Guard’s Course.

I think we all passed the induction course without any problems. They must have expected us all to pass as, even before the Redhill course was finished, nearly all of us received letters telling us to report for the Guards’ training course at Beckenham. (I’ve not been in the army, but I’ve seen old army orders, and the poor-quality duplicates of typed letters with your name, the details of your “orders” etc. filled in in Biro in the blank spaces all made it seem like the people in charge ran things the same way as the armed services.)