Railway Anecdotes and Stories

This is an example of a spot of customer service that shows how the simplest things get taken seriously as well:

A man getting into a Charing Cross bound train while putting away his ticket dropped his wallet onto the tracks while I was working on the London Bridge platforms. The platform staff saw it happen and told him not to worry. He stayed on the platform and as soon as the train had pulled out the Chargeman got on the phone to ask the signalman for assistance. Thus the signal outside the station was held at red; someone on the platform was put on watch and the Chargeman put on his high visibility jacket and climbed down onto the tracks and retrieved the wallet. The Chargeman climbed back onto the platform phoned the signalman to say that the tracks were clear again. The signal was released, the next train arrived with almost no delay and the man was on his way on a train about five minutes after the one he’d tried to catch.

Another similar example:

A rather smart lady got out of the train in a slightly agitated state as on getting into the train at Tonbridge her shoe had slipped off and gone through the gap onto the tracks. I think she had simply got on the train and not considered the idea of staying in Tonbridge to wait while the shoe was retrieved, so the first person she had told was the guard of the moving train. The Chargeman took her into our little room so she could sit down rather than perch on one shoe. He phoned Tonbridge and was told that the shoe was already on its way up to her on the next train. (I think perhaps the guard had passed on a message of some sort at Sevenoaks.) Anyway a few minutes later a train pulled in with the guard holding the shoe out in his hand.

Coincidence 1 - when working on the platforms at London Bridge I saw someone from university get out of one of the trains. He said Hi and dashed off to work.

Coincidence 2 - when working as a guard on a train near Croydon I checked the ticket of someone I went to school with, a boy two years above me. I called him by his nickname, “Boot” much to his surprise and the surprise of those sitting beside him.

I never did anything specifically wrong, but I was involved in one minor cock-up, and in one sneaky thing.

The sneaky thing was to get a lift on a train home to Greenwich, thing being that the train, a service from Charing Cross to Dartford via Greenwich had been cancelled due to a defect, but the stock was still going to have to go through Greenwich, as it headed non-stop to the depot at Slade Green. (I was at Charing Cross having been doing some shopping after my shift. I’d already been waiting at Charing Cross for ages before this train was cancelled and really didn’t fancy waiting another half hour till the next train to Greenwich so, as I was in uniform, I nipped down to the front of the train and found the driver talking to the repair men and asked the driver if there was any way he could drop me off at Greenwich as he went through. Thing was he said he obviously couldn’t actually make an official stop at Greenwich or the people waiting at the station for this train would try to get on. (Remember we’re talking about a train with old fashioned slam-doors so there was no way to stop people getting on simply by not releasing the door mechanism.) He offered to take me if I was willing to jump out as the train went through Greenwich! It wasn’t quite as nutty as that sounds. As the train approached Greenwich he slowed down to walking pace and I opened the inward opening door of the guard’s compartment, then, when the train reached the first bit of the platform, I stepped off at walking pace and continued along to the exit while the train accelerated back up to speed and disappeared. The railway man on the barrier for whom I was now a regular was slightly confused as to how I could just have appeared at the station when no trains had stopped there.

The cock-up, of sorts, happened at Redhill, and officially what happened was wrong. And I hope I can explain it in a manner that makes sense. It was not a big deal, but I will go into detail as a means of explaining how the railway worked.

The schedule job was for the train to go from London Bridge to Redhill and back to London Bridge. The means it arrives at the Down platform the announcement says “Train terminates here”. The empty train then does a back and forth shunting manoeuvre to the south of the station to cross over to the Up platform from where it can set off again northwards.

The back-and-forth shunting manoeuvre was where things went wrong. The normal procedure was for the driver to get out of the cab, (Let’s call it cab A) and for the guard to get in and sit in the driver’s seat. The driver then walks down the platform and gets in the other cab. (Call this Cab B).

The driver will then reverse out of the platform when he gets a signal from the guard that the guard can see from Cab A that the appropriate signal is showing the appropriate message. The guard gives a blast on the horn and the train then moves slowly out of the station and across several points to the designated track; here the driver goes far enough past another signal, which is the one that will presently change to tell him when it is safe for him to drive forward into the Up Platform. The guard has nothing very much to do other than stand by to make an emergency brake application if he sees danger or similar. (e.g. passenger falls of the platform or guard notices that although the signal says the train is to go to the track to the right the points are actually set to send it to the left.)

I am thus sitting in Cab A waiting for the signal in front of me to change, and the driver is in Cab B waiting for me to ring the bell to tell him it’s okay to reverse. But the signal doesn’t change. Now if you are waiting at a signal and the signalman knows you are there, then the rules say that you don’t need to do anything immediately, so neither driver nor me do anything. After a while everyone starts to do things, because in a minute we’re going to be late to set off back to London. The driver buzzes me on the intercom to check what’s up, at the same time as I’m buzzing him. We then both get out of our seats and go to a door and look at each other. And then there’s a raucous incomprehensible announcement on the tannoy and a member of the platform staff comes out of a door with an equally incomprehensible message, though the driver understands it. He talks to me on the intercom again and tells me that the manoeuvre is going to be via the points and signals at the northern end of the station instead of the south, and we should thus change places, but to save time he stays in Cab B. (otherwise he will first have to switch everything off, come down to Cab A, switch everything ion again, then after the manoeuvre, switch everything off again and go back to Cab B to switch everything on again to head for London.) I see that the signal is clear for us to head north and give him the sign to set off: two pings on the bell. We sail past the signal box where the signalman is giving us a funny look! I then sit in the driver’s seat and wait for the points and then shunting signal to change, whereupon I buzz the driver to say he can reverse. (Two pings on the bell). I give a toot on the horn and we set off for the correct platform. So far so good until I see that there is already another train in the other platform. This is not a problem per se, it’s common at some stations to allow two trains to stop at the same platform when they are going to head off in opposite directions or at different times. Redhill is also a very long platform and this other train is a small train only taking up a bit of space at the far end, so there is space for us to fit in front of it. Indeed the driver stops about a hundred yards short of the other train. However, the rules say that a guard should not be in the leading cab when a train is being reversed towards another train, especially not one containing passengers. However, as soon as we stopped we were ready to leave which was handy as our departure was now almost not going to be late, so with passengers aboard and a green signal we left the scene. Back at London Bridge the driver thanked me for whatever it was I’d done and suggested it would be best not mention who was in which cab when. He also explained that we were indeed meant to be going via the southern end, but had been messed up by the signalman putting the other train in the way, as that was due to go south.

I mentioned giving “pings on the bell”. When in an electric multiple unit “Two Pings” was the official signal from a guard to a driver to say that he may set off, you could not give two pings unless you were sure that the train was okay to go, that meant that all the doors were shit, that it was the correct time to depart and that the right signal was clear. One ping on the bell meant stop. You could give the pings either using a special switch above the door in the guard’s compartment (so long as you had used your special BR key to switch on the power supply for it in that compartment). And in the instance at Redhill I described you could also use the intercom (loudaphone) call button in the cab to give the driver two “buzzes”. If you wanted to use the intercom to talk to the driver, then you buzzed three+three pings.

Giving signals to the driver was a different story if you were in a train of carriages being hauled by a locomotive, then when it was time to go you had to signal the driver with a green flag or a green light from your lamp (red flag and red light to get him to stop). To use the flags and lights you had to stand on the platform to be sure that the driver could see you clearly and that you could see his acknowledgement as well. Then when the train started to move you had to hop onto the train. (We heard stories about guards getting left behind.). If you needed to tell the driver to stop, then a red flag or light was no good as the driver would not usually be looking down at you after you’d set off, so it was then simply a case of you stopping the train yourself by applying the emergency brake in the guard’s van.

The only time I worked with locomotives was on services to Uckfield, a line, which to this day remains one on the only lines in the area that is not electrified! After arrival at Uckfield the Class 33 loco had to “run round”. This means that it had to be detached from the front of the train; move over to the other track via a set of points; go along past the carriages; move back to the same track as the carriages via another set of points; move up slowly towards the carriages and then couple up again. I merely had to watch as there was a shunter in grubby overalls to do all the clambering about between the carriages and locomotive to disconnect and then reconnect all the pipes, couplings etc. and move the red lamp from one end to the other. Usually when going down to Uckfield or East Grinstead I went with 3D Diesel Electric Multiple Units, like this, whose main characteristic from a guard’s point of view was that the guard’s van was next to the engine compartment, hence warm on a cold evening, but noisy at all times.

Given I started this blog at a time of year when Dutch trains have been in the news for having trouble with slippery tracks due to leaves on the line I’ll also mention the “fun” of being in a train that slid through the station it was trying to stop at when we were on our way to London Bridge. Luckily it was at Brockley which is not a terminus, and we didn’t slide into the way of something else, or through a set of points not set the right way, but we went so far past the stopping point that I was only just able to step onto the end of the platform from the very rearmost door. I had to get out in order to phone the signalman and obtain permission for the train to reverse back past to where it was meant to stop. It wasn’t just a requirement to get permission to reverse, but also necessary to be officially told that it was okay to go back past a signal at the end of the platform that had already gone red. I also had to sit in the rear cab with my hands on the brakes and the horn to act as the driver’s eyes while he reversed. Then, before we could set off again, the driver had to get out to get permission from the signalman to go forward past the signal. We also had to report what had happened to the supervisor when we got to London Bridge

I have various notes in my log book about delays and the reasons therefore (more of my trains were late than on time, and genuinely never my fault I might add): one of my trains was delayed at Sutton for a few minutes while the platform staff searched for some missing French children! Another was delayed due to problems with a lady with a pushchair; a train at Gypsy Hill was held up due to helping a man on crutches. Trains were late leaving due to the stock being in the wrong place, or the driver being in the wrong place, or late arriving due to another train he’d been on running late, or we left somewhere late because Post Office staff taking too long to load/unload mailbags. Another one was late leaving as when a long train was brought in from the sidings it still had all the doors locked, meaning they all had to be unlocked manually, that’s eight doors on each side of each carriage of an 8-carriage train, I make that 128 doors and that took quite a while! My trains were often held a signal due to a train in front of us being slow or stuck at a signal, so that we were all just queuing at signals, though often a signal seemed to stay at danger/red for no apparent reason.

A couple of times a train was delayed due to a defect, and by that, I mean one where the brakes did not seem to be working, the driver could not get the compressor to make them pump up properly and it was impossible to do a brake test. However, I never bothered about cancelling a train due to a minor problem like some nonsense like it having a broken lightbulb.  

I found that drivers tended to look out for guards, and were usually incredibly helpful. I thus took note when I jumped off the bottom step when getting out of a train only to receive a lecture from the driver behind me: “Always step down. Never Jump,” he’d cautioned. “If you jump you might slip, and end up on the live rail or under the wheels of another train on the adjacent tracks.” Slipping over was a definite hazard and it is worth mentioning that if you had to walk between the tracks you should walk on the stones, the ballast, not on the sleepers as (wooden) sleepers could be dangerously slippery. The drivers often let me sit in the cab when I was learning with another guard and that made it easier to see things out of the window. And many’s the time that a driver was good company to talk to during those brief gaps when waiting for a train to set off on a return journey when there was no point in shutting down the train and leaving it to go to a rest room.

Occasionally the train crew had a better idea how to run a railway than the timetable makers. A good example being an early morning train from Epsom Downs to Victoria, a train that was due to arrive at Sutton one minute after a train for London Bridge left Sutton from just across the platform. However, the whole week I worked that train my driver managed to get to Sutton a couple of minutes before our scheduled arrival time, and the driver of the London Bridge train managed to delay his departure by a fraction too; the passengers on our train new this was likely to happen and were in just the right carriage to have a very short walk across the platform and save themselves a long wait for the next London Bridge service. I even made an announcement for them to let them know that the other train was still there as we came into the platform. And talking of announcements they had only just added a PA system to these old trains and I expect some regular commuters were a bit startled to suddenly be getting a guard welcoming them on board such a service at the crack of dawn.

Guards also occasionally worked out ways to swap part of a duty to make it easier for both of you, for instance at a busy station there might be a train about to head for Victoria with a guard who was based at London Bridge at the same time as another train was about to head for London Bridge, but with a guard based at Victoria, after which both guards would be at the end of their shifts. By swapping they could both obviously be finished half an hour earlier. (Though you both logged it as having done what you were meant to have done).