Things found on the Internet related to my time as a guard.

While writing this I’ve been looking through loads of my old BR things that I’ve had kept in a box, but I have also been searching the web for any useful additional info and have found all sorts of stuff.

Other people have written about their time as a guard for example, they describe many of the things I experienced.

This account here is by the first female guard on the SR about her time training to be a guard; she was based on the SW Division at Wimbledon Park depot where I went to practice dropping a Buck-eye coupling.

And here is her account of some of the things she did while working on the SW Division of the SR.

Here is an account by Bill, who was based at Grove Park Depot on the SE Division of the SR, of one of his typical days.

Obviously there are lots of images out there, but I don’t want to get into a mess with copyright of other people photos and videos etc., so I’m just going to give the links to the site where I found things:

Here’s a video clip of the final set (s) of 4-EPB stock. 4-EPBs were the trains I spent most of my time working on, though spent a lot of time on the smaller 2-EPBs as well.
Note how many doors there are on these trains!

The colour scheme of the units as they were in my day was the blue/green as can be seen at 3:57, also at 4:40 where you can also see inside the guard’s compartment (situated behind the driver’s compartment.).

At 5:25 you can see them in silhouette and how there is not corridor connection between the carriages.

There is an EPB set in use as a route-learning train at 9:20, though in this case it’s for driver training (Driver training and route learning is, of course, a very different matter, as unlike the guards just having to know the geography side drivers also have to know at which speed they have to go at every point, where to brake in time etc., and how to do all sorts of things with the mechanical side of the trains).

This next video I found here is of a cab ride of one of the routes I did frequently: London Bridge to Victoria (calling at South Bermondsey, Queen’s Road Peckham, Peckham Rye, Denmark Hill, Clapham High Street, Wandsworth Road, Battersea Park.

Note that despite going through a densely-populated part of London there are few stations, not even at Brixton! This is also in a very short 2-car train where the driver and guard are at the same end of the train, hence the guard sometimes rings the bell to tell the driver to set off and sometimes just gives him a verbal OK as they are only a few feet apart.

This video clip is of a fast service on “Our” Main Line: London Bridge to Brighton. I say fast, but with the speed limit given on the right of the screen you’ll see that it is not that high! But you can still see how many times it overtakes a stopping service on the slow lines.

Most of this part of the network still looks like it did in my day apart from a section near the beginning before New Cross Gate where new tracks have been added to connect the East London Line, and where a few stations have been rebuilt e.g. Gatwick has an additional platform, and of course the track-side vegetation has grown!

this clip is the run north from Brighton to London Bridge

and this clip is of the view going from Gatwick to Victoria