Starting work as a guard

I took charge of my first train as a proper qualified guard on 14th February 1984: it wasthe 14:20 service from London Bridge to Sutton via Norwood Junction, calling at New Cross Gate, Brockley, Honor Oak Park, Forest Hill, Sydenham, Penge West, Anerley, Norwood Junction, West Croydon, Waddon, Wallington, Carshalton Beeches and Sutton. We arrived right time at 14:58!

(Later that day, however, the 16:18 from London Bridge to Tattenham Corner via Purley arrived 8 minutes late after we were held at signals at Windmill Bridge Junction north of East Croydon: I found the details in my old logbook!)

The work you had to do each week as a guard was called a Turn. Each turn had a number and you did them in sequence, so that if you were doing say turn 301 this week then you’d be doing turn 302 next week, 303 the week after and so on, and would know thus what duty you were on for months in advance. The details of all the turns were listed on a board in the guard’s room at London Bridge and it was up to you to make notes about where you had to be at what time, and what train you had to look after etc.

The duties were now part of “flexible rostering”, thus the work was irregular, i.e. not every day of the week would necessarily involve the same number of hours/minutes, and you would not always get the same day(s) off each week, and you had to work weekends. At the end of a week all the minutes should add up to 39 hours, And, while things varied, on no one day would you have had to work more than 9 hours.
The time you were meant to be at work also included the minutes required to find out what was going on etc. before you worked on a train and the minutes at the end of the day to hand things in, make any reports if needed etc. The turn’s timings also included all the time needed to walk between places or, when necessary, travel as a passenger between stations or depots.

It took a vast amount of planning to work out how to ensure there was a guard in the right place at the right time, and it was soon obvious to me how vulnerable the whole system was because of this, especially as there were separate turns for guards and drivers. It was not the case that you and a driver turned up at the same time went to a train and then the two of you and the train stayed together all day long driving it about until another crew took over from you, (remember that guards fell under the auspices of the Traffic Department and drivers under the Motive Power Department).
The planners don’t just have to work out the turns to match services required as even empty trains had to have a driver and guard or shunter on them to be moved about.

There are also schedules, called Diagrams, for working out where all the bits of rolling stock have to be at different times of day, and they can be really complex.

I’ll invent a fictitious example of some train movements etc to give the idea:

It’s half past three in the afternoon. At platform 10 at London Bridge is a 4-car unit that has spent the day being used mainly on services between Holborn Viaduct and Wimbledon and has just arrived from Sutton. It will soon be headed for Crystal Palace, from where it will head to Victoria. But, by the time it leaves Victoria with a service to Epsom, it will be the start of the evening rush hour and will need to be a train with 8 carriages not 4. Thus, before it even leaves London Bridge for Crystal Palace, another empty 4-car unit will need to be coupled to it and thus have to be moved to Platform 10 at London Bridge from New Cross-Gate sidings (where it was taken to be parked in number 3 siding after being uncoupled from another 4-car unit at the end of the morning rush hour). From Epsom it will work back to Victoria as a fast service not carrying passengers, and then form another rush-hour stopping service back to Epsom. By then it will be the end of the evening rush hour and the train will work as a stopping service back to London Bridge where the two 4-car units will be split apart. One of the units will run empty back to New Cross Gate sidings to be parked in siding 2 till an hour before the rush hour the following morning. The other unit will get taken down to Selhurst maintenance depot for the equivalent of its MOT as it’s been six months since the last one. Meantime another 4-car unit that has been having its MOT during the previous 24 hours has run empty from Selhurst Depot to London Bridge and will spend the evening working back and forth between London Bridge and Sutton, and will be parked over night at London Bridge.

As I say it was complicated.

One week my duty turn was just to be “Cover/Spare” i.e. sitting in the canteen near the supervisor’s office waiting to be summoned by him to take over when something went wrong. I was hardly needed all week apart from one train. There was no guard for a fast service to Brighton during the evening rush-hour; it was a 12-carriage train completely stuffed with people, so they were probably grateful for me that day. There were some turns – known as short turns – where you would work on specific trains for say five hours and then report to a designated Train Crew Supervisor at say Victoria or Selhurst depot to act as cover and await instructions if you were needed to work on a train where the guard was absent. Sometimes there were trains perhaps from a depot to a siding that did not always run every day and were marked in the working timetable with a Q and thus known as “Q-trains.” If they were running that day, then you took them, if not you reported to a supervisor to see if there was anything else he needed you for.

I’ve found some examples of actual Guard’s Turns:

Turn 386 - Rest day Friday and Saturday

Sign on duty at 12:52

Dep London Bridge 13:12 to London Bridge* (via Wimbledon and West Sutton) arr. LB 14:33

Dep London Bridge 14:42 to London Bridge (via Wimbledon and West Sutton) arr. LB 16:03

Take Break at London Bridge

Dep London Bridge 16:50 to Battersea Park arr. 17:08

Dep Battersea Park 17:20 to London Bridge arr. 17:43

Dep London Bridge 17:50 to Battersea Park arr. 18:09

Dep Battersea Park 18:19 to London Bridge arr. 18:42

Dep London Bridge 18:57 to London Bridge via Hackbridge, Sutton & Wimbledon arr. 20:18

Sign off duty 20:38.

(*known as a “Rounder”)

Turn 387 – rest day Monday

Sign on duty at 05.55 (for me that meant that long cold walk with all my gear from Greenwich to New Cross to catch a staff-only train to be there on time)

Dep London Bridge 06:15 to Epsom Downs arr. 07:04.

Dep Epsom Downs 07:10 to Victoria arr. 08:00

Dep Victoria 08:19 to Smitham arr. 08:56

Dep Smitham 09:06 to Selhurst arr. 09:23 (train taken over by another guard)

Take Break at Selhurst

Dep Selhurst 10:07 to West Croydon arr. 10:10 (take over from the original guard)

Dep West Croydon 10:24 to Holborn Viaduct arr. 10:57

Dep Holborn Viaduct 11:05 to Selhurst arr. 11:37 (train taken over by another guard)

Mon & Thurs stay on same train as a passenger to West Croydon

Travel as passenger on 11:49 from West Croydon to London Bridge.

Report to Train Crew Supervisor London Bridge as spare.

Sign off duty at 13:29

Tues, Weds and Fri at 11:37 report to Selhurst depot and

Dep Selhurst Depot 12:05 with empty stock to New Cross Gate arr. 12:20

Dep New Cross Gate 12:20 to sidings arr. 12:30

Travel as passenger from New Cross Gate to London Bridge on 12:57

Sign off duty at 13:29

Turn 418

Sign on duty at 14:55

Dep London Bridge 15:55 to Three Bridges arr. 17:00

Travel as passenger on 17:13 to Gatwick

(Relieve guard of the train you’ve travelled on at 17:37)

Dep Gatwick 17:37 to Barnham arr. 18:32 (Unit detaches)

Dep Barnham 18:36 to Bognor arr. 18:42

Take Break at Bognor

Dep Bognor 19:30 to Littlehampton arr. 19:44

Dep Littlehampton 19:57 to Gatwick arr. 21:01 (Portion attaches)

Dep Gatwick 21:05 to Victoria arr. 21:46

Dep Victoria 22:16 to London Bridge arr. 22:36

Sign off duty at 22:56

Now, despite the system having devised all these Turns and knowing what Turn you had been assigned each week, your wages were not calculated automatically and you still had to fill in a time sheet to get paid. When I’d been working on the platforms and on the courses it had been enough to fill out a time sheet once a week as each day was the same. As a guard, each day was different, but, rather than just have to fill the varieties of times you started and finished work, you also had to fill in details for every train you worked on etc. break times, travelling time etc., (i.e. you basically had to transcribe the details for the turn, but the reality thereof rather than how it was on the noticeboard.). This obviously meant that for a whole week there was far too much detail to fit on one sheet so you had to fill in a time sheet at the end of every shift!
The sheets were A4 in size and there was nothing printed on them in advance like your own details to make them simple quick or easy to fill in, it was no wonder that part of your paid time at work included a certain amount of time to fill in forms. (I think I had it quite easy as, while on the training course, it had become clear that a number of the other guards had trouble with their literacy and numeracy skills).

You posted your time sheet in a special letter box by the supervisor’s office at the end of each shift; it was collected and dispatched to somewhere like Brighton (via the internal post of course) for the information to be entered into a computer such that you’d get your wages at the end of the week.

When I worked for BR I used to take food and drink to work, as the canteen was invariably not open when I needed food, and the food it offered was not terrific, and back in 1983/4 the catering available in the public parts of stations was very limited, and hardly cheap or healthy, (though the grilled burgers at Casey Jones at Charing Cross were tasty and in my opinion vastly superior to those offered by McDonalds and Burger King). Taking drinks and sandwiches to work was no big deal when I worked on the platforms or was on the courses, as I didn’t have to take much else and didn’t have to carry things about all day once I’d got to work. However, once I was a guard I had to carry everything with me, for although I had a locker at London Bridge, my meal break (known as a PNB = Personal Needs Break) was invariably never anywhere near at London Bridge, and I occasionally became a bit fed up with the weight I had to carry.

My supplies usually consisted of a thermos of coffee, liver sausage sandwiches, a banana and a Twix or Mars, though it could feel a bit weird eating this sort of food early in the morning when on an early shift or late in the evening when on a late shift. Shift work generally played havoc with all my meals and mealtimes and found it easiest to transpose a whole day and thus have a late breakfast after getting up late before a late shift and an early evening meal before going to bed early before an early shift. The biggest help on the catering front was that between Greenwich station and my flat I had to walk past two small supermarkets (a Coop and an International Stores) and a Fruit & Veg man and a newsagent. (That newsagent was where I bought my first copy of Modern Railways Magazine! I have been getting it monthly since then, and have also got hold of a couple of dozen old back issues, so I now have quite a collection. It never occurred to me, however, when buying that first magazine that I would later become a regular supplier of information to the magazine about matters relating to Dutch Railways, nor that they’d publish several of my photographs!)

The reason lugging food and drink about all day was an issue was because, in addition to the food and drink, one also had to carry about a vast amount of stuff when working as a guard: whistle, flags, lamp, padlock, timetables, ticket manuals, ticket punch, rule book, regional appendixes, log book, note book, route book, high-visibility vest, and of course a pocket watch on a chain and a tin of detonators!

Mentioning the padlock reminds me that a guard might be called upon to lock a set of points in place in an emergency situation. If your train had to be moved across a set of points that were not normally used in the direction you were going to travel in and could not be locked in position, then they had to be clamped and padlocked (“C&P”). Reason being that if a point was not locked in position, then it could wobble about and move while a train was going over it, so that one wheel might go one way and another wheel the other way, known as “splitting the points”, something which can derail a train, or, at best, badly damage the wheels/bogies and points.).

My life had thus become all about the railway and routine, albeit an irregular routine.