The West End of the line is definitely less boisterous that the East, three nights at WER and not one sleeper to show for it. I have nights again next week and I’m going to see if anyone wants to swap my last WERs for last EPPs just so I’ve got something to write about!

Over the weekend we had engineering works closing the line from LIS to LES. Friday night I was spare and the DMT told me that I might have to cover one of the early turns up until my duty finished around 07:00. When we checked we found that even though the first four booked on around 05:00 they were being sent in a taxi to WER to get trains out of the depot, the earliest coming out at 06:45. That obviously didn’t give me enough time to get back to LES to finish so I couldn’t cover anything.

Saturday night I shared a taxi to LIS with another night shift TOp as I was on the last WER again while they were taking the last EAB and then stabling at WHC. After that I was getting a taxi to LOU to bring out the first train in the morning while other TOp was going from WHC to HAI. We assumed that we’d be in the same taxi but we had on one each. Until last week the plan was to shut the line all the way out to LOU and I was booked to take a third taxi at the end of my shift to get me back to LES so I could go home.

All these taxis would seem a tad extravagant at a time when we are being told that we need to save money but what really makes us laugh is that during the day TOps from the East End depots who were booked to pick up trains at LIS were told that they would have to use the replacement buses to get from LES to STR and then get the mainline service into LIS. It was fortunate for everyone that the mainline didn’t develop any problems otherwise there would have been TOps arriving at LIS expecting to go home and finding no one to replace them. They would have had to take the train back to WHC, get relieved there and only then head back to their depots.

If we ever needed further evidence that the people making these plans up at 55 are somewhat out of touch with the people working down here then this is more than enough.