I’m doing the same shift as yesterday and obviously I was wondering if I’d have another wasted hike into HAI yard but I had a pleasant surprise waiting for me when I booked on. One of my colleagues is being assessed under Competency Management, the system LUL presents as evidence to the Office of Rail Regulation that our staff are capable of doing their jobs.

Part of the TOp’s examination is to bring a train into service and as luck would have it the assessing manager chose my train for this purpose. So here I am sat in the rest room again waiting for a train to drive. It snowed quite heavily through the night but we seem to be running all right at the moment.

Nothing much happened yesterday and the dead train at Debden is as yet unmolested. My highlight was about half a dozen magpies hoping around the track between LES and SNA, it reminded me that we see a fair amount of wildlife trackside, especially the EPP branch. Loads of rabbits between DEB-THB and occasionally up towards EPP, wood pigeon especially between LOU-DEB, squirrels anywhere there are trees and plenty of crows.

There are a fair amount of foxes around, I saw one excellent specimen in the summer sunning itself on a patch of grass just past SOW who barely raised its head to acknowledge the train’s approach. And a few days ago while sat here at a PC a blue tit perched on the window sill and peered in at me. Mustn’t forget the huge rat that crawled out of a bush at NOA and then scuttled back or the mice that inhabit the platforms in the tunnel sections.