Draining

Two days spare, two days down the Waterloo & City. On the second day I’d started on a trip that took me to NEP, EAB and was due to finish in the sidings at LOU but when I reached LES on the EB another TOp was waiting to take me off. Someone had SPADed down the Drain so I had to go down and finish off their turn.

The rest of the evening was spent monotonously shuttling the Walking Dead in Suits under the Thames; why some TOps love working down here is beyond me. As I was driving the last train and had never done that shift before I thought I’d better ask what was expected. The manager on the desk advised me to ask the other TOps which would have been a good idea except there weren’t any TOps to ask, they’d all finished apart from one and he was driving the other train. As the closest we ever got was passing each other at around 50kph there was little chance to discus practice.

Fortunately there were station staff on both platforms to signal me out, I offloaded my last passengers at Waterloo and waited to stable the train. After five minutes with no movement I called the signals who told me that they were waiting for a train to vacate the sidings so I could take it’s place. Ten minutes later I was still sitting there and only then did someone bother to tell me that I was supposed to leave my train on the platform for the manager to put away, walk into the sidings, take the train everybody was waiting for up to Bank, shut it down and go home.

Did I mention I hate the W&C…….