I must admit I was surprised when RMT said they’d be going ahead with this week’s strike so the news that they’d called it off wasn’t unexpected.  From what is being said  they’ve got LUL to offer the SAMFs and CSAs a similar deal to the one TSSA announced for DSMs and SSs so no one will be facing a pay cut in 2018 if the get downgraded.  Even so Tuesday seemed eerily quiet, perhaps not everyone got the message that the strike was cancelled or maybe they’d not all recovered from the Bank Holiday.

Yesterday everything had gone horribly wrong before I booked on, a train had gone defective at LEY WB, it turned out the ATP controller had failed which meant it wasn’t going to move in ATO or CM so Wood Lane decided that the best thing to do was go to BEG in RM then reverse back over the crossover, a 6.5km trip at 15kph.  My first half was a simple LES-EAB-WHC but my train had been put away in WHC sidings so I was told to go there, bring it out on the EB and hand it over to whoever was relieving me for my meal break.

That would have worked fine except with the delays and disruption it took me about an hour and 15 minutes to get to WHC.  I arrived 20 minutes after I was due to come out of the sidings and just over half an hour before I was due to pick up my second half which was possibly the only train running on time.  So my first train stayed in the sidings, I had the shortest allowable meal break and picked up my second half, WHC-NOR-LOU-NOA-HAI via NEP and then back on the cushions to LES.

When I reached NOR I was told to extend up to WER where the train would be taken off me, turned into another train, wait for the train that mine had been turned into and make that into my one.  When I got to WER the train I was to take over was at TCR WB and by the time I eventually left WER I should have been at TCR EB.  When I reached RUG the platform indicators showed the train as only going to NOR, I called up Wood Lane who said they’d spotted the mistake and I was to go to LES but shortly after they’d shortened the trip even further to LIS.

That all went perfectly, I went into the sidings at LIS and came out on the WB back on time.  I wasn’t too late getting to NOA but delays going back EB meant that when I was due to hand over at HAI I was only just arriving at LES.  Fortunately the TOp who was meant to be taking me off at HAI had only started their meal break so a spare had been sent to take me off and run the train round to WOO via HAI so after all that I got away a little earlier than expected.

Which was nice.