Sorry I didn’t write yesterday but it was my day off and I felt like a day out enjoying myself up West rather than sitting around. Tuesday was reasonably uneventful other than getting stuck behind a “passenger ill on a train” for so long that I reached EAB ten minutes after I should have left.

At HAI the train was due to go into the depot but there were no station staff available to help me close up which made me even later than I already was; with the staff cuts due in February I expect that this is a taste of things to come. Fortunately rather than first sending me up though the wash to give the train a good clean and then having to change ends before stabling the shunters sent me straight into the yard which saved me a few minutes.

Other than that very little to report, let’s see what happens tonight.

Monday went to timetable, a refreshing change and a reminder that lates seem to suffer far less agro than earlies. You may or may not be aware that ASLEF has balloted us for a strike on Boxing Day, the votes we due in next Monday (13 Dec) so we should get the result early next week.

ASLEF are asking for some sort of compensation as in the past we worked a reduced service on Dec 26 regardless of what day it fell on and it coped perfectly with demand. The duty sheets are up and apart from opening about an hour late it looks like a full Sunday service. If memory serves less than 30 TOps booked on at my depot in the past, this year it's 42.

Obviously what we really want is a return to the previous agreements so that some of us could enjoy Boxing Day like normal people but that is highly unlikely as LUL have all those leaflets printed up telling passengers that we'll be running a normal Sunday service and it would far too late and expensive to replace them. We won’t be getting a day off in lieu as it’s not a bank holiday so a little financial compensation for depriving us of what little social life we have would be appreciated. Fat chance.

The only alternative is to stick two fingers up at our magnificent, munificent management, lose a day’s pay and stay at home with our friends and families (or go watch West Ham away at Fulham). I somehow doubt if there will be any ASLEF picket lines as that would defeat the point of the strike. Perhaps we should just all phone in sick like the Spanish air traffic controllers.

And going all the way back to my first post this was what one kind passenger left for the the cleaner to deal with on the night of Thursday 15 April 2010

Here’s the graffitied train I mentioned back on Wednesday 12 May 2010.

I finally downloaded all the photos off my mobile so here are a few Tube related ones. This was at about a month ago, it wasn't so much that it was a huge panda, what disturbed me was that it appears to have been the recipient of a frontal lobotomy.

We have a useful programme on the LUL internal system called Trackernet which displays a map of any given line and shows the trains moving along, very useful for keeping tabs on your next train.

I have no idea what happened to my fellow TOp and the manager who went into HAI dept but ten minutes before I was due to relieve them on the WB they were nowhere to be seen on Trackernet. The DMT had a look for my train on the Predictor, another bit of kit, and that confirmed that my train was indeed missing. A call to Wood Lane confirmed that there had been a few problems and I was told to take over a train due to go out of service at RUG and make it into mine, a piece of news very welcome to the TOp I took over from as it saved him a long, cold walk out of RUI depot.

So once more I was late picking up and each time I reached my destination I had just enough time to change ends before I was back off again. Despite this by the time I started the last trip before my meal break (EPP – WHC) I was back on time. Just as I was about to pull away from HOL we were told to hold on platforms for a train with door problems so I ended up being ten minutes late which just gave me enough time to squeeze in my meal break before I had to pick up my second half which thanks to a bit of switching around was on time.

Off till Monday, try to keep warm.

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.