A rather annoying Saturday night. There were engineering works at MAA which shut the line down between WHC and HOL. As I was overnight at WHC this meant that I was booked to get a taxi over to WHC with the TOp doing the WER night duty but he’d decided to make his own way over so I had the taxi to myself. For a start it turned up ten minutes late as it had been waiting round the wrong side of the station but as it was still booked for two people we had to wait even longer while the driver confirmed that is was to leave one person short.

After making our way across town we got to WHC with just enough time for me to pick up my train, not that there was much to do, EAB – WHC – EAB then back to WHC empty and into the sidings. There was a short delay caused by an ATP failure two cars short of being fully into the platform and then after stabling the train I had to walk back along Wood Lane to the station and take another into the sidings. Glad it wasn’t raining.

In the morning I got the first train out, up to EAB and back and then a taxi back to LES. Ten minutes after it was due to pick me up I was still waiting so I went back to the desk to ask the DMT to chase it up. Someone had decided to cancel it for some reason so it had to be rebooked and I was told it would pick me up in five minutes. I waited, went out again, waited another ten minutes and then went back to the DMT.

This time I was told that the taxi was outside waiting but when I went back out the street was still noticeably taxi free. The DMT got on the phone again and was assured that the taxi was definitely there. This time he came out to see for himself, agreed there was no taxi but he thought he could see one waiting up the road at Wood Lane station. Sure enough when I walked up there I found that my taxi had been waiting at the wrong station, the driver hadn’t realised there were two stations on the same road.

I ended up being forty minutes late, not the sort of thing you want on a Sunday morning. I heard on the radio that EPP and SNA were unstaffed again and I would hazard a guess that they will be unstaffed until the shifts change on Tuesday, seven days with no one there at close of traffic, not an encouraging sign for the future. Off till Wednesday.