Another glorious day and my first trip was round “the Loop”. To start with my train was running 15 minutes late so when I got to WOO, tipped out, went up the siding (21 Road) and changed ends I didn’t have long sitting around before I was off again.

Coming into the platform the emergency brakes came on for no obvious reason; I was under the target speed so it wasn’t an overspeed, I still had Codes so it wasn’t an emergency platform plunger nor was it anything else that I could immediately see would cause the train to stop. After a few seconds I got it moving again as if nothing had happened, I got another car or so into the platform but then it slammed on the brakes again and refused to budge. I went though my checks and then called up Wood Lane to let them know that I was experiencing difficulties.

As I still couldn’t get a brake release in Coded I switched into Restricted and pulled in the rest of the way. I switched back into Coded and everything was fine so I’m still none the wiser as to what the problem was. While I was sat halfway in the platform I had a party of schoolkids gazing in at me; one even asked the teacher how they were going to get home if the train had broken down.

So I was late getting away from WOO and I was made even later still by a handle down at STR followed almost immediately by a passenger incident on a train at LEY. By the time I reached MIE I was ten minutes down with the whole of Zone 1 in the evening peak still ahead.

I was meant to go to RUG and then put the train away but halfway through “the Pipe” I noticed that the dot matrix board over platform was now advertising my destination as WER. I changed the destination on the train and sure enough when I reached RUG the signal was a straight green sending me onto WER rather than a shunt signal into the depot. When I reached WER there was a TOp waiting to take over the train and I trotted off for my meal break.

I suppose I could have radioed Wood Lane to find out what was going on but I was curious to see if at anytime anyone was going to bother to tell me what was going on and no one did. Not that I’m complaining as it saved me a long walk out of the depot but it’s a perfect example of how the TOp is usually the last person to be informed.