Saturday it rained and the trains were slipping around so much that Wood Lane told us to drive in Coded Manual if we felt it was necessary. I’d already switched by then as the train had nearly gone through a red signal at WHC WB in Auto.

Sunday morning I had the pleasure of taking the first WB through the pipe. There is a lot of dust down there, normally just floating around but after the last train goes through it settles and in the morning the air pushed ahead of the first train sends it up again. These clouds of dust are clearly visible in the headlights and are quite entertaining. However there have been a few occasions when the dust has been so bad that passengers waiting on the platform have mistaken it for smoke and reported a fire in the tunnels.

The other thing with running the first train on a Sunday is that we open an hour and a half later than every other day, people forget this and the platforms are as crowded as in the peak hours. When the train arrived from EPP it was quite busy but after the first train from HAI had pulled in and the passengers had been decanted onto my train it was so full that when we arrived at LEY some people couldn’t get on. The same thing was repeated all the way through to HOL.

When I was waking across to get my train one poor soul asked me how to get to Chigwell and I had to tell him that the first train wasn’t for over an hour. If you are travelling anywhere and you’re not sure about what time things run I can thoroughly recommend TfL’s journey planner, it’s on their website, I use it all the time and now I know that if anyone wants to go to Chigwell at 7am on a Sunday morning they can go to Buckhurst Hill and get a bus.