The good news is that LUL appear to have had an unexpected attack on sense and after a quick chat with our brand new Gen Sec have promised “meaningful” talks soon, one would imagine this week. In response ASLEF has suspended the three planned 24 hour strikes in the hope that LUL’s interpretation of “meaningful” is approximately the same as ours.

Yesterday was my first night back, for some reason the timetable had us running empty from EPP before stabling at LOU and I had to wake one sleeper so I could close up. I explained that the train was going out of service and that there were no more trains from EPP that night. Without a word he stood up and staggered off the train, wandered aimlessly up and down the platform for a while, ducked into the toilets and then the waiting room before returning to the train.

He tried pressing the door buttons to see if he could get back on and when that failed he tried to force open the doors. All doors have a little “give” to them but they will only open a couple of inches or so. When strength alone failed to gain access he changed tactics and tried to squeeze himself through the gap he’d created. After a minute or so of watching this on the CCTV and with the time to leave fast approaching I left the warmth of my cab and headed back down the platform to see what was what.

I hadn’t walked more than a few cars back when I saw that he’d given up his attempt to board the train and had resumed wandering up and down the platform. By the time I’d got back to the cab and turned everything back on there was no sign of him. He failed to reappear before the signal cleared but as I sped down to THB I was plagued by a nagging worry; what if it wasn’t him I saw on the platform, what if it was someone else and he’d managed to squeeze on board. Needless to say when I got to LOU I went back for a quick check that I wasn’t carrying anyone I shouldn’t.