On Tuesday there was a one-under at EAA just as I was booking on so everything between WHC and NOA was shut down for two hours. I got turned at MAA, came back out of the siding pretty sharpish, went up to EPP and had only just changed ends when the signal cleared to send me back west again. I was due to hand over the train at LOU but as I was now running half an hour early my replacement was probably still driving down the M11.

I thought it prudent to make Wood Lane aware of the situation and fortunately there was a TOp waiting on the platform at LOU whose train was still out there somewhere in the confusion. I renumbered my train into theirs, handed it over and rode the cushions to LES. The service was still a mess on the second half and as I walked towards the bus stop at the end of my shift I could hear the station PA announcing that the next EPP train was at CHL; 19 minutes on the timetable but a lot longer once you factor in passengers struggling against each other to get on and off.

Wednesday was going smoothly until I tried leaving LIS EB on my last trip. The train moved a few yards forward and then came to a juddering halt with DTS declaring that I had lost codes. I went through the procedures with no joy so I called up Wood Lane who informed me that I wasn’t the first to encounter this problem and that I should carry on in Restricted Manual until I picked up codes again. So off I went at a stately 15kph, checking that the points were actually where they should be before going over them until DTS chimed up that codes had mysteriously reappeared.

Had this been one of those all singing, all dancing, driverless trains that Boris is so keen on the Attendant would have had to fight their way to the front through a train packed with a peak time crowd. Oh but that won’t happen as the system will be perfect and won’t suffer sudden unexpected failures, will it.