Thursday was chaos.  For some reason a signal fault in the LEY-LES area meant that we had no idea where any of the trains were, neither the predictor nor Trackernet was working .  I’d never experienced this before but it meant that the TOps had no idea how late their trains were, if they were going WB or EB, or even if they’d been cancelled.  Wood Lane were too busy trying to sort out the mess to answer questions so we just waited until a TOp arrived expecting to be relieved then called the DTSM to tell them which number train they were trying to offload so that the DTSM could call up the appropriate TOp.

My duty was a five and a half hour snip, LES-NOR-WHC with 45 minutes for grub then WHC-EPP-WER-LES but 10 minutes after I was due to pick up the DTSM told me that my train was in LOU sidings.  After two trains went through to HAI via NEP I got an EPP train which ended up terminating at LOU, not a good time to be on a train in uniform.  My NOR became a WHC but the time I’d walked into the sidings, got the train out and reached LES I was an hour down and should have been at NOR waiting to come back EB, I was only at HOL when I was meant to be getting off.

I arrived at WHC with exactly 30 minutes before my next pick up but that turned out to be running 10 minutes down.  I spent the rest of the shift heading off as soon as I’d changed ends and by the end I was back on time.  Then I had to spend an hour and a half moving the goldfish from one tank to another as the room where their tank is situated will be fumigated today as someone complained that they were bitten by something while in there.  Clive, Slick and Jagger looked about as happy as the passengers on the train at LOU, I never knew goldfish could look vexed.