New challenges

Today I became a qualified driver on the Metropolitan District Railway.

Just thought I would share that!

 

So you have been driving as an unqualified driver?

 

Ooooh. You'll get to bring trains on their holidays, out here to the
countryside... Mind out for Sheep on the line.

 

No, I was qualified on the Piccadilly.

 

Sheep in Barking and Richmond?

 

Ah, I sort of mentally put the emphasis on "Metropolitan"...

 

So you're now certified to sit in a different sort of train cab and do
****-all?

 

In message

Yup, and still get paid c£42k for it

Isn't life grand.

 

Surely being able to hold ones arm on the lever is the same
everywhere, it's not like you have to steer or anything.

 

For how many hours a day, and with how many days holiday?

GFY...

 

That explains all the banging and shunting on the met line then.

 

Well, yes and no.

If one 'accepts' an incorrect signal it is a SPAD (Signal Passed at
Danger) and is noted on your holistic record as such and is a safety
critical incident.

New skills I have had to learn include...

National Rail rules and procedures
New routes (signals, reversing points etc.)
C (Circle line) stock (a train I have never touched before transfer)
which, is, lets say, special!
D (District line) stock which to be fair is similar to what I did
before.

Easy really, but all needs to be signed off.

 

It might had I been transferring to HM Metropolitan Railway as opposed
to the Metropolitan District

 

35 hours/week (averaged, 7h12mins/day) and 28 days (plus bank holidays
which are worked as normal and added to our leave allocation, and
'accrued' days as our agreement is 36 hours rostered): which totals 43
days a year.

Bear also in mind though that 40 of these days are taken at the behest
of the company so we have no control over when they will be. The other
3 days are retained and mostly allocated when we are not required on a
pubic holiday such as Christmas day.

 

And in due course S7 - when they get round to delivering them.

Well done btw - just in time for me to move offices meaning I won't be
using the Destruct everyday and will instead be back on the Picclydickly
(and Victoria).

 

Ooh. Upstairs or downstairs?

 

Many, MANY moons ago (1979?) I was a guard / emgcy motorman on the
Northern line working out of Morden. '32 stock, the old red ones,
IIRC. Some silver ones too though. At the end of every day your nose
is full of brake dust and the window covered in spittle from the cunts
at the end of the platform who spit at you as you pull out into the
tunnel. Leaving that job was a good move.

However, you get less of that at the front. Congrats on your
qualification and I wish you much fortune.

 

I've already had a session on the simulator and a rather nice train they
seem to be.

I'm told the first one will on the railway by end 2011. Passenger
service in Spring 2012.

You avoiding me?

Thanks anyway.

 

Sideways - back to what I was doing but with a wider remit, fewer staff
and not a lot of certainty as to whether survival through the next
reorganisation (a TfL one rather than LU) is possible. That will be the
third in three years. I only just hung on by my fingernails this time
so I if the old redundancy package is offered again I may simply take
it. I really do not want to endure another year like the last one.

 

You live on that little?