The missus wants to know why the trains are all winking at her.
I take she means they only seem to have one headlight? You'll be pleased to know they have two, one for night time and one for day, they also have have two marker lights. The night headlamp (LHS) is aimed to illuminate the lineside markers [1], the day one (RHS) is angled to be seen at a distance in daylight (oddly). Th whole point of train headlamps is for the train to be seen rather than the driver to see [2]. In fact in some conditions at night its easier to drive with the lights off. But that's a no no. [1] In recent years the old style cut out speed boards and the like have been replaced with the retro-reflective roadsign type. Which is fucking great when they're covered in graffiti, brake dust, sandite and de-icer fluid. Some areas of the country the cut outs are still the norm. [2] When I first passed out, trains just had two 60w household bulbs to illuminate the headcodes. That was your lot. Did we complain? No, because we were real men.
Well, it all depends on what you define a train crash as. A collision with another train or track stuff that may or may not have caused damage counts. Also whether you only include the vehicles involved as ones you were on rather than nominally in charge of. Either way its still yes. My personal definition of "that'll be a bit of a job to square up" seems to work quite well. Anyway, I managed to push three fully loaded 100 ton wagons over the stop blocks into a field where they then promptly sank up to their doors in mud. That was a little tricky to cover up. Extending platform 8 at Brighton due to incorrect train formation and defective brakes [1]. It's very difficult to reverse an engineers freight train discretely after an almighty fucking bang that loosened a hundreds years worth of crap out of the roof, frightened all the pigeons (and punters) and knocked the stops down. That was squared up after a bit of argy bargy. When I was the Secondman (drivers assistant) we managed to drive through some shed doors leaving a train sized hole. Also fly shunting [2] a brake van up a siding then realising the Guard who should be at that moment applying the hand brake on said van is in fact stood next to us as the van disappears from view is a bit silly too. Not so much crashes by the popular tabloid definition, more fuckwittedness. [1] Not actually defective but the incorrect formation had undesirable side effects. [1] Basically whacking the wagon with the engine and letting it roll down the sidings while the brakes are applied by hand by a shunter/guard running alongside/riding on (or not, as the case maybe).
<snip fantastic stuff> Briliant! Just brilliant! I think we need to extend this thread - c'mon, who's crashed a ship - Ace? JC? Bonwick?
Indeed. Made me smile, too. I ran a yacht aground once, just off The Needles. Don't suppose that counts, really.
Nope. I did get kicked off the bridge once for sleeping on watch while I'd let the quartermaster go for his smokoe, but we were in the middle of the South Atlantic at the time so it would have been quite difficult to find anything to hit.
