big jim

Ive got in my head a figure of £300 a minute and thats going back to the early 2000s so it may well be more now As stationmaster says its a complex beast this 'delay attribution' take for example last night, that made us late into kingmoor which in turn could have knocked our log loading time, if the southbound logs then left late as a result then the delay could be traced back to the inbound delay and ultimatly the failure of 6x52 If then as a result of us running late we delay say a passenger service they will 'claim' the delay off us however we can then claim the delay off the FOC who failed last night, similarly if that delay then escalates and delays another service (or many others throughout the day) then the various toc/foc will trace the delay back to origin even if its from a previous day Im not sure any money physically changes hands either, it could be that minutes are wiped off 'the tab' as it were As a driver its quite important to be aware of 'delay attribution' so you can report anomalies in a schedule where delays are occuring, i remember back in fastline days we had a liverpool to ironbridge job that gave you 3 minutes to cover a certain stretch of line which was an impossibility short of doing 50mph round a 15mph curve, so it was highlighted and found that the schedule was indeed wrong, it was adjusted accordingly and no more delays were incured from that point As it happens im currently stood on crewe station awaiting my train and the sleeper is about 2 hours late, a knock on effect from yesterday, that being the driver of yesterdays southbound service has not had sufficiant rest to be able to work the northbound service on time this evening, that could impact on other services later in the day or even on me later if i have to make an unscheduled stop in a loop to let him pass And you thought it was just pull a lever and go!!

few more pics one from last night, not fantastic but it was pitch black and raining hard and some from this evening, caught the train from carlisle to crewe to work the logs back there later 156 coming in from newcastle, this departs carlisle for middlesborough TPE 350 tyne yard to kingmoor service pendolino hopefully tonight will be a better trip north than yesterday

the bell is simply a warning alarm, the best way it was described to me is "it goes off to warn you that the loco is about to do something" rather than there being a problem with the loco, it goes off when isolating a loco as its warning you the loco could roll away (obviously its coupled to a train etc or it will roll away!) when firing up a loco it goes off to warn you the loco will be starting, much in the same way a 66 has the starting claxons

Yes, ive since found out it had wheel flats so was restricted to 50mph The southbound 66/67 combo never made it to london either apparently, 66 failed at MK but there was also a fatality in the watford area which stopped everything

I passed a top and tail 37 waiting to come off kingmoor this morning, just 3 coaches, one of those being an anglian livery one, the lead loco was 37423

Interesting night last night, started off by noticing that the sleeper was running late into crewe, so much so my train arrived before it whereas the sleeper is normally a good hour in front, i overheard one of the platform staff saying it was running at a reduced speed So off i set, dropped the other driver off at warrington and i continued north, got stopped outside wigan, contacted the box via the gsm-r at the red signal and got a 'wait' so i sat and waited until he rang me to say the train in front had failed and i would be needed to assist him, await signal and for him to call me back A good 40 mins went by before i got a call, i was going to buffer up and push him into the rear platform at wigan station before setting back onto the mainline to continue north , the driver of the failed train had placed emergency protection down and i had the authority to pass the signal at danger and proceed to the protection point to pick up the driver, his train was a class 90 which had failed with total loss of power Picked him up and going by the latest rules had to run over the 3 detonators he had placed down which was fun at 01:30! Buffered up, coupled up and once we were set to move i pushed him forward into the station, he still had full control of the brake, just no power, so we didnt attach the brake pipes, we basically braked our own individual trains, we of course were only moving at walking pace anyway Once in clear i uncoupled and under the watchful eye of the local MOM (mobile operations manager) set my train back behind the junction signal before waiting for it to change to a proceed aspect to continue north, thankfully i was 45 early before wigan so after all the messing about only ended up about 30 late from there Just one pic of my train coupled to the rear of the failed car train Before i set off again i checked realtime and could see the sleeper was 77 late from crewe so it must have had big problems, he was however just south of warrington by now Got a good run before preston box put me in at barton and boughton loop to let a class 4 past, by now the sleeper was in preston and only 10 mins behind me so i thought he'd hold me and let him pass but no, once the class 4 went i was back out, must be going in at carnforth, no, straight through there, grayrigg it is as i had a feeling the sleeper was catching me up, no, past there too, definatly tebay then, again, no, greens all the way, penrith seemed unlikely and i was right, straight through there too, finally dropped into kingmoor at about 05:10 and had run round and was about to set back when the sleeper finally went past, looking at RTT once id finished shunting revealed that it had lost futher time between lancaster and carlisle and when it passed me it certainly wasnt going as quick as it normally does! Right behind that sleeper was the 2nd northbound service (edinburgh and glasgow train) which was at a crawl too as it was running on restrictive aspects behind the first sleeper then to top it all the southbound sleeper went past running about 3 hours late with 66710 up front and a 67 providing the ETH, not a good night for the caledonian sleeper at all by the looks of it The final thing to pass was the failed car train, this time with a pair of 90s up front, they must have managed to find a spare one on warrington to pilot it

a few from today, made my way from our caravan back to crewe in readyness for work later tonight, caught the train from wigton to carlisle then on to crewe just so happened that the cumbrian coast train was one of the loco hauled sets with a DBSO arriving into wigton sheltering from the rain! DBSO 37402 tour de france 158 another DBSO with lots of measuring equipment on the front you wait for one...... heading back out to the coast thats it for now, heading back north later with the logs

wet week in Wigton

lovely picture sorry its taken so long to reply, back from the wilderness (solway firth) for a few hours so i have 4G on the ipad and can finally see pictures on the forum EDIT: actually mark, its not the same night, you photographed 804 and my pics are 806, i defiantly waved to you twice that week!

It was 37402... With the DBSO 9705 on the rear, i sat in that, very nice it is too

Ooooh, just realised ive got to get the train from wigton to carlisle later (and on to crewe) and the one i planned on getting is a loco hauled service (17:29 arrival into carlisle) wonder whats on that today?

No there are still fire extinguishers in the cabs All this talknof fire supression equipment, i take it the equipment/set up with the DBSO is different to the existing DRS AAR multi cable set up? The reson i ask is drs 37s already have remote fire equipment for when they work the RHTT top and tail etc

Showing my ignorance now, how common was (or is) 750v DC overheads around the london area?

Nice morning on the english solway coast, having a long weekend in our static caravan in sliioth, taking the kids swimming later and then its 'music club' with them in the afternoon, the wife and kids are staying up here for the whole summer, only coming home for one weekend over it im in work on wednesday morning next but handily its a crewe to carlisle job which i can do by going passenger from carlisle to crewe then work the train back so when i finish in carlisle at 05:00 in the morning its back to the van for a couple more days with family, hopefully i will get a few jobs like that over the next 5 weeks!

Quite probably the same day, you were out photographing me twice that week!

this is it with the shed moved futher back and fuel plant in front, looks much better

The crossing is from the pile of unused bits and i quite like the impractically of the set up to be honest!!

why am i looking at this picture and seeing the tracks heading off outside through a trap door and into the garden?

im liking it at the back too but as 'DRS crewe' says move it back a bit the advantage of it being over the back is there is less chance of damage to the shed or a loco dropping to the floor, also i can use my sentinal shunter to move the wagons around as it would be in a private yard as such i may however have to slightly re-model the yard to allow the tank train to arrive and depart without entering the shed building itself

funnily enough the weedkiller MPV was in shrewsbury this morning when i passed through

i use wowcher for my big prints, had a few canvas' done through their deals over the last year http://www.wowcher.co.uk/nationwide/national-deal/deal-383755-detail/7-instead-39-picture-perfect-canvas-prints-a3/deal.html?searchresult=true http://www.wowcher.co.uk/nationwide/national-deal/deal-369732-detail/10-99-instead-36-99-great-photo-gifts/deal.html?searchresult=true

it will go futher back but i've put a fuelling plant behind it just outside the shed, i will move it back tomorrow and put the fueller at the front, see how it looks

well bob you were right, took 2 years though!! while the top level is loose i thought i'd have a look at re-arranging the station area to get a bit more operational interest, it will be nice and easy to fit any new point motors to that section before i refit it ive moved the track round a bit and gained a bay platform, (where the 150 is sat) i also ripped up some of the pointwork at fuel farm end, the points at the bottom are a new addition into the bay, the main through line is the diverging line to the right of those points moving the rear line over by a few cm has left me enough room to move the island platform road back a bit so the platform is not too narrow, i have however lost a platform road but its not an issue this is the fun bit, at the fuel farm end i've left the main points in situ but added a diamond crossover and set of points to set back into the facility i was thinking of refitting the Y point within the plant but i came up with this instead.... another set of points on the other mainline road so the 2 roads are totally separate, shunting into the plant will involve splitting the train and doing 2 shunts across the mainline now this is where i need your opinion, the more i looked at it the more i thought the Bachmann TMD building would look good over that side of the layout and move the fuel plant over to where i planned to fit the Bachmann shed, what do we think? i'm liking that set up personally, i could still fit the storage tanks on the shed side of the layout and have the pipes disappearing "underground" or even an overhead rig over the mainline maybe or even squeeze them between the unloader and mainline, or a 3rd option is move the unloading sidings closer to the mainline and fit the tanks on the base board edge side

i pass the front of this building regularly when i visit my dad in ellesmere but today was the first time i have actually pulled into the old station yard and got a photo of the old cambrian station which is sadly now boarded up would make a fantastic house, a very big house at that my dad's house in ellesmere is on the old junction of the cambrian and line to wrexham, his street is the old wrexham trackbed and his back garden is where the actual pointwork used to be

couple from this morning, chirk to hereford empty logs signal check in shrewsbury nice run this morning and could have been done by 07:30, decided to stay on to newport though as the driver needed an assessment ride and im in no rush to get home newport