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Severe Delays

Tag Archives: memos

No Forward Movement

11 Tuesday Jun 2013

Posted by severedelays in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

fail, fuckwits, memos, train

Sometimes at a terminus late at night a person might close up everything then go to drive their train into a siding and then it turns itself off. That’s ok. It’s supposed to do that. It’s just checking stuff. All you have to do is sit and twiddle your thumbs for a few minutes til it turns everything back on and once you have motors available you zoom off.

OR, you can sit and gaze around the cab if you don’t fancy twiddling your thumbs right at that particular moment. Perchance your gaze may alight on the emergency brake button which is pleasingly big and red. If such a circumstance were to occur you might happen to notice that the emergency brake button is at a very peculiar angle and give it a little poke whereupon you might find that the whole thing spins round in an anticlockwise direction.

Coincidentally, anticlockwise is the direction you spin it in to release the emergency brake. Had you wished to apply the emergency brake you’d give it a push and it spins clockwise and applies the brakes. But you probably don’t want to push it. You might ponder that a spinning emergency brake button is not something you really want on a train and perhaps you should be calling up the Controller to mention it. But before you do…hey, wonder if it also spins in a clockwise direction? So you might test that. And then hear a soft thunk of brakes applying. And then you might be left frantically spinning the button to no apparent point in either direction.

And if such a thing should ever happen to you then definitely will be calling the Controller and then you’ll be answering some extremely pointed questions about how comes the emergency button came to be pressed in the first place. And you’ll come up with the most half-arsed explanation ever proffered to anyone, ever, including when your parents told you that Fido was going off to live on a farm where he could chase chickens. And then the Controller will most likely tell you that your signal is going to return to danger and can you confirm that you will not be moving your train? And then you’ll burst out laughing all over the radio because that’s kind of the problem here. And then you’ll have to wait a bit for them to fetch a man who will turn up and say “Oh that’s bad, we don’t have a tool for that”, and then he’ll shrug and bring out a big hammer and give it a go anyway.

And after a bout of thumping and cussing he’ll tell you it’s fixed. Well not fixed, exactly, but it’ll move. And then you’d probably high-tail it into the siding as fast as you can because you want to get rid of this damn train as quickly as possible.

And the moral of the story is TWIDDLE YOUR FUCKING THUMBS.

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I was only following orders, guv

06 Friday Jan 2012

Posted by severedelays in Uncategorized

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

fail, memos, oddness, train, tube, tunnel

So I was rattling along last night happy as Larry when something went wrong with my train. Oh dear.

I’ve mentioned before that when we are in train-ing we often hear the phrase “that wasn’t supposed to happen” as trains break in inexplicable ways. Last night I gazed in puzzlement at the defect and then muttered the immortal phrase to myself. I won’t bore you with the details of the defect but will just say that it was an odd one that logic dictates should not occur.

As there was no safety issue I continued to rattle along while I tried to figure out a workaround to the problem. This was more of an intellectual challenge to pass the time than a real, pressing need as we had so few customers it was easy enough to explain what they should do (nothing) while the issue was happening. I tried a few things which didn’t work and as I reached the terminus I added another minor defect to my list of woes. I fiddled around and fixed the second issue though this meant leaving rather late in the other direction. And as I pootled along I tried something else and lo, it was fixed! Or rather it wasn’t. For as soon as I once more reversed and started driving in the original direction the problem reappeared.

Never one to be bothered by the idea of making a complete idiot of myself, I called the Voices. Although they haven’t all been drivers with experience of fixing defects they do always hear about what goes wrong with the trains and can sometimes offer some good suggestions. In this case I didn’t need advice but did need permission to do something rather drastic to the train – I wanted to kill it.

Some defects are best solved by doing what I call the Windows Option. Turn it all off and then turn it back on again. Trains are similar to PCs in that it can take a few minutes for the systems to be restored fully so killing the thing is not something we are encouraged to do. But as I had some time to spare at the terminus the Voice agreed and told me to keep him updated on whether it worked. So I duly committed foul murder and set about restoring my train to life. During which I just let customers (all three of them) board through the cab since I was too busy to mess around with doors. Heading off in the other direction I realised I still had the defect and called up the Voices to tell them.

I got a different Voice this time who asked me to give him the entire history of the defect. He hadn’t any other ideas but did check the train ID and realised this was a problem we’d had last week. The train had been returned to the depot to be fixed and either was ignored or had somehow become defective again. And while the problem was fairly minor on a wet Wednesday evening where there were only three customers who I could warn, it would cause plenty of confusion and delays on a Thursday morning rush hour. So the Voice did the sensible thing and asked me to take it out of service, dump it in the yard to be fixed and bring a better train back out.

This would be all well and good if it were not for the manager waiting for me on the platform to ask me details about the problem train. This is common when a driver decides to take a train out of service due to a defect. In this situation I’d have thought that if the Voice already knew what the issue was then they could fill in the forms but I humoured him and provided the general story before heading home. Today, I was asked to write a report on the train. I’m now really puzzled by the reaction to this because I only took the train out of service because the Voice told me to. As I was given no time to actually write the report I declined and this gives me a bit of time to come up with a fun scheme. I just have to decide whether to Nuremberg on this or to write something very, very silly. Ideas are most welcome. *weg*

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Conversations

16 Tuesday Sep 2008

Posted by severedelays in Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on Conversations

Tags

memos, truth

Oh and since we are on the subject of kittehs I think I’ll just post this lolcat for no reason whatsoever.

cat
more animals

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Twitter Updates

  • RT @lottelydia: This is essentially a picture of sexual assault, and the fact that it has become our abiding image of VJ Day tells us a lot… 1 hour ago
  • RT @gray: This is somebody’s job. https://t.co/h4qgVR9Yhi 15 hours ago
  • RT @YorkshireWP: Also, full disclosure: We will be campaigning HARD with our bosses to let us name her Licky. https://t.co/YQ6YAJ9gNb 18 hours ago
  • RT @YorkshireWP: A few ground rules: 🐜 The name has to start with the letter L (we know, this is less fun - but it's a ZOO RULE and we hav… 18 hours ago
  • RT @YorkshireWP: *Takes a deep breath* Against all better judgement from upper management, we have been granted permission to run a naming… 18 hours ago
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