Playing trains

Very kind of most readers not to point out the lack of activity here in a while! Truth is, the workload has been a bit overwhelming, among the reasons being (in no particular order)...

1) Financial year end
2) Winning new contracts (of which more anon)
3) Looking after Taz's cat

Tommy (Taz's cat) - or Thomas the Tank Engine to give him his full name (honestly, would you let a three year old name your pet? Oh ok, you would...) - was great company for a week, but tore my arms and hands to shreds. I now discover it is quite a normal feature of young cats that they will play with you with claws fully extended. Tommy will nuzzle up to you, let you stroke him for ages and then - completely without warning - take a swipe at you, often drawing blood, or - if he is feeling particulary playful, try to bite your hand off. Then, when you retreat feeling that you have perhaps upset him in some way, will come running after you looking for more attention. But I love him to bits and will gladly have him again when the time comes.

One other highlight of the last week has been our debut appearances on rail replacement for two separate train companies.

Much to our surprise, the Go-Ahead Group actually gave us a job on the Three Bridges to Brighton line the Sunday before last. This involved one double decker out all day, with two shifts - one early, one late. Jamie did the early, I did the late. Three Bridges is in Crawley, in case you didn't know, so it wasn't exactly local, but I've done the Brighton Main Line before in Solent Blue Line days and it's always fun. Needless to say it's a very busy line, and at times they were firing off two fully loaded double deckers at roughly ten minute intervals. It makes quite a sight, driving down the A23 seeing this procession of deckers from all over the south east trundling past.

We used F303 MYJ, looking resplendent with its new interior, and including the long dead journeys to and from Eastleigh at the start and end of the day, covered 464 miles in one day. It performed faultlessly, although 10 mph up Handcross Hill was a bit disconcerting! Easily made it back and more on the flat bits though!

I got back to Eastleigh at 0130 on the Monday morning and promptly drove in to the petrol station. The attendant was one of the ones who's regularly there when we fuel up in the evening. He didn't bat an eyelid when I presented myself at this time, nor when I reappeared ten minutes later with V384, which had been used on service 8!

On Wednesday last week, we got an emergency callout from South West Trains. Emergency, as in they wanted the buses on Thursday night. So at least we had some time to think about it. They wanted two buses - one each to do 0040 and 0140 Southampton to Bournemouth in the early hours of Friday morning. With me, Taz and Jamie all available and up for it, I decided to proceed on the basis that we would take three down, as I had a hunch that one bus each trip didn't seem like a lot for the numbers likely to arrive on the connecting trains.

So after a tortuous exercise to give everyone enough rest before and/or after to keep them legal, we were all set to go on Thursday night. At 2215 the phone rang - South West Trains - any chance of two more buses??? Well, I thought about it theatrically for a moment, looked at Taz, Jamie, looked myself up and down and announced that we could probably muster a third. A fourth was stretching it a bit too much though, and in the end they got Brijan Tours to provide the fourth vehicle. The guy at the other end of the phone took a deep breath and said, would one of us be able to go as far as Weymouth if required on the 0140? I took a deep breath and said yes, knowing that would be my job as I know where all the stations are!

Taz and I then wandered off to the office for a bit and when we got back to the compound at 2345, Jamie had got the three working DAFs - V7, V11 and V12 - up and running, all lit up with "rail replacement" on the destination. They looked absolutely stunning! At that moment I really wanted my camera to have a better phone! You'll have to take my word for it.

We all set off in convey into Southampton, getting to the station at 0015. By 0020, the first bus was full! So with the approval of the station staff we despatched Jamie, and made Taz the only bus for the 0040 - worried now about how he'd cope with the numbers. Luckily we had nothing to worry about - they'd cancelled the connecting train, so he left on time with three passengers!

That left me to do the 0140, and in due course Mr Brijan Tours himself - Brian Botley - appared with a coach called "Alfie" and we spent a pleasant hour or so chatting until departure time.

Anyway, despite being primed to go to Weymouth (a bit odd, since there wouldn't normally be any trains going anywhere near Weymouth at that time), Brian took the Bournemouth and Poole passengers and left me to go all the way to.... Brockenhurst and New Milton!

Thoroughly enjoyed the job though, and got back to the yard at around 0330, hoping for more soon!