9/5/2007

Day Two,

Started at 9:00AM today, we planned to go to York IECC so went across the motorway to Leeds station, we first went to look at the Network Rail yard at whitehall, and watched some tampers move around. We went upto the offices and I spoke with the M.O.M on duty, Jamie. Jamie asked what we had been doing and asked if I was a spotter to which I said no! he seemed very nice and Anthony got me some videos to watch at home. Anthony then went to collect the LOM's car keys and we went off to York IECC, after a long wait at the gate outside the IECC, a signaller came out and let us in. My first impressions were that it was a big, office situation. As we went around and watched the signallers do their thing, I noticed it's alot more laid back than I expect, and everyone is good friends with eachother. I was seated with the supervisor for Leeds signalling, and he talked me through isolation and reminders, even showing me what it looked like on empty lines, he talked me through the telephone, and everything a signaller needs. We then moved on to 'the emergency' boards which are a track diagram of York/Leeds and train describers are magnets, this is only to be used when power has been lost.


We then left the IECC centre and went through to 'Control' the hub of all northern rail operations, I saw representatives from each TOC (GNER, Northern, TPExpress) and it was busting at the seams with activity, this is the location where incidents are reported and relevant staff sent out to address the situation, I was introduced to a controller who travelled 100 miles each day to get to work, simply because he loved his job! after a quick look round it was clear the people and managers were extremely busy with youths stealing copper wire from the trackside.

Again, we went across the motorway to a yard named Healey Mills, and is a EWS sign on point, which holds numerous old loco's and wagons, we went across to the yard, and looked at the old loco's and I got into the cab of a class 56 EWS and a class 37, also EWS. After seeing this we quickly photographed the two EWS 66's stood at the maintenance centre, then we visited Healey Mills PSB and had a look at what they did, I took pictures of the PSB and we quickly went to see the Healey Mills LOM and got some documents for Leeds.

Back over to Leeds we dropped the documents off, found out what we would be doing tomorrow, Anthony picked up some DVD's and also showed me the old Leeds signalling training centre, signallers would practise on a model railway!

After long queues on the motorway, I finally arrived home.