Failures, faults and engineering alterations!

Well folks what a week it's been!
This week saw me on lates and working Monday through to Thursday evenings.

All of my jobs this week had been 'STP'd'. This term means that the job in its original form has been changed and the diagram of work contains some short term change. This can be a unit change, timetable amendment, early finish due to cancellation of a booked job or a route diversion due to engineering works.

This weeks work contained all of the above and more!

Monday first of all saw a major points failure at Ardwick causing a 'traffic queue' of trains getting into and out of Piccadilly due to the signallers only having selected routes into and out of the station. Many cancellations and delays ensued as this happened in the height of the evening peak. We looked like headless chickens on the ground as the signallers were handling things up in the box and trains were all over the place, we really did have to wing it! This sounds particularly poor
but when the workload is flat out you just have to play it by ear. My service left 23 minutes late and ran through one of the outer roads at Longsight depot to avoid the affected routes. This was a nice change although had us another few minutes of delay due to the low speed limit on the depot.

We arrived at Crewe 30 mins late but had been booked 46 mins stand down time in the sidings so we stayed in the platform and went back to Manchester right time.
Following that it was a trip up to Chester which saw me on changed traction (150/2 instead of a 142 :-( )
This was the last train of the night and would be stabled overnight at Chester and we got a taxi back! Normally I'd have worked back to Piccadilly so a nice change and a early finish as the taxi driver didn't take his time!!

Tuesday saw more alterations still with the last two services to Chester cancelled so a very early finish having worked only two services.

Wednesday was a carbon copy of Monday but all ran smoothly and allowed me a nice americano and cookie at Crewe!!!

Thursday saw me working one of the worst 'late' jobs we have. The job consists of a trip to Crewe then Hadfield then a further 2 round trips to Crewe.
Pretty uneventful for me really. However a vacated birds nest at Newton for Hyde knocked out the power on the Hadfield line for nearly 2 hours as it filled with water and shorted the lines. But 'luckily' for me it had been returned to service before my trip up there.
This was my 4th STP'd job of the week again due to engineering works and so my last trip back from Crewe was via the Styal line express from Wilmslow as the route via Stockport was blocked.
However we left Crewe 3 down due to a late running Arriva service then approaching Chelford we got cautioned down only to be taken across 'wrong road'. All became clear a minute or so after crossing over as we 'overtook' a Failed Freightliner class 70 and its full rake of waggons before being crossed back over to the right line just before Chelford station.

Still finished a full 20 minutes in my favour and the end to a pleasantly different week!

Enjoy the sunny weekend folks

The Guard