Oh yeah I was well familiar with "Boil In The Bags" when I was working out of London Bridge and I could tell a number of tales of their exploits none of which, curiously, made it to the newspapers since they were normally given the option to resign.Micky wrote:It is and it isn't PinzaC55, considering in British Rail days of the 1970s ALL driver's started as secondmen and had to at the very least 2 years as a secondman before they could go up for driving and that was the exception most secondmen would do 5 or 6 as a secondman before they went up for driving and even then after passing there rules & regs and going on a traction training course at Ilford to learn various traction units such as class 08 diesel shunters and class 31s they would only be a 'passed secondman' and would probably only get light engine movements, yard shunting and maybe ECS diagrams for there first year out as a driver until they were promoted into the lower driver's links.PinzaC55 wrote:This bit
"The driver involved was experienced, having worked for a freight train
operator for six years before joining Grand Central Railway. Although it had not
been responsible for his original training, Grand Central Railway had assessed
the driver’s competence in semaphore signalling, but had not identified that he
did not fully understand the meaning of the configuration that he encountered on
2 December 2009."
is particularly amazing in that a driver with 6 years previous experience didn't understand a common signal configuration.
Nowadays they take people 'off the street' (same in the signalling grade) put them through driving course and after a certain number of months they are out driving!. Sometimes the old ways of doing it was better me thinks.
On the flip side at Kings Cross the secondmen essentially had nothing to do most of the time. I suppose there should have been a happy medium between the two. As recently as 2004 I was talking to a young driver doing his route learning via Harrogate and I mentioned something about Key Token working and, judging by his blank look, he had no idea what I was on about.
