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I still have a deck of Virgin Trains playing cards somewhere in a pile of moving boxes that i'm yet to unpack. Not the only railway related deck in my possession, efforts to locate the other, much older set are ongoing and so far fruitless.

Wasn't there also a central exchange/railway only directory enquiries until about a decade ago? In my station days, I remember quite a lot of grumbling from the older staff about "the exchange" being closed. Apparently if you didn't have the number for a given station (critical in our case for...

Actual service level is what is taken into account. One location on my patch prior to its most recent regrade, was assessed as having 83 trains per day according to it's 2005 regrading. It now has over 200 trains a day in the normal timetable, in addition to being a primary diversionary route...

Service levels are only one aspect of what is considered when a re-grading request is made. Inter alia, changes in workload in general (line blockage requests, crossings of all kinds becoming busier/quieter etc), complexity of layout, volume of equipment and changes to methods of working all get...

Either there's a train there, or the signaller is reminding themselves that they need to specially watch the operation of track circuits for the next train on that line following a possession/line block affecting safety of the line. I've seen it be used for both.

The loop also gets used for the railhead treatment train during the leaf fall season, it was always later in the evening during my tenure.

Rufford has a station/box cat, now named Billy, although that's not what I was known to call him when he was making a nuisance of himself in the box or frightening the life out of me with his deft leaps through the always open window. He had a funny habit of waiting until I was writing in the...

As I used to jokingly say to Liverpool bound passengers when I was signalling at Rufford. "I'd get one hell of a shock if a Merseyrail train turned up here, and probably one hell of a grilling from the boss!" The idea of taking the buffers out and using battery units, with trains passing at...

I was quite amused around this time last year when I returned from an unusually long stint away from a box that had recently had a SATWS activation point installed, only to find that the resident Buddleia had already completely overran it. They hadn't even had chance to fully commission the...

Type in the word "on" in the command line, press enter.

Yeah it wasn't a popular move with my colleagues and I either. As I said in my post, I seemed to spend an awful lot of time reporting the shouty agency people. Outside of my generic "passengers are advised to remain behind the yellow line to allow passengers to alight before attempting to...

I've mentioned this a few times already. I was an announcer at Piccadilly when they brought in the "shouty people" from an agency, quite a few of whom were already regularly brought in to cover customer care/security shortages, after my colleagues and I raised safety concerns during the absolute...

I was supposed to be on nights on christmas eve as the last of 6 shifts but got swapped to day turn in the same location due to sickness. I was considering putting "FINA LLY- -A-- DAY- OFF-" followed by my initials across the berths at the location I was covering as an in joke about the sheer...

If you're on role clarity then you don't get the pay rise if you join the company after the cut off date.

It isn't rumour, it was completely shot. Those chunks that were missing were from concrete that had fell away rather than any strikes.

The story goes (since varified by a colleague who has transferred from the OLE department) that the engineers dug the holes for the piles for the OLE as normal then when going to drive them in, found that they simply went straight down through the hole and out of sight, to much confusion. Turns...

That phone only went off once in anger in my time there, much to my initial confusion. It was a regular passenger asking about a delayed train, he thought I wasn't in because the door and windows were shut and the lights were off as it was both much too bright and much too cold. Back on topic...

Its not uncommon in the boxes that I sign for there to be a 2 ish hour dead spot on a Sunday morning whilst waiting for engineering work to be done with, that's usually when the "big" clean gets done. Otherwise like other posters have said, I could be busy dealing with line blockages, incident...

There's accusations going around on my region that the signalling school are passing candidates that they know aren't up to scratch just to keep their pass rates up for their performance reviews. I've certainly been critical about the quality of recent trainees on my patch. This actually...

Yeah that one :D