Sorry Beveridges but I have to pick up on a few of these points...!
Take it from me, on the freight side my average day at work is never predictable! Diagrams, as good as they are are pretty much a guide to what should happen and are often wrong or have to be changed at the last minute to suit our customer's requirements and things do go wrong, usually on a daily basis, some minor but some needing much more on the spot initiative when you're train is blocking a busy mainline in the rush hour. We do spend a lot of time on our own in the cab but the nature of our work is that we still do a lot of old fashioned 'railway work' with the amount of shunting we do, day in, day out.
I rarely become bored when I'm actually driving, for me one of the joys is seeing the landscape from a different viewpoint, something which a lot of folk outside our little railway bubble never get the chance to appreciate.
With the vast majority of our diagrams at Rugby there's plenty of opportunity to have a brew somewhere or stretch our legs, especially on the night turns when we despatch our stone trains from Bardon Hill, Stud Farm, Mantle Lane etc. The variation in shift patterns / start / stop times etc isn't for everyone I'll grant you, but it certainly makes the job interesting, it's never dull on our particular patch, and the early vs late turn ratio is more or less even as by the 'out and back' nature of our work the loaded jobs go out one night and come back the next day as empties.
Having said all that I can fully understand how being based at a depot at one end of a route could become very tedious but I count myself lucky to be based at a depot which is close to the centre of a railway hub, meaning my route card is quite extensive, basically (at the moment at least!) it covers WCML Willesden - Crewe via B'ham, Bescot, Wolves and the Trent Valley to Crewe, B'ham to Stourbridge, Worcester and Gloucester, B'ham to banbury, Oxford and Didcot plus Aynho to Old Oak on the Chiltern (including the Greenford Triangle / West Ealing / Acton lines), B'ham to Leicester and the MML from Leicester to Cricklewood, plus the connecting lines to Neasden and Acton, not forgetting the Bletchley to Bedford line. A few of our lads sign all of this plus Toton, Sheet Stores, Stenson Jcn etc, Peterborough and Whitemoor as well.
I know you love your depot job but frankly I'd be bored stiff doing that...! Each to their own and all that
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