The other day I had a student who is a signaller in the south Wales area, so we had some mutual acquaintances, names from the past were spoken that I’d not heard for ten years at least. I think we spent as much time talking railway signalling as much as we did bikes.
Over lunch I shared some of the stuff we did in the good old days, one of which involved cautioning trains using local landmarks such as pubs. We wouldn’t dream of doing that these days, but back in late BR/early Railtrack days, it was, er, done. Ahem. So I mentioned a pub name – the Chocolate Poodle. It’s a pub in the Westbury signalling area and is a landmark where the Salisbury box takes over. At which point he said that he wondered where that came from as it made him laugh when it was mentioned in safety briefings and he had no idea of the context.
That was one of mine. About twenty years ago – around 2001/02 – I was sitting in a room with a colleague and a contractor discussing communications misunderstandings on the railway as we were looking at training packages to improve it. As the outside contractor had little understanding of the industry, the two of us started rattling off slang terms we used at various times in our career to give her some idea of what she was dealing with: boards, pegs, back boards and so on – and as the Westbury signallers had used the Chocolate Poodle, I slung that in as well. It was like a foreign language to her, so she captured some of this stuff and it found its way into communications training material that was used not only for signallers, but was also incorporated into training material for track workers.
I left Network Rail nearly twenty years ago. Today, I heard an echo of something I helped create. I may have gone, but even after all this time, a little of what I did still remains. For the first time in years, I found myself homesick for my railway days, but perhaps most importantly, it was a reminder that wherever we go, we leave little ripples. I had an effect on the rail industry that is still felt to this day. The then CEO, Ian Coucher, didn’t want people like me in Network Rail because I wasn’t a ‘yes’ man. Because I dared to challenge ideas that I felt were misguided. This didn’t fit with Network Rail behaviours, so on the night of the long knives in November 2003, I was one of those to go, along with the rest of the awkward squad. This week, I smiled to myself. He may have got rid of me, but part of me remains twenty years later. I metaphorically lifted two fingers in Coucher’s direction.
“Didn’t want people like me in Network Rail because I wasn’t a ‘yes’ man. Because I dared to challenge ideas that I felt were misguided”
Yep, me too (but in a different organisation)…
Oh. I had a not dissimilar experience. I applied for a job for which I was well qualified. The first interview went well. But I got a ‘dear John’ letter. Between the lines I gathered I might not have been a team player. No problem, I got a better job as a consultant. And ended up consulting for the company that didn’t want me, to sort out why the department I would have been in charge of was failing. I charged the company ten times the salary offered for the job.
I was back at Network Rail as a consultant within a few weeks doing training and assessment at significantly more cost to them than I had been as an employee.
When I retired I left written instructions for quite a few jobs that I had been doing and that nobody else did. Some of it modifications to equipment for more specialised applications. Some of it just simple stuff like the montly test of the fire alarm call points and emergency lights. I suspect that my little instruction leaflets will still be in use many years from now.
Reminds me of the time I spent the last few weeks of my working time documenting items on my laptop. I worked at a remote secure site and handed in the laptop on my last day to a manager who was sent to pick it up.
I got a call the next week asking about the documentation. After a few days it transpired that the guy who had picked it up had passed it to a new employee and it was wiped so he could use it. Backups were on a MoD server and they wouldn’t let them access them and as I had left I couldn’t get back in, not that I wanted to travel to London to access them anyway.
I got a few calls after than and the responses depending on who I was speaking to. That was fun.
Ha! Longrider has created The ghost in the machine.
“‘Ere I am J.H.”
They probably want you back there, so they sent him.
No. When they had the mass redundancy in 2003, everyone who went was put on a ‘do not employ’ blacklist. We were wrongthinkers.
If you want back in, try again. They may have had a rethink, you never know.
Nah. Time has moved on. I’m winding down to retirement now.