Search results

Just Derby and Notts, not the others. Quite unusual at both locations in that they drive outside the confines of the depot too, shunting around the station and ferrying units to/from the depot, and thus need full rules training and an EU train driving licence – the only other example that I'm...

It's not so much that the hard work's done at the start of the shift - it's more that whole shifts are generally earlier than they are at Derby! Start earlier, finish earlier. Most will have gone home by 2 or 3 in the morning, even earlier on a good night, leaving just the two night drivers to...

Sorry for the slow reply. I've had a world of trouble trying to reply to this on mobile! Nottingham's fundamentally very different to Derby, in that Eastcroft is a relatively small maintenance depot with not much siding capacity, so most units stable overnight on the station instead of being...

Nottingham's current shed link. Very different pattern to Derby's, for various reasons. Same principles with spares (SP) though. 

Yup. Three instances in thirty weeks, if I'm not mistaken, to protect the R/D pattern and make swaps much easier. I've not heard a single complaint about it!

What @iphone76 said, mostly (ta!). Just to clear up the last couple of details - times shown on 'no duty' days are datum times used for allocation of rest day work, and S/B actually stands for safety brief. The 'Sundays exclusive' print of the same link adds pink days and pink spare days!

An example... Preserves the fixed three-week RD cycle, including the long weekends, but at the cost of ending up with a small number of isolated rest days.

Another vote for Inkscape - brilliant for copying and pasting once you've got the basic components established. The only downside (if I'm not mistaken?) is that you can only work on one page at a time, so if I want to make a booklet then I have to export each page as individual images than drop...

EMR Driver: YES (for all new starters including qualified drivers, plus existing mainline drivers who have chosen to opt-in)

Nottingham has three non-progressive links (although it's possible that they might soon be split to give a small feeder link for each, to give an element of progression) plus one 'spare' link. The three main links each cover all core local routes plus a couple of longer routes each. Traction, at...

2.5 hours spare movement, for the ex-Central depots at least.

Quite a few years ago now, but I did the TCB conversion even though I was going to a pure AB box. It meant that I didn't have to go back to school when I went for a job on the relief and thus had to learn the fringe boxes at either end of the patch. It'd have put me in a better position if I'd...

156s have no vigilance, but you still get the five seconds or so to change feet or whatever else you want to do - you just don’t get any audible indication that you’ve taken your foot off it until it dumps the brake. 170s are pretty good, with a holdover button that gives you quite a bit of...

2h30 movement from spare Generally folk work to a base roster, which averages out at no more than 35hrs/wk (or whatever the contracted hours are) over the number of weeks in the roster. Some weeks will be longer, some weeks will be shorter. You’ll get overtime on an hourly rate for anything...

It's probably worth mentioning that not every depot has a progressive link structure like that. Many places (an increasing number?) have a non-progressive structure where there's differences between links in terms of route knowledge, but the 'rubbish work' is shared out roughly equally between...

I use a combination of cycle/train to get to work when shifts allow, albeit only just over a couple of miles on the bike. I usually feel much better for a bit of exercise before work. I'm not sure that I'd want to cycle the full distance to work for early starts though, if only because it'd mean...

The only way that seniority really comes into it is where a depot has ‘progressive’ links - a link, in broad terms, being a base roster followed by one group of drivers. Larger depots will usually have a number of different links, often with some differences in the routes covered by each link...

No agreement that I'm aware of. It's currently two in three Saturdays and two in six Sundays at Notts, with a long weekend off every third weekend, but only time will tell whether there'll be much more Sunday work to be fitted into the links.

Nottingham drivers with Sundays inside (it was optional for existing drivers) get an extra week of annual leave and the higher pay. It’s still not quite harmonised across all Ts&Cs but it’s not far off.

I guess the risk is that you start the dispatch process, get into the routine and focus on the train safety check, then forget all about the signal?