Bombardier Engineer on Cross Country train

[Timster83]

I travelled on the 1300 Cross Country from Glasgow to Edinburgh ( final destination Plymouth) yesterday.

In the carriage, there was a Bombardier engineer with a laptop with lots of graphs on the screen.

I also noticed that the train itself was made by Bombardier.

Any ideas as to what he might have been up to?

 

[gordonthemoron]

Working?

 

[edwin_m]

There may be some on-board diagnostics which can be accessed by plugging a data lead into somewhere on the train. But if he was just sitting at a normal table then, as stated, he was probably just doing some work on the laptop!

 

[swt_passenger]

There are Bombardier technicians permanently employed to ride the trains in service, (FGW have the same with their HSTs). I've no idea how many of them cover the country but I often see the same chap between Reading and Southampton, he goes back and forth all day, often in the back cab. Could be he has a diagram that allows him to monitor specific trains as and when, but I'd expect his main purpose is to be in the area when a unit fails, he should never be more than an hour or so away...

 

[O L Leigh]

He'll be one of the travelling fitters. They are based at various locations and go around dealing with minor faults in-service. They are not required to travel up and down if all is well with the fleet, but perhaps this chap was either on his way to or from a job or actually working on the unit you were travelling on.

O L Leigh

 

[Yew]

I dont think anyone could pay me to spend my whole day on va voyager...

 

[ainsworth74]

I dont think anyone could pay me to spend my whole day on va voyager...

In which case I'm not sure you know the value of money

 

[WatcherZero]

You see a lot of engineers nowadays using the accelerometers built in to laptops to measure performance but he could simply have been working on something else.

 

[AlexS]

XC fleet maintenance is all contracted out to various people. Bombardier look after the 22x side, East Coast do the HSTs and London Midland the 170s. Overnight stabling and maintenance is also undertaken all over the country at locations including Laira, Craigentinny, Neville Hill, Cambridge, Leicester etc.