Can someone please tell me in detail what a day to day role is for a depot driver and not just shunting trains as that will not help me.
Depot Driving at a maintenance depot is, what I think, the pinnacle of British Train Driving. This opinion even comes from some of Depot Drivers at Newton Heath who have previously done mainline both passenger and freight in the 1990's, and driven everything from small bouncy Class 142s all the way up to Class 56's on 2000 ton freights.
Anyway answering the original question; day to day duties of a Maintenance Depot Driver are as follows:
- Preperation and Disposal of Units and Rolling stock. Preperation includes testing everything safety-related is working properly on the unit and a 360-degrees walkaround the outside checking everything under solebar level is intact and set correctly. You have to do this on units that are going to enter service. Not on units that are going into shed buildings for maintenance, or units that are being moved for storage pending further maintenance.
- Rectifying faults and fault diagnosis. This ranges from getting a unit moving that has things that are not set correctly preventing you from getting brake release/power/door closure in order to commence the shunt, to finding faults that prevent the unit from entering service as outlined in the rulebook TW5. These faults, if unable to rectify, require reporting to fitters. Then there is the more advanced form of fault finding. This is when the job requires you to move a complete demic unit, and there are many things wrong with it, and you have to shunt it from one shed road to another, it may require many, many things isolating. Isolating cocks, EBS, TIS, parking brakes, couplers, batteries, all these kind of things are isolated on a very, very regular basis to perform these types of moves. Often these units require assistance from another unit to get them to move. You'll see trains that are under-going repair in a state you've never seen them in before... the engines won't start, the air suspension is down, couplers are unaligned, they leak air very fast, driving cab has loads of stuff missing in it, and you get told you have to move it. Its then up to you to work out how to get the thing moving.
- Ground Shunting. This goes much further than just pulling points for your own train. You'll also be pulling points for other trains that are moving around the depot to improve "depot flow" (the term used to describe how fast trains are moving around the depot). You'll also be involved in manual couple/uncouple, putting split units back together manually (connecting the electrical jumper cables), despatching trains off the depot and dealing with units coming on the depot (often driven by mainline drivers and ferrymen), so you'll have to set the points and give the appropriate hand signals. Ground shunting is also required when propelling moves are taking place; or any other move where another depot driver is driving from other than the leading end. The shunter will have to walk in front of the unit and give out instructions to the driver using hand held radios. Other ground shunting tasks involve putting scotches underneath wheels of "swinger" units before uncoupling, manual couple/uncouple between incompatible rolling stock, DP duties, removing & taking possessions on the fuel rig, fuel rig unit positioning, and so on. All this is only scratching the surface, I could go on a lot longer about ground shunting...
- Safety Critical Communication via hand held radios. This is possibly the most difficult part of the role to learn. As there are often many movements happening at a maintenance depot at the same time (especially at night), you'll have to be constantly listening and communicating with other maintenance depot drivers to (A) Find out where all their moves are going to/from and (B) let everyone know your move. At busy times you'll have to have a map of the depot in your head with everyone's current move/position as other shunting movements will conflict with your own. As there many be up to 7 moves all conflicting with each other at one end of the depot, it becomes like a puzzle that you have to work out how to get around all the other moves, and theres many decisions you'll have to make, from deciding whether to drop down ontop of other units, where to stop and wait, what handpoints to set, whether to double shunt into another siding to get out of the way of another "higher priority" move, if there is another route you can take to get to the part of the depot you're heading to, you'll also have to consider the order that the units go down roads if a certain formation is required. The decisions are endless and you'll often have to be communicating and listening constantly while performing these moves.
This is just what some depots are like. Other, more modern depots, are a lot more simple. They just have ground position light signals that you have to follow instead!
You'll also recieve details of your shunt moves via hand held radio from the Operations Team Leader (the guy who gives out all the moves, a bit like a depot controller). You have to know what unit number to look for, what road it is currently on, where it needs moving to, whether it needs to couple or not, and any additional instructions; such as faults that you may need to know about, whether the toilet needs unblocking, whether you need to fuel it, whether any special positioning is required for a certain type of maintenance, etc.
Other safety crit comms include asking for permission to drop down beyond the depot exit signal to perform a shunt, shunting instructions while propelling / positioning units on the fuel rig / positioning units for maintenance / putting split units back together / reporting faults to fitters / asking permission off the DP to exit & enter depot buildings / listening for whether the posession or "block" has been taken on fuel roads or shed buildings. If a posession has been taken you simply cannot move the unit as fitters/fuellers etc are working on it and it could kill someone if you moved it. This is where you need to listen for whether its been given back.
Theres countless other things that safety-crit comms are essential for, too many to name.
- Driving the units around the depot, in accordance to the depot protection agreements & rulebook, and in an environmentally friendly manner. No I'm not going to write in depth about all the rules and regs relating to the driving or the post would go on forever. You get about 10 weeks on this in your training.
All I will say is that while driving a train at 5mph does not require a great deal of judgement or skill; putting a Class 14X back together again while driving from other than the leading end and having to position it to the centimeter for the "coffins" (then later the rigid bar) to be put together again requires an immense amount of judgement & skill which takes many years to even get quite good at it. As does propelling a "swinger" unit (a unit with brakes isolated) to within less than an inch of a vehicle on jacks (something which is required when you're trying to fit a large unit into the shed when theres only just enough space for it!) this is just an example of how hard, skilled and responsible some of the depotdriving can be. Not only are you driving from other than the leading end, on a road heavily contaminated with oil, but if you actually hit the unit on the jacks, the results could be devestating, I don't think I need to tell you what could happen in terms of potential damage to equipment or even people possibly injured/killed if you get it horribly wrong.
Also before moving ANY unit from a depot building (whether it needs to be prepped or not) you have to perform a 360 walkaround. There often is countless unsafe things you can and often do find, that could make moving that unit without a prior walkaround a disaster.
Other more mundane driving includes driving through the wash road (max speed 2mph), driving up & down the yard/in and out of shed buildings, positioning units for maintenance, moving demic units around, positioning units in the underfloor cleaning shed (exact positioning is required), positioning units for A & B exams (exact positioning required again).
Some of the most fun movements you'll get involved in is driving half units, now apart from isolating certain safety equipment before being able to move off, these moves are simple when going forwards, but going backwards you'll need a ground shunter watching you as you'll obviously be driving from the rear for obvious reasons.
- Fuelling, CET tanking, toilet water refilling, engine oil and coolant. This has been discussed in depth before. these are hard, heavy dirty jobs. On paper fuelling/tanking sounds like unskilled manual labouring but in fact there is a lot of skill involved and this part of the job can take years to master. To be able to fuel trains as fast as possible and also stay clean at the same time is a skill in itself. In brief, Fuelling normally involves lifting a large screw-on coupler (attatched to a thick pipe) and screwing onto a flight valve on a units fuel tank, but thats just scratching the surface... You'll need to log fuel intake for every vehicle, recognise faults on the fuel rig and rectify them (if it's old poorly maintained equipment you'll be problem-solving on a constant basis), keep the fuel rig tidy during use, grit the fuel rig during freezing whether, take posessions/remove posessions, draw units down for positioning, log spillage, wash spillage down the drain, perform tanking duties simultanously, multitasking. Correct use of PPE is also important.
That is just about scratching the surface, on what a Maintenance Depot Driving job involves on a typical day at the Depots I work at. This post ended up longer than I expected, but it is my favourite topic. Yes, the role at other Depots and TOC's will differ, but can only give the point of view of where I have worked.
Do you have any questions about anything specific?
Drumroll please.............................................
