• Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!

Eastleigh to the rescue

Status
Not open for further replies.

TheSlash

Established Member
Joined
7 Jun 2005
Messages
2,339
Location
Marwell Zoo
Just a little story for all the pway guys
Went in at booked 23:00 last night ready for a 00:30 block at Sholing for breather adjustment and fishplate greasing
About 23:15 the phone went "Can you lot goto Salisbury and meet Mr so and so, theres an emergency broken rail and they can't cover it, be there for 00:00"
So after quickly off loading the fish plate greasing gear and loading up stuff for a broken rail, we headed off to Salisbury, arriving bang on 00:00
We didn't have the gate code, so we had to sit outside the yard for 5 minutes til someone let us in. This guy explained that we were waiting for contract welders to turn up, then we'd all follow him to the site.
So about 00:45 we all headed off to site, 6 guys from Eastleigh, 2 from Salisbury. About 30 minutes later we arrived at the site, somewhere west of Warminster!
Eastleigh then unloaded the Salisbury flat bed while Salisbury did nothing. Once the trolley was loaded up, Salisbury pushed it down to the site while Eastleigh unloaded the rail horses and went in the opposite direction {we went on at a level crossing}
Eastleigh then dogged the new 60ft rail into the 4ft and attached it to the rail horses before pushing it down to the site.
Once on site, Salisbury had cut the defect rail out, but let Eastleigh lift it out and drop the new one in while they stood around talking among themselves {they also had 2 TO's theres}
Eastleigh then unloaded the stressing kit and set it up because none of the Salisbury lot knew how apparently.
Once the static weld had been done, Eastleigh then had to stress the rail ready for the stress weld while Salisbury disappeared off in their flatbed for 2 hours. By the time the stress weld was dropped, it was about 04:00.
As soon as possible, Eastleigh took the stressing kit off, loaded it onto the trolley along with other tools and pushed it back to crossing to wait for the Salisbury flatbed.
By now we were totally pis$ed off with Salisbury, so we left the stuff just clear of the crossing and went back to our van. When Salisbury came back, they had the nerve to come and ask us to help them load up. Help them in their terms meant do it all while they just put the generator in the back of the van.
By now several of Eastleigh had been dropping hints to Salisbury about their performance which hadn't been acknowledged by Salisbury. So one of my mates finally lost it after we finished loading up "I'd like to of said it's been a pleasure working with you but i don't tell lies, especially 2 in the same sentence" :lol: :lol: :lol:
We finally got back to Eastleigh at 05:30 for a 06:00 finish {we're normally gone by 04:30 on nights}
So if you get called to help Salisbury, be prepared. If they get called to help you, when they turn up, take a back seat and let them do it
Turns out that they weren't short staffed, they just didn't want to cancel another maintenance possession that they already had planned {this was an emergency, bloody great big crack in the rail!}
 
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R

RailUK Forums

Status
Not open for further replies.

Top