Royal Train

[paul miller]

Originally Posted by Arthur Maunsell

i bet "SHE" was delighted to see you...did she wave?

If she had seen you she would probably have said, " And what do you do?"
That would have foxed you would'nt it.
Paul.

[hairyhandedfool]

Originally Posted by Dynamo

They did. The first time I drove the royal train, I was booked as the second man on a standby engine at Ferryhill near Durham. The train itself was to drive up to Sedgfield and stay there overnight. The job of our loco was to just stand at Ferryhill in case of breakdown. This was in the years before they put a loco on each end of the train.....

Yeah, sorry, I meant a specific loco as opposed to any spare loco that is up to it in a siding.

Originally Posted by Dynamo

....I must admit to being really annoyed with the people in charge of the train on the day. They were all terrified of the job, and also not very good at it to boot. One incident stands out a mile to me. I was driving facing road to the point where the train was to be stabled overnight in the pitch dark. No headlights in those days either. The inspector gave me clear instructions that when I saw a red handsignal, contarary to all my previous training, I was to stop with the red light alongside my cab window. As I approached the red light however, the inspector suddenly shouted "Stop here" when I was about twenty yards off it. I slowly brought the train to a halt, but he had a dig at me because I didn't bring the train to a halt quickly enough. I gave him a piece of my mind saying that I didn't want to bang the train about and he shouldn't have changed his instructions in the middle of what I was doing. F***ing idiot!

Sounds like the people on the job today