Firstly I’d like to say that the presentation to the Head of Signal Engineering went really well. It wasn’t quite as formal as I thought it would be and we even managed to have a bit of a laugh with him and his team. They seemed pretty impressed with the amount of effort and enthusiasm both teams put into the project and his team quizzed us afterwards with some relevant, and baffling, questions. The project, mainly the track works side, is up for an Industry Innovation Award so I might get my name in lights pretty soon – or maybe not! The project is pretty much done now, bar a few exhibitions and close outs, so I’ve been back to my graduate scheme placements recently.

The past three weeks I have been working out of the First ScotRail maintenance depot at Shields Junction in Glasgow. This placement had been arranged for December but I had to postpone it due to the time that the Modular S&C project took up. This placement is to allow us to see the other side of the fence and appreciate the issues that the rolling stock company faces with Network Rail – plus you get to play with a massive train set, every eight-year-old’s dream. So my three weeks was split between maintenance, out-based staff and the technical office to give a range of experience. Maintenance was the best – fixing stuff under, and on top of, trains and getting your hands really dirty – far better than being in the office.

Anyway, I’ll keep this one short and sweet as I am aware that recent blogs have been a bit ‘War and Peace’ but I’ll be back in touch soon! I’m in the office at the minute catching up on my professional development evidence and reports, and soon I’ll be working eight weeks of weekend nightshift as I go on my Testing & Commissioning placement. Bang – there goes my social life for a bit but its all swings and roundabouts…

Once in a while I treat myself to a Saturday night back home. I leave Glasgow right after my football match finishes in the afternoon and I’m home, fed and in the pub by 8pm ready for an evening of insanity with the old university lads. It’s an excellent way to unwind after a week in the office in Glasgow and a chance to celebrate, or drown my sorrows, depending on how the game has gone earlier in the day. That said, it’s not the best idea if you have to get up at 9.30am the next day to go to Swindon…

Yes, Swindon - the next stop for the Modular S&C project. I never even knew where Swindon was until I fired it into Google Maps the other week and let me tell you… it’s a mission to get to from Dundee. That bleary eyed Sunday was like a scene from one of my favourite ever films “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” and there was a hint of irony about this trip too as the East Coast Mainline through Fife, from Dundee to Edinburgh, was closed for the weekend for track works - something this project aims to alleviate. We got to our hotel around 7pm and my head was still thumping. Quick dinner and bed was definitely on the cards… I needed to be on my A-game the next morning!

So, as I told you in my previous entry, we were here to test the South Team’s location case, and vice-versa, only ours hadn’t been delivered yet due to a miscommunication between our project manager, the team organiser in York and a well known courier firm. No one had explained that the location was about 7 foot tall and weighed… well… a lot. So the little box van they sent to begin with just wouldn’t cut the mustard. But it got there around 10.30am on Monday morning and all was well.

I was given the role of Tester-In-Charge, which basically meant I was the boss. I had swotted up the week before and wrote up a testing plan of what needed to be done. We got started as soon as I’d given the health and safety brief and things were going smoothly, everyone taking a turn at being lead tester and also being the assistant. The South Team hadn’t gotten all of their parts delivered in time so there was some ingenious wiring going on to get both locations working. More extra wiring was needed when two members of our team, who shall remain nameless, accidentally blew up a transformer rectifier. I could have throttled them! It wasn’t all moans and groans though – we had a good laugh along the way, especially when one of the team claimed he could eat an entire tub of butter for a bet. There is a video of it on my phone if anyone wants to see it.

Despite the obvious set back we ploughed on and finished testing. It was great to be so hands on as we’d never get the opportunity to do it on the live railway. Especially me being the gaffer! The responsibility of the tester-in-charge is huge. It’s his or her job to ensure testing activities go to plan first time, every time, especially on the live railway. Time is money – and if something goes wrong in the testing stage you can pretty much guarantee there will be an overrun on the job. There have been some high profile overruns recently so it’s something we’re working hard to avoid… and no one likes rail replacement buses, let’s be honest.

The experience has made me think about my career path. I didn’t really think about going into testing before this project but I really enjoyed it and it’s something I am going to investigate further in the coming months, pulling in some favours and adding to my address book the people who matter. You need to be a certain type of person to be a tester. You need to be organised, clear of thought and be able to handle the pressure when the proverbials hit the fan. Not to mention dealing with Saturday night shifts in the middle of January or, even worse, Hogmanay. I have a testing placement still to do before I finish the scheme so that will also give me some valuable experience and will get my face known in the testing circles.

By the time I post my next update, I will have been to London to present the results of this project to the Head of Signal Engineering, Steve Hailes, at his team meeting. The boys from York are coming up to Glasgow to prepare so it’s good not to have to travel for once. Anyway, I’ve got a date with PowerPoint to get to so wish me luck…

Every job at some point in time kicks into overdrive and it’s a case of all hands on deck and ride out the storm. Fifteen months into my graduate career exactly that happened, and what was to follow over the next few months was a rollercoaster ride of deadlines, challenges and problems. Don’t worry I’ll explain…

In November, the signalling engineers from the 2006 intake of graduates were summoned to HQ with nothing more than a brief explanation of the reasoning for the meeting. Very cloak and dagger!

There, sat around the table, were some big players in the company, and they explained why we were plucked from our respective offices to the heady heights of London. What followed was a melting pot of emotions: confusion, nervousness, fear, excitement, confidence, and a little bit more fear. We had been charged with building a piece of kit that in the long run would be an integral part of our railway’s infrastructure!

Now this was the first time any graduate signalling team had been given such a large scale project to tackle. We were issued the job titles of ‘Guinea Pig’ and our success would determine whether further projects like this would be given to other graduates. So there was quite a bit of responsibility given to us, but it was a responsibility that we were all relishing.

One of the biggest issues in the industry at the moment is how we manage to deliver a 7-day railway, freeing up the railway from engineering works at the weekend. This new project was to build a location case that would help allow new points to be installed within 8 hours rather than an entire weekend, by cutting down on onsite testing as it takes considerably longer. As the whole concept is modular, the majority of testing can be done away from the railway without stopping trains, and then dropped in at the last minute. Good for the business, better for the public! So it’s a pretty big deal and a lot of the top management are keen to see this happen.

We were split into two teams, a north – south divide, each charged with building our own location! Now the design given to us that day in London was stared at and not entirely understood at first, but we soon assigned team roles and each of us returned to our offices and cracked on with our jobs. Most of the early stages were spent completing GRIP paperwork and parts procurement, but we reached the festive period on track and with everything done. We broke up for Christmas having done a good job and I headed back to Dundee to celebrate in the pub and live on turkey sandwiches for about a week.

The first couple of weeks of 2008 were quiet for me, finishing off odd ends for the project, organising travel plans and returning to some jobs that I had been working on previously. We had arranged dates for the end of January to start work in York on our latest project, so I had plenty of time to help the guys around the office.

Everyone was optimistic about the build stage ahead and I thought I had everything ready for it but it turned out I didn’t. How I forgot to pack until half an hour before I had to get the bus was beyond me? Laptop, boots, PPE jacket, scruffy jeans and toothbrush all chucked in the bag. Anything else packed was a bonus, although I was shocked to discover I did manage to remember my phone charger.

A few weeks on, we had finished building our location and it was quite a challenge, far beyond what I thought it would be. Not only overcoming problems with a design that had a few minor mistakes in it and learning new installation techniques, but also working in a small depot in York, with three other strong graduate personalities. One of them knew exactly how to wind me up and did so on numerous occasions, much to his pleasure. At times it was like trying to fit square blocks into triangular holes, quite literally, but eventually all the parts did fit with a bit of creative arrangement.

Next we need to test the location to make sure it works, in fact we are testing the southern team’s location, so that involves finding more errors, learning more new techniques and working in a different depot. So I don’t think that storm has cleared quite yet, better hold on tight…

So there was me, a young Graduate from Dundee, moved to the big city (Glasgow) for the first time. For those who failed their Geography A-level, Dundee is only about 80 miles north-east of Glasgow but it might as well be Mars, and I might as well have been Martian to some of the locals.

OK so it wasn’t quite as bad as I make it sound, quite the opposite in fact - there was no lynch mob chasing me through the streets or scientific research about my origins, and now 16 months on, and a good few nicknames later, I have been greatly accepted as one of their own, possibly due the slight ‘Weegie’ twang I’ve developed much to my annoyance.

Everyone I’ve met from the bosses in HQ to maintenance technicians and every grade in between have been truly welcoming and unbelievably helpful. From the start I felt like I was a part of a railway ‘family’ with plenty of people looking out for me and taking a genuine interest in my progress. And they really help you with that Geography….from checking out radio transmitters at the top of a mountain near Mallaig, to the rather random little village of Sanqhar, via Montrose, Ardrossan, Blair Athol and Holytown. Google them at your leisure…

Now just over a year after I chose to take Signalling as my discipline I’ve reached possibly the most hectic point of my training. To give you a quick run through of play so far…

I spent three months in each of Maintenance, Infrastructure Investment and Design, with around 10 weeks of training courses dotted in between. In that time I’ve learnt how to test points, that there is a lot of paperwork in projects and how to correlate design drawings, plus a whole lot of fun, and also random stuff that I probably shouldn’t have learnt, like where the best shops for lunch are. It’s been a good year but the busiest is yet to come.

And for those who want to know about that shop – it’s Delights in Arbroath…