Heard some news yesterday

Whilst i was travelling home yesterday, I was chatting with a couple of staff about the Picc line.

Apparently the service on the Picc will resume on Thursday 4th.

So hopefully some good news for all the Picc line passengers.

Christ i'm bored

I came back to work today, fully expecting to have to work for a living.

And bingo there's no bloody train service. And no a security alert was not the reason, it's engineering works all weekend.

So I have practically NOTHING to do. The Station Master is on a different shift or sick and I have noone to abuse.

Just looking forward to going home and relaxing before another boring shift tommorrow.

Start smiling the 3 point 1 way

A lovely young blogger by the name of Version 3 point 1 is starting a smile campaign.

Check out her blog for how to join in her smile campaign.

What a night.

I have only now arrived home after getting some distressing news about my son.

I was chatting on msn to my eldest, when she told me that my son had been attacked by there family dog.
I live over 120 miles away from my kids, and as you can image I was pretty shocked at the news.
I rang my Ex who was in hyserics and after calming her down, told her to call an ambulance as she couldn't drive in the condition she was in, and for once she actually listened.

I than left home to drive the 120 miles to southend to see my son.

I arrived at the hospital to find my son with 9 stitches in his nose, the right part of his lip glued together and more stitches in the left hand side. 2 of his teeth had to be pulled out as they had been damaged. The only thing that put a smile on my face was my son seeing me and running into my arms.

I took my son home to his house in southend, (my ex's fella had taken the dog to be destroyed) and spent some quality time with my son and with my eldest girl.

I left there house to come home and finally reached home at 12:10 absolutely shattered, but pleased to see my son is ok.

Rest Day

And my god i've rested today.

I went to bed last night to get a good sleep, next thing i know it's 9.30am.

So I basically sat around resting in a pair of shorts. Watching TV, DVD's and just generally dosing about the house.

Well it's just gone 6pm and thanks to my the birthday card from sister, I'm about to order a takeaway.

A mixed kebab and some taramasalata, mmmm my mouth is watering already.

Well it's back to earlies tomorrow so i'll be getting up at 04:30.

As Robin Williams said in Good Morning Vietnam, what does the 0 stand, it stands for 0 my god it's early.

Not Sure If This Is Real

A friend of mine sent me this picture of a noticeboard alledgedly taken at Notting Hill Gate.

I've been away

Well after a 20 hour shift i had a nice Saturday, I went out for a lovely meal with the Girlfriend and finally got back to my own pad today.

I had such a quiet shift on Sunday that i was fighting boredom.

Life seemed to pass on by.

On a bit of a better note. The H&C resumed during the peaks on Monday.

Hopefully normal service will resume to all destinations shortly.

How sad am I

After finishing my shift I had a bit of a problem.

How was i going to stay awake on the train journey home.

I'd finished reading my book during the night, I know i'll by the new Harry Potter book.

And yes I bought it for the train journey home.

Another day in paradise.

I'm finally home after a 20 hour shift.

I arrived in yesterday at 11 am, only to get a call from the admin assistant asking me if i'd do a night shift at the Station Masters station.

Si i said ok i'll go home now and come back in later.

No don't worry about going home you can work through if you want and we will give you a day off on saturday.

Ok then i said not remembering that we have to have 12 hours rest between duties.

Silly me.

Me and my shadow

Well after work i thought i deserved a beer.

So me and The Station Master hit the pub on the way home and after a few beers, ok a good few beers, we realised we were in charge today with all the problems hitting us today.

Are we worried, are we scared.

No fucking way. I'm back to work tomorrow and looking forward to it.

My colleague The Station Master has the weekend off.

Lucky bastard.

Love-life update

My colleaugue the station master wants me to give it a rest about his love life.

BOLLOX i say go for it, he is a lovely fella who needs some love in his life.

He is generally a gentleman who can be a bit pissy (but that's life).

Please contact him at stationlogbook@gmail.com

Contact him now as he is availiable.

Security alerts.

Well I finally had some thing to do today.

I was involved in the security alerts today and to tell you the truth I was glad I was working.

It was some way of a relief to deal with the situation today and to deal with customers in a professional manner that we are basically trained to do.

I know I was fed up with the last incident on the 7th but to tell you the truth I'm happy that I could help today.

Forget about security alerts some bugger has nicked my bacon butties

Well i arrived at work this morning to promtly upset my colleague the Station Master, he went out to buy some some bacon sandwiches and brought them back, only for me to eat his sarnies too.

He was so upset as i have brown sauce in mine and he doesn't.

Back to work

I had a lovely weekend off 5 days in total. 4 days as rest days and 1 as annual leave.

So i was abit surprised yesterday when one of my fellow colleagues rang me to ask where i was, and why i wasn't at work.

Well i'm on leave i says.

Really no one new.

Why are you asking I said

Because one of the managers are looking for me.

Now this is great thinks me.

My manager is trying to find me and i'm on leave.

It was one of my managers (and considering they work in the same room) who gave me leave.

Great communication on this job.

Good shift today

I had a fairly quiet shift today.

Until 17 50 everything was running smoothly and then the service fell down.

My cleaner opened the office door and appeared in a puff of smoke. Magic i thought, but i was wrong.

The last eastbound train had left a plume of smoke all along my platform (and it shows what hardy buggers passengers are, they didn't bat an eyelid).

I rang the line controller and was told that the last car was smoking and informed him about the smoke on my platform, the line controller told me the train would be met at the next station.

However the train trundled off into the distance and because of the next stations lay out it wasn't met in time.

So the train head off again and is met at the next stop and is met by the Fire Brigade.

So now we are shut down and no trains are running.

After what must have been 20 minutes the service resumed with the smoking train out of service.

I watched the train moving off on trackernet, it took over 10 minutes for the train to move one stop. And stop it did. We're suspended again.

Finally we are on the move and an hour of my shift has flown by.

I forgot to mention

We got our doughnuts today.

Plus a whole load of drinks (4 crates of coke) and 2 boxes of multiple goodies like apples, biscuits, rice krispies snacks, melons, bananas, grapes and loads of other fruit.

Had an interesting email today

A lovely young friend of mine sent me an email today.

Subject: In case of emergency campaign.

Following the disaster in London . . .

East Anglian Ambulance Service have launched a national "In case of Emergency ( ICE ) " campaign with the support of Falklands war hero Simon Weston.

The idea is that you store the word " I C E " in your mobile phone address book, and against it enter the number of the person you would want to be contacted "In Case of Emergency".

In an emergency situation ambulance and hospital staff will then be able to quickly find out who your next of kin are and be able to contact them.

It's so simple that everyone can do it. Please do.

It really could save your life, or put a loved one's mind at rest.


Thanks for this Jo

I just got home

And i've had a quiet day. Nothing happened. no managers upset me, no passengers upset me. no nothing happened.

My colleague The Station Master met a fellow blogger today and apparently I only missed her by 10 minutes.

He's also done really well on quitting smoking considering the pass 4 days we have just had.

He told me he has £25 in the bank already. I asked him can i borrow £20 :)

He told me no as he was going to by porn. Damn we need to find this fellow a girlfriend.

A normal service has resumed

Right it's time i got myself back to normality, so here goes.

My friend and colleague The Station Master is still single and looking for LOVE.

If there are any young ladies out there aged 25 to 32 look him up and send him an email.

He's a smashing bloke once you get to know him, he is an honest sort of a guy, who will worship the ground you walk on and treat you like the special person that you are.

He has his own place (rented) in North London somewhere, and likes eating out, pubs and clubs, theatre, films and quiet nights in. He is well educated, but at the same time like to have a laugh.

So send him an email with a picture (optional) to: stationlogbook@gmail.com

Please excuse my rants of last night.

As you can see I was a bit miffed at management yesterday, and after a good night sleep (ok 3 hours).

I'm up and ready to go.

What am i talking about, where's that bed again.

Lost Property

I was travelling home with a manager tonight and as per usual we talked about how our days went.

We came up for an idea for Tony and Ken..

How about if a passenger leaves there property on the station and it closes the station for any period of time. Which you must admit is a major problem at the moment.

The person who owns the property goes to court and if found guilty given either a £1000 fine or a 3 month term inside. Or even better made to work as one of the ISS cleaners. (in house joke that).

What do you think.

The Journey Home

As i was travelling home tonight I was chatting with a manager from another group, We got on to the subject of the goodie bags, now here's the interesting thing which will have my colleague The Station Master spitting too.

Apparently it wasn't just drinks delivered to the main group station, but Doughnuts, Custard Creams, and other stuff too.

So as I and The Station Manager work at the minnow stations, we never got a sniff except for an offer of cans of drink for our staff.

But something else happened to make me laugh.

As some of you might know I live 70 odd miles from London and commute using national rail.
Well on the train home tonight there were 3 little boys (no not really young about 18) on the train acting the arse.

We pulled into the terminus station and as we were walking out of the station I heard these kids asking a member of staff what time the next train south was.

You missed it says the member of staff.

Oh deep joy because these pratts now have a 25 mile walk home.

Space Cadets and the Brucey Bonus

Well I was standing on the gateline around 8pm when up wanders a lovely lady and asks Why have you been closed for the past 2 days.

I'm now left wondering HELP!!!

Now for the bonus, I happened to be on the platform this eaving around 10pm, when 2 young french woman obviously under the influence of alcohol were messing about on the platform. I was keeping an eye on the pair when the boarded a train.

As the train passed me BINGO there were the 2 french woman flashing the breasts at me.

Now that has made me feel a hell of a lot better then how i've been feeling of late.

Fuckwits and how to spot them

The managers on my group and the night turn station supervisor.

Firstly, the late turn Duty Station Manager pissed me off today just by ringing me.

A message was broadcast at work today that as an appreciation for all the hard work, Goodie bags would be sent to each station.

Around 8 pm I received a phone call from my manager. What would you like to drink and what would you colleagues like.

So I told him what I wanted and what my colleagues wanted.

Now this is what pissed me off after all the hard work the staff have done ( me not included for Thursday) the management in there infinite wisdom decide 2 days after the most intense couple of days to send us some drinks.

Out of disgust, I accepted the drink, took the can into the messroom and emptied it down the sink.

My colleague The Station Cleaner suggested sending back the empty can with a post it note saying ... THANKS.

Now It's coming up to the end of my shift which finishes at 23 00, there's an unwritten rule concerning take offs, basically we take each other off 30 minutes before the end of our shift.
However my night turn supervisor is being a complete fuckwit at the moment and decides to arrive at 23 52. My parting words to the pratt.

I'm so glad that i work with a C**T like you.

Quiet after the storm

I actually was made to feel bad to day. A customer came up to me and said I'd like to say thanks for all the hard work LUL staff coped with yesterday.

All i could say was thank you.

All i did today was direct customers to other stations today. It's a long way from what I found out from one of my colleagues who was on duty at Kings Cross yesterday morning.

He was one of the first staff on the scene at Kings Cross and basically he said he never ever thought he would witness a scene like that.

I wont go into detail but the carnage was frightening.

SO WELL DONE THE STAFF AT KINGS CROSS.

It's Strange

After all that's happened today.

Why is it i feel that I have let down my colleagues, I know that i live 70 miles outside of London, and I was told to stay at home, but when i spoke to my colleague The Station Master

I felt shamed by the fact that he struggled into work, walking over an hour to get there, and I stayed home.

Tube Shutdown

I rang work to try and get in today as I'm to be at work from 1500. I was told by my managers not to try as mainline train services are not going into London and the whole of the tube network has been closed down and all bus services are suspended.

My wishes go to all the Customers and there families who have been caught in today's terrible incidents.

Especially those Customers who have lost there lives.

Last Night Tonight

Well it's my last night turn tonight and I'm looking forward to 2 days rest, as I'm shattered.

That means I get to see my girlfriend for the first time in 7 days. So guess what I'll be doing tomorrow ... That's right Shopping in Peterborough.

but at least i get to see Most Haunted a double episode.

Well time to get showered and dressed.

The start of the week.

At the beginning of this week of nights. I was really worried about my colleague The Station Master. He was really down in the dumps and feeling down trodden.

So like a good mate I've been trying to make him feel good all week by just messing about and driving him mad.

So guess what ... Now he feels suicidal ... Well that didn't work.

Oh I pissed my managers off today.

Instead of going to my own home today, I went to my mums house to put up a curtain rail on her new double glazing.

After getting the rail up and the curtains on, I finally hit the sack about 10:30 only to stay awake until after 11.

3 hours later I'm up again and getting ready to go to my nieces 18th birthday. Don't worry I didn't even have 1 beer what with the Drugs & Alcohol policy at work.

I had a lovely day until 5pm when I get a call on my mobile, from a manager on another group, who is covering the whole of the line.

Can I start work at 7pm tonight as the late turn supervisor hasn't turned in and the middle turn isn't willing to work through until 11pm, when I'm due to start.

Sorry i said I'm at a family do and i can't leave.

Ok says my manager.

19:15 comes around and i get a text from the middle turn SS my station will be closed at 19:30.


Yeahhhhh!!!.

19:20 another text, bollox a wanker at another station is covering the station from 19:30 until i get in.

Needless to say I'm normally in work by 22:15 when I'm working nights, but as this bollock chops of an SS covered the duty. I duly arrive for work fresh after 3 hours sleep at 22:45 and best yet I'm in civvies, so i can't take over the station.

14 minutes later and I'm already for work.

Let me explain about the take off procedure.

Most stations take each other off at least 30 minutes early, but the cretin I was relieving always turns up bang on time.

Live After 8

Well it was almost 2am and there I was pondering my naval, thanking the management for keeping me open an extra hour.

I was contemplating getting my head down for a couple of hours sleep, as I have a family do the next afternoon.

When low and behold a train pulls into my station with a woman in a skirt straddling a man with a smile on his face. Bouncing up and down on a stationary train.

Jealous ... To bloody right.

DMR Again

All my contractors went home tonight by 02:30, and I thought oh well no OT tonight.

Just my luck at 03:15 some contractors turned up to do some emergency work on my station.

Woohoo more over time for me. That's 2 hours so far for being disturbed (no not the mental kind either).

Oh how my management are going to love me.

Dating the blogging way.

Whilst chatting over night with my colleague The Station Manager about life in general.

My colleague said to me, it's nice to see I'm so happy with my girlfriend. And that he wished he had one as well. As he's been single for a little while now.

He also told another colleague from On The District about it too, so after getting copy write approval and basic plagiarism. We are going to see if we can get the Station Master out there dating again.

So here's our little advert for him.


My Friend the Station Master, is seeking a nice young lady friend, for fun and friendship, The Station Master is an honest sort of a guy, who will worship the ground you walk on and treat you like the special person that you are.

All he asks is that you don't snore and don't mistreat him.

He has his own place (rented) in North London somewhere, and likes eating out, pubs and clubs, theatre, films and quiet nights in. He is well educated, but at the same time like to have a laugh.

If you fit the bill, and want to know more, the clink the link to the Station Log Book, on the right, and go to his blog where you can email him.

Good Luck

Sleep patterns

Unfortunately as with a lot of people who do shift work, My body clock has gone ping and broken.

So when I'm on nights I try to keep to a certain routine.

after I finish my first night turn, I generally get home around 8 30 in the morning, I'll have some breakfast and watch a bit of TV until 12:00. I then go to sleep until 7:00.

When I wake up I'm out of bed and off to get myself a shower, as I walk past the cooker I turn it on, so it can warm up (I hate electric cookers) and put on the kettle.

After my shower I get myself dressed (I'm a big boy now after all) and start to cook my dinner.

After dinner I relax with a coffee or two until 20:50 , then it's out the door to work, where I look forward to another shift of bitchin about my other colleagues especially the lazy useless bastard on earlies, who we are all waiting for, to retire.

Night Night or should that be DAY DAY.

Night 3 almost half way. And an upset manager to boot

At the moment, like most stations I have a lot of contractors on site over night. 26 in total last night.

We are soon to be in the middle of a station refurbishment, and unlike Bow Road they are actually going to do some work at my station, so the influx of contractors is going to steadily rise.

At the moment I am having an on going battle with my managers about meal breaks during the course of a night. As I am on my own on the station, I think it is unfair that we are not allowed to be paid for our meal breaks, even though we are on the stations all night we are expected to work through the night and have our meal breaks at work, the management tell us to put a piece of paper on the door and tell the contractors to leave us alone for 30 minutes.

Now this is ok as long as you do not get disturbed by any contractors, which inevitably you get the knock at the door, as someone what's to either start work or finish and needs to sign in or out with the Supervisor.

So this week as I'm in a pissy mood with management, I'm claiming DMR's (underground jargon for Deferred Meal Relief or in laymans terms disturbed grub).

So here's what I do, if I get disturbed, as soon as the contractor leaves I ring the DOM short for Duty Operation Manager and inform him I'm claiming a DMR as I was interrupted by contractors.

I take his name and then put it on the overtime sheets with his details.

However last night my own manager was on nights too and I claimed a DMR which went down like alead balloon, he asked me why did I answer the door, I replied I had a contractor booking on to carry out some work, his reply, well you could have let him book on when you had finished considering I was only 10 minutes into my break, this would have let the contractor work for another 20 minutes with out having my authority to start.

Security it's a laugh.

I pointed this out to my manager and I don't think he was to impressed.

TUT TUT!!!

Roll on tonight when I claim another.