Re: guard/driver training (was: "Olympic Sprint Platform - Lidcombe")

["Rod" <berlina@bigpond.com>]

MarkBau1 wrote in message <19990512042815.22658.00001052@ng-cc1.aol.com>...
><< > 5 weeks, I could have a newbie 90% of the way to being a good spark
driver
>in
>> that time.
Listen Mark, I dont often disagree with you, but if the above comment is
yours, then this is one time!
when I left Wodonga in 1980, and ended up at the Sparks [not my choice] I
thought like you...horizontal lift drivers!!
I entered a system with signals seemingly every 200 feet, a much more
complicated
system to learn, the responsibility of running many very different trains,
on some pretty hairy sections [remember the 8 car reds down Belgrave, the 50
kph curves and the home at the end of Ferntree Gully??]
I also remember the boredom, after I got used to all these new things. I
remember that I was my own boss, all out on my own, trying to maintain
times, remembering stopping places etc.
I had more mechanical problems to sort out, and I had to put up with a
Public which could be very stupid, abusive and even violent.
I had to learn by the seat of my pants, and I survived 4 years without a
major problem.
I developed a sixth sense that allowed me to stop in time, to miss a
pedestrian on a crossing by inches, to scrape a bumper bar of a falcon. To
blow the horn at all the right spots, amazed at the stupidity of people who
barge out behind a train into your path. To kids jumping on and off and all
the rest of it.
I would never ever go back to it, I love my diesels too much, but Spark
drivers do it harder than I do. It took me 2 years to feel at home there, It
took me three weeks to feel at home at Dynon when I got back.
Cheers Rod ;o)