Sorry everybody, Theo's too busy to write his blog tonight - instead he's doodling on a tissue box! So far we have had golfing with an 8-ball, a dodgem, a ship on a BIG sea, a dice and a doodle-person sticking 2 fingers up. Yeah vitally important eh?!
So anyways, this is dave hijacking the blog again. Todays been an interesting day, the train service was meant to be a round trip up to trwyn-y-garnedd (a place in the woods) then back to port, and i was the guard. Jed had put the heating on first thing before i rocked up, cos the gas heating is crap and takes hours to get warm, so i cleaned the set and got ready to go off-shed. The Blanche came round into 14 road and I finished cleaning the set. I stepped out of the train and heard a hissing sound to my right. To me it sounded like the air compressor starting up down in the pit further up 14 road, so I went off to check that anyone working under the train knew we were about to go. As I walked along the side of oach 114 (the push-pull buffet car) a fireball erupted sideways out of the gas cylinder cupboard, about 10-12 ft in front of me.
At this point the rest of the works were going on about their daily business blissfully unaware that coach 114s heating was producing more heat than it had ever done before. I couldn't find a fire alarm smash glass thing in glan-y-mor where the carriages are kept so I legged it round into the carriage shop and set the alarm off before ringing control and the fire brigade (not that I could what either of them were saying to me down the phone cos I couldn't hear anything over the noise of the alarm) while beefy moved the three coaches in 13 road safely clear of the fire.
I got over to the top yard where everyone had assembled and ritually had the piss ripped out of me...all the jokes about making an easy guarding turn even shorter lol. The ginger one had gone racing off to the halt to open the crossing gates for the fire engines, which soon came racing across the cob - so they knew where boston lodge then.
It took a while befre we were allowed to go back but Dylan came and said we could go back into the den out of the wind. I didn't think it was that cold, having walked over the cob in a short sleeve shirt (i'm from up north and we don't do cold up there - its either warm of f***ing cold with nothing in between)
So the train got cancelled, which I guess was inevitable, and the fire brigade did their thing, putting out coach 114, and I walked back over to Port to speak to control. Word had obviously got round as I was getting texts off Joe (aka Young Boris Johnson) up in Blackburn to congratulate me
The day wasn't over though, for 114 torching itself meant we were short of coaches for tomorrow, so Phil and me came back to the works this afternoon to put a new set together for tomrrow. While I was over there I saw Theo in the workshops actually doing some work - yes he actually does work and isn't blagging it! When I saw him he was painting one of the Earl's bogies, while Tony was up a ladder on 138s boiler, Bob was painting some bits of metal light green (not sure what the bits of metal were, not being technically minded etc lol) and I saw Bruno kicking about there too, though I didn't notice what he was doing.
Phil fired up the Cricc and we shunted the burnt coach out of the way, put the push-pull coach onto the bottom of what's going to be the half termset, then attached them to the remains of my train from earlier (the bit that didn't get warm) and took the full nine coaches over to port. By this time it was well after 4pm and the works were all done for the day, so by the time we brought the Cricc back to put 114 away in the shed, everyone was gone...part timers!
So that was today. We;ve just been down to Tescos and had food, watched some crap on BBC3 about vampires (not as good as the lady fighters from last night tho) and Theo's still doodling - his words of wisdom for the day are: one way to avoid death is to be magnificent. Perhaps we should get him to do a thought for the day each day :-)
Right I've had enough now, normal service will resume next time
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