Ah, doesn’t time fly. It only feels like yesterday when I received the email letting me know I was heading back to London Waterloo as a Metro Guard with SWR, and now I’m home having completed Day Nine of the Basic Guards Course, for the second time.
So far, we have covered some important training subjects such as non-technical skills, conflict avoidance, disability and inclusion awareness, customer service skills and today… Personal Trackside Safety (PTS). PTS is one of those subjects on the railway that is critical to get right. Safety is always number one.
The next few weeks will see us covering prep for duty (booking on, what we are confirming when booking on for duty!), signalling (what are we looking at and for when dispatching our train), as well as how to be a Guard overall. We don’t learn this stuff overnight, after all!
On day one, I very rapidly learned that our trainer knew who I was (I met them last time I was at Waterloo) and we had a brief chat; they advised me that the next few weeks would be painful, and that I need to remember that I am in a special position, and especially need to remember everyone else in the room hasn’t sit this course at SWR before. I know the answers, and need to give them a chance to shine! But that it would also be painful and tiring, sitting back and going over all the materials and learning that inevitably I will remember. Already I have gotten home exhausted some days because I’ve had to hold back from answering every question, and had to particularly keep my focus on the course, and not let my attention drift.
The course feels very much shorter this time around. Only twenty-fiveish working days till we’re released to our depots and doing route learning…