07:00.

Good morning from Swindon. It’s time for breakfast before the group heads off to the local Atkins offices for a briefing and training session, after which we’ll be spending the day at Network Rail training centre at Cocklebury sidings. The centre is separate from the live railway but is fitted out with tracks, switches and OLE. It’s an idea place to learn about the railway without getting in the way of trains.

I’ll add update through the day as I can. I’m only here for the day so this evening I’ll be heading back to West Yorkshire (which could be fun). Watch this space…

08:55.

The trainees and staff from companies involved in the challenge are being briefed at Atkins office.

10:00.

Site briefing before tasks start and people are split into teams.

17:00.

Well, that was an informative and challenging day! I’ll add a few pictures later but what happened was the people who joined the challenge were split into four teams in order to gain hands on experience of assembling overhead equipment from drawings. After that they had the opportunity to get hands on with various tools and also learn about more aspects of the equipment used to electrify the railway. Some of those taking part had never been trackside before.

The final challenge of day 1 was running out and fixing a catenary wire under tension.

Now the day’s over. The teams have headed back for the night and I’m heading back to West Yorkshire. Hopefully, that won’t be too bad a journey. GWR services are running to time (or very nearly) and it’s a lovely evening to travel. Even so, I don’t expect to get home before 22:00 but hey – I’ve had a profitable and interesting couple of days, so I’m not complaining!

20:00.

The journey home’s been quite painless for once. My GWR train into Paddington was 10 late as it was stuck behind a late running service From Reading, but I had time in the bank but wasn’t too worried. Much as I’d liked to, I didn’t hang around at Paddington as we hadn’t got to the ‘blue hour’ when the sky performs the transition from daylight to dusk where it makes powerful pictures. Instead, I joined commuters on the Metropolitan line for a trip across to Kings Cross. By the time I arrived the skies had darkened enough to make it worth grabbing a few pictures. Now I’m on LNER’s 19:03 heading to Leeds. Today it’s a 9-car train so pretty quiet. I’ve managed to blag a table seat and set up the mobile office and begin editing today’s pictures. Chatting to a regular traveller on this service earlier it seems this is normally a very busy service, but today it’s a 9-car, hence me getting some space. Having wandered through the train to the buffet after the stop at Peterborough I can see what he was saying. My coach is probably the least busy on the train. That said, I’m sat opposite a woman who is slaving away on what’s obviously a company laptop (it has an asset register sticker on the front). Judging by the amount of huffing and puffing she’s obviously not a happy bunny! There’s workers of all kinds on this trip. I’m not the only one with a hard hat on the side of their rucsac. There’s a smattering of leisure travellers as some schools are still on holiday. There’s also a few people with airline baggage tags still attached to their suitcases, which is always a bit of a giveaway.

21:50.

The last leg. Rather than changing at Leeds I’ve had a brief break at a very quiet Doncaster station before catching the following Grand Central service which is mow carrying me directly home to Halifax.   I *could* have chosen to use it from Kings Cross but I saw it was a veritable sea of reservation labels. So, choice of a 9 car on which I cold do some work, or sit in the vestibule of a 5 car. A bit of a no-brainer really.

22:20.

Home again…

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