An exciting couple of days, and I'm not even being sarcastic! Ysterday one of the DSM's came along to do a trackwalk with the station supervisor, who had to be refamiliarised with the track around the station - familiarisations expire every six months and have to be redone, which I think I mentioned in a post recently, although mine were station, not track, familiarisations. I was on my lunch break and piped up "Can I come?", determined to remind the DSM if he seemed hesitant that he'd agreed back in April to take me on a track walk at the first opportunity but hadn't yet done so, but luckily he agreed straight away, so I found myself getting my hi-vi on and preparing to go on a wander. We nearly had a last minute cancellation when it looked like I'd have to man the platform for sunlight duties, but thankfully a cloud came over and we got away with it!

We walked around the sets of points around the station, crossing the track over to the cess on the westbound road to walk down to the furthest set - the other three can be done by just walking off the platforms. It was great fun clambering over the ballast, even if the DSM did seem to forget that he was a rather man man with long legs and we were both short-ish girls. I'm not particularly tall and the supervisor is another head or so shorter than me - though considerably fitter, nearly needless to say. Still, we did just about manage to keep up, and being passed by trains while down at that level is really quite a breathtaking experience for me still. Especially since there's a rail gap with the associated sparking!!

After dealing with the west end of the track we walked back, crossing over again to reach the platform, and then walking down to the east end of the eastbound platform. We were at Oakwood and the east end leads to the depot and is underneath the station and road. While we were down in the ten foot two trains passed, one in either direction, and the noise was deafening, but the interplay of the lights of the trains and, again, some sparking, was amazing. We then walked back up onto the platform on the westbound side, which bought the walk to an end. *sigh!*

Today I had my six month performance review, which went okay. The DSM (a different one from the day before) admitted he hadn't been sure I'd make it, but that I'd turned out alright in the end. I had rather a tempestuous first few weeks so I'm not surprised that he thought that! There wasn't much to say on the development side since everything hinges on the medical on Friday.

I was on the gateline at about 2pm, just updating the service board, and expecting to go home within the hour, when the DSM from the day before and the supervisor for the afternoon came over. "How would you like some overtime?" they said, and I said, "When?". Turned out the supervisor had to be re-familiarised with the track around Cockfosters, so I stayed on an extra two hours, until 5pm - I'd started at 7am - supervising the station. I was sent along a rather useless CSA to help - from what I can tell, he doesn't want the job, and therefore doesn't see the point in making any effort - although I was thankfully later joined by another slightly more effective one. Typically, though, the chaos that had reigned during the first half of my supervising died down by the time she arrived. Due to some earlier service problems I had to reverse a few trains, plus there were a few others problems tossed my way, all of which I hope I handled alright! No one perished so I assume things turned out okay.