Property News · March 19, 2011

A working life: The railway controller


First Great Western’s Deborah Hawken explains how train delays, cable thefts and sheep on the line are all in a day’s workIt is possible, I suppose, to have thoroughness trained into you, but Deborah Hawken strikes me as a person who was born with hers. “Obviously this is a quiet area, so you will have to switch your mobile phone to silent,” she explains, as we swish upstairs into First Great Western’s Swindon control centre. “And there’s no fire alarm expected today,” she adds, “so if it does go off, it might be a fire. In which case, the exits are here and here.” I nod, and make the necessary mental preparations.Hawken begins the tour. Pointing, around an archipelago of tidy desks, she shows me the maintenance controller who talks to drivers on the phone to solve technical problems; there’s the service controller, who investigates the cause of delays; there’s the crew delivery managers; there’s the high-speed desk; there’s the people who arrange road replacement services; there’s the customer information team, which posts all the service information online and on the station display boards. Continue reading…

Source : theguardian.com
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