Spooky Sidings
I love working night shifts. There's something about being 'allowed' to wander about at 3am that's kind of 'naughty'. Anyone who does shift work will know what I'm babbling about.

Now - during a night shift, you get used to hearing/seeing weird stuff - 99.9% can be explained (usually drunken passengers who missed their train sha**ing in the shadows) but there are certain times...

During engineering works, I had to take an empty train to the coast, sit on it in the sidings for 5 hours, then take it back up as the first train of the day. As most sensible drivers did, I packed a sleeping bag and an alarm clock - getting paid to sleep rocks! Not that I got much sleep. I found a warm first class compartment and bunked down for the night. After about 20 minutes, I thought I heard voices in the next compartment. Nothing you could make out, just a low murmur of conversation. "Wow, the imagination is in overdrive tonight" I thought. I tried to ignore it, but I couldn't - so I quietly got up and opened the door. As soon as my hand reached the handle, the noise stopped, and when I looked in the next compartment - nothing.
Satisfied I had imagined the whole thing - I tried to get back to sleep. The conversation next door started again. Then the tapping started.
By this point, I really wasn't going to get any sleep, and told whoever was on my train, living or dead to get the hell off my train.

Then a door somewhere down the train slammed shut. I wasn't even going to look back - I was off the train and walking back down the track to the safety of the signalbox. When I walked in, the first thing the signalman said to me was "I was wondering how long it would be before you came up here... the driver on the same job last night did the same."
( HSDriver was probably still at work on, Tue 8 Jul 2008, 13:56, Reply)