First turn of the new season on the KESR

A black and white shot as that is exactly how the scene looked. Dull, grey, misty with a black engine. No 376 the Norwegian, which has appeared in my blips before, is moving off shed at Rolvenden yard to run light engine up to Tenterden to form the first train of the day.

I was at Rolvenden to collect the long section token to open up Wittersham Road signal box. I was wondering if we'd have to instigate fog working but fortunately the clag wasn't so bad at Wittersham.

Today's timetable meant that in theory it would be an easy day at the box. All the crossings being done at other stations and trains only calling at the station in each direction to pick up and drop off any passengers misguided enough to want to get off at this wayside halt. All I had to do was signal trains into and out of the station and change the points lock according to the direction of travel.

However, things never turn out as you expect on the railway. A broken signal wire at Northiam meant that the signal was defective at danger which caused delays as drivers had telephone the signalbox to be instructed to pass the signal at danger. In the event this caused so much delay that I was asked to cross trains at Wittersham. Not the normal crossing where the down comes in first but a more unusual move where the up comes in first.

The move worked and we made up time so that by the end of the day we were pretty much back to the timetable. The signalman at Rolvenden was not a happy bunny as he was still waiting for light engines to come back down from Tenterden at 6.00pm owing to some sort of problem at the station.

Did some box cleaning as today was the first day of operation since February. It's important to have as clean a box as possible. In the intervening weeks thousands of flies had been hatched, matched and dispatched so there were enough dead flies on the floors and windowsills to make loads of garibaldi biscuits. The hoover soon dispatched those and also hundreds of live ones who, I suspect are still buzzing around the inside of the machine. But by the end of the day there appeared to be just as many flies around as there were when I started the mass cull.