Duty Signalman's view

First day back on the Kent and East Sussex Railway for the 2019 season. In Wittersham Road Signalbox with a trainee who is nearly ready to pass out at this box. So my day was spent supervising his operation of the box, mainly from this position. We both did well given this was our first turn since last year.

There were more people at Wittersham Road today than I've ever seen before. The yard was burgled overnight, lots of stuff stolen or vandalised. The police were informed and came quite promptly. This is just another in a spate of burglaries and vandalism on the railway over the past few months. Most frustrating and understandably people are not too complimentary about the perpetrators.

We had another crowd of railway people studying signal angles and sighting lines as there have been some complaints that one signal, in particular, was not well sited and could lead to a SPAD (Signal Passed At Danger)

Then there was the family who got on the first train down from Tenterden to Bodiam this morning and chose a train back from Bodiam which didn't stop at Wittersham. It seems that whatever train they got on it didn't stop at Wittersham! In the end, I had to rearrange the stopping pattern of the last down train so it called at Wittersham to drop them off. Fortunately, nobody on the up train that was booked to stop at Wittersham wanted to get off there (we only have the one platform)