Angus Duncan
@Angus_Duncan
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Trainee train driver, photographer and cat dad. Car ferry and sleeper train connoisseur. he/him. @angusduncan on other apps. Own views, not anyone else’s.
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Joined March 2009
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This is garnering a lot of attention, so I’d like to clarify a few things:
🇵🇸 Free Palestine
🇺🇦 Support Ukraine
🏳️⚧️ Trans rights are human rights
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@Specsavers
Hello Specsavers social person. It’s lovely to hear from you, but it’s sad you’re working on Christmas.
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@J_Flash17
Because this is a stupid joke that I’ve posted every year and it is just as surprising that this has gone viral as it is that I actually have a fiancée
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A spokesperson said, “This is the one thing we didn’t want to happen.”
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Hats off to
@flyloganair
- a kid left their teddy on the plane, so they gave the bear a job and the last seat on the plane.
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@Dyson
So, I’m an influencer now in the world of hand dryers. Purchase a Dyson Airblade using the link below and I will earn a commission. Yes, I am entirely serious.
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The Czechs love their trains. They’ve got the densest and busiest railway in Europe. And their locomotives all have mad nicknames. These are known as “Brejlovecs” - translates as “Goggles Man” or “Mr Goggles.”
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On a London bus. Tourist spending some time asking for directions to hotel from driver.
From the back of the bus: “Oi! Oi, bruv!”
Tourist turns round.
“You got a phone?”
He nods.
“You got Google Maps?”
Affirmative.
“Use that.”
Tourist alights.
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The first thing you need to know is that there’s an academic aspect to the role. You’ll spend months in a classroom before you getting first proper go driving. They’ll have you drive one at 5mph in a depot and spend time shadowing, or maybe practice procedures in a simulator.
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You’ll do exams regularly throughout the training, you’re expected to revise when you go home at night. The rules and procedures are part of a system that exists to keep you, your colleagues and passengers safe - but also legal. You don’t want prison time for culpable homicide.
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The direct train is replaced by a bus while the line between Belgrade and the Hungarian border near Subotica are upgraded for 200kmh trains. It is possible, but not necessarily advisable, to take trains the entire distance. I shall explain why…
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At which point do you apply the brakes to bring your 300 ton, 125mph train with 600 people on board so that it stops at the platform over two miles away?
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This is a far from exhaustive thread and I’ve had to leave lots out or abridge things just to fit them into tweets.
It’s an extremely rewarding and satisfying job, but it requires dedication, attention to detail, intense focus and sacrifices in your personal life.
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You can travel to Beograd Centar from the city centre by frequent bus or trolley bus, thereby defeating the purpose of having a central railway station. Anyone arriving this way is greeted by this remarkably well maintained graffiti declaring Serbia’s claim over Kosovo.
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One more thing, you only get to this point if you pass the application and assessment stage. A gruelling selection process to ensure you’re suitable for the process and the role. Most people (myself included) do not pass.
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Belgrade once had a main station, named Belgrade Main Station, at the heart of the city. It was demolished to make way for property developments and a replacement, Beograd Centar, was constructed over two miles away. A promised rail connection to the centre never materialised.
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Congrats! You’ve made it to your first “driving lesson” with a real train. Here’s the deal: your instructor will be standing over you watching every single thing you do, keeping you right, constantly risk assessing. If you have an incident, it’ll go on their record.
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Your life out of work affects your job now, so you’ll have to adjust. Being prepared, having your kit ready before bed time. Managing your social life. Making sure your bedroom is cool and dark - even when you have a 2am alarm clock in July. These non-technical skills are vital.
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Oh, one more thing. There’ll be passengers on board. Don’t that it distract you, though…
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You’ll be taught strategies to deal with distractions - both in and out of work. Obviously you’ll need a good sleep before work, but there’s other factors.
How’s your diet? Do you drink enough water? Are you looking at your phone in bed? Pets like to disturb you in the night?
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A lot of very strange people getting upset over a picture of a train driver, train driver instructor, train manager and two catering crew together.
When you come on shift to drive your train and find you're part of an all-female crew 👋
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How many driving lessons did you take before you passed? How many were in the dark? Expect to spend at least 200 hours at the controls with an instructor before you’re even considered for your final exams, a proportion of which need to be in the dark.
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But back to the driving cab, did you forget about it for a second? It might be over a mile between your train passing a yellow signal (indicating the next is red) and you’ve still got to drive the train and react to everything that you come across in that mile. You can’t forget.
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You’ll need to learn your routes while you do this, memorising them in minute detail to the point you’ll feel like you could almost drive them blindfolded. Signals, speeds, stations, gradients, junctions, crossings, structures, who controls what and where everything leads…
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And is that point the same with each train? In all weather conditions? Nope. You’ll use your knowledge and expertise to make these decisions.
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You’ll be an expert on the trains you drive, too. Knowing just how to drive it isn’t enough. You need to know how it all works and where everything is. If something goes wrong, what can you do to diagnose the problem and sort it?
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You’re now on trains alone. It’s all up to you now. You’ll see your manager as they come out to assess you on the job, test you on rules and procedures, or let you know that they they downloaded your train’s black box data recorded the other day and what they found.
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It is a tragic fact that people are hit by trains. Would you be able to fall back on your rules and procedures to get you through the initial aftermath. There’s support in place for you after, but you still have to keep everyone safe until help has arrived.
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@seatsixtyone
Only one thing for it. Pub. The end.
tl;dr: You may want to take the bus between Belgrade and Budapest until the new railway opens.
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My latest idiotic eBay purchase arrived today. This was apparently once on the pointy end of a Pendolino.
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BUT, you’ve done all that now. You’ve sat all your exams and passed. You’ve put the work in, studying religiously, making sure you’re getting enough sleep, prepared for each shift and sacrificing social engagements where required.
You can relax a bit now, right? Wrong.
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Your mind is tempted to wander…but you can’t let it. Do you talk to yourself much? Get used to doing it if you want to become a train driver. Saying aloud what you’re doing and verbally identifying potential hazards keeps your mind on those.
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As with any job, the more experience and confidence you build up, the greater the chance of becoming complacent. The exciting job at the front of a fast train watching the world flying by becomes monotonous.
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See, when I read that the railway to the border was being upgraded with help from China, I imagined that meant in terms of funding, maybe engineering advice.
No. It meant trains, machinery, and it appeared also workers, all coming to Serbia.
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A brand new double-decker train, built by Stadler of Switzerland, whisks us the 75km to Novi Sad in 36 minutes. If the direct railway to Subotica was open and completed, we could have gone from the capital to the border in under two hours.
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Novi Sad is the current terminus of the higher speed line. It’s received a new station as part of the upgrades. Everything seems shiny and new, but on closer inspection we discover that all the clocks are stuck on 12. A fire alarm button has a “not in use” sticker covering it.
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Still, at least you don’t need to study anymore? Wrong again. On every shift you need to check the noticeboards, they detail things like potential risks, recent incidents, temporary speed restrictions (remember that trains take a very long time to slow down).
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The interior of Belgrade’s new station, known as ���Prokop” after the locality it was built in, is wholly unremarkable. Airy and bright with modern art and food concessions, it could be pretty much any European airport departure lounge.
📷 Sergio_Spector on YouTube
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@seatsixtyone
I could write about the hop across the border to Szeged and the rest of the journey to Budapest, but it was fairly uneventful. Fun, yes, but not exciting for Twitter.
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Finally, can you stay calm under pressure? It doesn’t matter even if you did only press a button to go and another to stop. If something happens, it’s up to you to take charge and deal with it.
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There are ten platforms at Beograd Centar, although two of them don’t have any tracks between them. At platform 7 is train 540 to Novi Sad, the current limit of Serbia’s higher speed railway, which has been built with Chinese assistance.
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Jane Boulton off of Airline is bringing out keyrings. Just wanted to let you know.
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The entrance level lacks trains or indeed, much reassurance that this really is a railway station. To find them, we descend to the bowels of the building. A dark, damp, dank, seemingly forgotten area. We are going to make the entire trip to Budapest by rail.
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Oh, and there’s more. Is there an update to the software on the train(s) you drive? Maybe there’s a new procedure to be followed. The rule book is updated regularly and you’ll be tested on it. Several hundred questions and a 100% pass mark. No biggie.
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Then there’s the operating notices - they come out weekly with details of engineering works, changes that will affect your shifts and how you do your job. Every three months there’ll be more updates, this time with longer term changes. You’ll sign for each one received.
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Could this be the last train photo I post on Twitter? Possibly.
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As well as the steward, the train is patrolled by a conductor, security guards, and armed police. Since the train is busy and I don’t speak a word of Serbian, it seems sensible to keep the camera out the way.
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Social media is not a happy place at the minute, so please enjoy this picture of my ridiculously fluffy cat.
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For a brief period, passenger carrying Boeing 747s are back at Heathrow.
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Easy. GNER took the packaging for the last microwave burger they sold, put it in a glass case with a brass plaque and donated it to the National Railway Museum.
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The train trundles slowly through worksite after worksite. Workers wearing vests branded with the name of Chinese company stand between machinery branded with the same logo, occasionally joined by Worker’s Party badges.
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Bumped into an old friend. Never got a look in the “small end” cab while it was at work on the East Coast.
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Bogojevo is right at the Croatian border, but no trains traverse it.
@seatsixtyone
blames the collective “incompetence” of the respective state railways as the sole reason.
People jump off for a smoke and find themselves briefly locked out.
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There’s no photos from inside the train for reasons that will soon become clear, but believe me when I say that it’s very comfortable. Second class has plush leather seats with charging sockets and large tables. There’s no
@_DiningCar
but there’s a roving steward taking orders.
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No sign of a cleaner among the many uniforms pacing the aisles, but the train is immaculate. The toilet cubicles are gendered. The one marked male has a toilet and a urinal. Srbija Voz management clearly decided it would have been a step too far for ladies to see such a thing.
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The British Isles’ only high speed railway is great. We should have more.
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After waiting for some time and watching people gather across the tracks from us, it becomes apparent that we’re on the wrong platform since there’s no other trains due.
The brand new electronic departure screens are ready and waiting to be connected to a power supply.
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We hop off my new favourite train (no, not because of the urinal) and wait on the platform for our connection to Subotica. It takes a 65km detour via Bogojevo and takes over three hours, but it means we don’t need to get a bus.
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Something serious has happened in Glasgow city centre. Large number of emergency vehicles assembled on Wellington Street at Wellington Lane. At least eight police cars/vans, two ambulances and two fire engines so far.
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@seatsixtyone
Welcome to Subotica station. We find someone who speaks English, who tells us that our connection has in fact not left and will be at the platform in 30 minutes.
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@seatsixtyone
Three quarters of an hour passes before we see a small red train inch out of the yard towards the station. As it gets closer, we can see the illuminated display below the windscreen. Novi Sad. We’ve been waiting on a train in the wrong direction. Shit.
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@seatsixtyone
We’re on a 2016 vintage Russian diesel train built by Metrovagonmash, the company once tasked with building all of the Soviet Union’s metro trains. The carriages are mounted above a pair of noisy, rattly engines.
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Change of platform. Again. Our train, due to leave at 0915, rolls in at 0935. Nobody seems surprised or bothered. We set off, crawling past a Chinese diesel locomotive at a junction just north of the station.
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@seatsixtyone
The interminable journey grows later by the minute. The same seven fields form a procession and pass by the window. Sometimes we stop at a level crossing where the warnings are no longer working, proceeding at walking pace after a blast of the horn.
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I asked MidJourney to design the first class seating for a high speed train. As you can see, the headrests are made from mirrors and LCD screens.
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Rather impressed by the refurb on this Pendo. Nicer seats, more legroom, white instead of cream walls and ceilings makes it feel much more spacious.
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