What's your job ?

[millemille]

Another rail industry engineer here...

Went to catering college at 16, because my mum was a chef of some repute in London in the 60's, but after a year decided it was too much like hard work and followed in the family tradition and joined the armed forces (old man was an organisation and management specialist in the RCL, brother was RM, uncle was RAF and so on).

Did 5 years in 1st Battalion REME with 14/20 Kings Royal Hussars, a couple of tours in NI and then off to the Gulf. Apprenticed and started as a Recovery mechanic and then became a 'tiffy. Had been looking at a cross service transfer to the RAF to train to be a Met Officer, they were going to sponsor me through uni, but after coming back from the first Gulf outing I jacked and moved to Birmingham to attend Birmingham Poly and read mechanical engineering.

It was a part time course and I needed a job and a local company called Metro-Cammell were advertising for vehicle builders so I applied and got a job there. Knew nothing about trains, had no interest in them, it was just a job.

Nearly 30 years later and I'm still in the railway industry, apart from a brief hiatus in 2010 when I owned a fish and chip shop, having worked on the tools as vehicle builder and tester, maintenance fitter and technician and then off the tools - more or less - as a commissioning engineer, modification engineer, fleet technical officer, fleet recovery engineer, consultant, systems engineer, engineering manager, planning manager, safety engineer and I'm now the engineering director of an SME specialising in sanding systems to deal with "leaves on the line".

Had a couple of second jobs along the way; product support technician in BSB & WSB and had my own business looking after ex race bikes for some wealthy folks in Kent.

[lostboy]

Am a shareholder in and Director of a Construction company. Business Development is my domain. Bought it from it's founders a few years ago and alongside the guys I led in the buyout team we've been making it significantly more sustainable than most in our industry. Regional operation with two offices in the Central South and if you live in the region you will have seen one of our signs at some point in the last 15 years.

Very diverse past - qualified as a Building Surveyor within local authority before then going into technical roles in the private sector. Got into BD by accident about 25 years ago and haven't got around to leaving that role yet. Love it, love the industry and the closer I get to retirement (exit was clearly mapped out in the business plan when we bought it) the less I fancy any kind of full time retirement - I really enjoy what I do.

[GuzziPaul]

Traffic Systems Engineer/designer. Designing traffic signal junctions, crossings Variable message signs , ANPR, and other Urban Traffic control stuff.

In my experience, Traffic Signal Engineers are control freaks.

Don't know about control freaks but I do like to quote standards and specs a fair bit. My latest crusade is against the excessive use of pedestrian guard rail and tall poles with multiple signal heads on one approach.

[Bigyin]

Spent my early years from leaving school working in the photo trade moving jobs every 18 months from lab work to stock control to retail sales then spent some time in the Parachute Regiment but a serious back injury fucked that up. While recovering i was a bike courier in Glasgow then ended up in the RAF Police. Was bored shitless there after 3 years even during first Gulf War so i left.

Joined Civvy Police aged 24, spent 4 years in uniform and the next 24 years in either a suit or jeans, t shirt and unshaven lurking, watching and recording. Worked on everything from major murder enquiries, rapes, serial burglars and sex offenders but specialised in Organised Crime and County Lines Drug Trafficking. Over that period of time only ever had one single "Not Guilty" verdict at court (for a trivial offence that even the defence lawyer laughed at winning)

Loved the job i did and worked with a very small team of people i have at times trusted my life with and would have happily stayed for another 10 years. I was extremely fortunate to find a team and speciality that fitted me perfectly and i enjoyed every part of it from the long hours of surveillance, the adrenaline of the strike, then the building the case and even the presentation at Crown Court playing mind games with barristers on 10 times my salary. My time was up in June 2019 so made sense for me financially to retire aged 51 as it cleared all my debts, provides me with a pension and allows me to do things i would previously been unable to afford.

I am now a CBT instructor at a local bike training school so again lucky to land somewhere i enjoy what i am doing. The money is crap and i could earn 3 times as much doing something along my former career but its about doing something i want to do and enjoy doing and putting something back into a hobby that has played such a huge part of my life and shaped who i am. Next step is get my DAS ticket and get onto to training on the bigger bikes rather than 125cc and below. I am supposed to be part time but generally work a little more but allows me the time to indulge in gym visits and cycling to keep in shape as well as spending time with the missus who also works part time

[millemille]

...unshaven lurking, watching and recording.

You mean I can get paid to do my hobby?

[derek badger]

IT here also, despite doing Mechanical Engineering at Uni. Worked my way up from helpdesk monkey back in 1998 through servers support, enterprise rollouts, DevOps, Systems Engineering and now I'm a Service Delivery Manager for the EMEA area of our business. I still try and keep my hands dirty with the techie stuff, but I'm being pushed into more of a PM/BA role by upper management.

[MingtheMerciless]

Can the two methods be combined? OHL on the clear runs and 3rd rail through tunnels for example.

You can and as another poster said you can have bi and tri mode trains. However they cannot change over from 25000V AC to 750V DC on the move. We have a change over at Farringdon Station for the Thameslink stock and the train comes to a stand, and swaps over from OHL to 3rd rail or vice versa. What the public see's is the pantograph lowering or raising and the train rebooting. What you don't see is the special equipment (I think we only have a few places in the country with it) feeding both OHL and 3rd rail doing a complicated automated dance of power feeding in a nearby substations. If I remember correctly the problem is not so much the train power but the trackside signalling systems requiring separation from AC or DC sources, remember train power usually flows through the same rails as the signalling system so separation of the two at the signalling bit is paramount to stop it from either blowing up the signalling kit or causing wrong side/high risk failures where the protecting signal can go back to green even though it should be red protecting a train on the line. A signalling engineer will be wincing at this description but its as simple as I can make it and I'm not fully conversant on the system at Farringdon as I don't control it.

In some Tunnels with limited clearance the 25kV OHL catenary structure is replaced with a shielded 25kV rail system bolted to the tunnel ceiling.

[millemille]

What the public see's is the driver forgetting to lower the pan and smashing it into the tunnel portal...

Happened a few times on 319's at Farringdon when they were being run down into my old patch at Southeastern.

[Bigyin]

...unshaven lurking, watching and recording.

You mean I can get paid to do my hobby?

You need a warrant card to get away with it AND get paid ......... if not its called stalking or yoyeurism

[Yorick]

Left school 16 straight to Lucas Aerospace. I should have done really well there if I'd followed their plans for me. But I was only interested in bike racing.
After 9 years I left and went backpacking round the world for a year.
Came home and retrained into IT.

Managed 25 years as programmer, sysadmin and DBA.
Always planned to retire at 55, but McAfee gave me the flick at 54 with years salary payoff.

I'd done 14 years instructing with Focused Events
I knew the head honcho at MSV so got in there, instructing for proper big money I was the only one there not at current BSB level. But they knew I was a good instructor.

Did that one year till Penny retired, then we came over here.

Now I have several jobs..

Pool cleaner.
Dog walker.
Moving wine from fridge to her glass.
4WD tour guide.

Could have been worse

[slowsider]

An unplanned non-linear route from dispatching through airline operations, pressure relief device sales engineer, bike trainer, car trainer, trainer trainer, and latterly training QA in plant operating qualifications. Contracting/self employed since 2009.
Had set out with great intentions, to study Mech eng and get a job with Joe Ehrlich tuning strokers, but an absence of talent and application meant that other ways of earning a crust took priority.

[Silly Car]

Been in Financial Services as an adviser for 26.5 years, been pretty ok as a whole although it was touch and go in mid Feb whether I was going to Chuck in the towel with the current mob. I thank my lucky stars for seeing the light when dragged into regional office back then and committing to stick with it as the alternative was pretty much starting 6 months notice there and then...

Not been in the office since mid-March, role has developed massively as there have been three retirements announced from senior guys and guess who’s scooping up their clients!

Likelihood is if things continue improving or stay the same, I’ll be here for a while.

[Taff]

at 16ish I went on a family's day on the RN ship that my brother was serving on, they took us out to sea for the day and to me it was all a bit Meh....that is until the Lynx took off and did a flying display by the side of the ship....and it did a barrel roll

Any helicopter that can go upside down has got my attention so that was it, I was joining up to work on the Lynx (If the Army had Apache at that point I would have joined REME cos they have Big FO gunz and stuff)

20 something years later I was leaving having done 22, mostly on the Lynx, Royal Navy and Army variants, but I did start off on the Sea Harrier for a few years cruising and getting pissed in the Med.

When I left the RN I joind the MOD, I thought I was going into a PM or project engineering job, but it turned out to be safety job. My new boss had an eye on retiring and hired me to train up to take over from him which did kind of happen. I moved around in MOD aircraft project teams until I had a puncture one evening and fate kicked in.

long story short, I landed up in a recovery truck with a bloke that lived a few miles from me, we'd worked on the same sqdn in the early 2000's and had quite a few common friends. He told me that his company was looking for safety engineers and the pay would be a chunk more than the mod was paying, he took a copy of my CV and the interview went well

so now I'm 'doing' functional safety of critical systems, deriving safety requirements, constructing loss models, justifying integrity requirements, etc etc

it's mostly boring as shit, I feel like I'm wading through treacle most days but its technically challenging and satifying at the same time, it also pays the bills which is handy.

[millemille]

20 something years later I was leaving having done 22, mostly on the Lynx, Royal Navy and Army variants, but I did start off on the Sea Harrier for a few years cruising and getting pissed in the Med.

Ever come across a navy Lynx engineer called Alex Gidley?

[Big Red]

Left school and straight to college doing basic engineering course. Trained in a small local garage for 4 years as a light vehicle mechanic. Stayed there for a further 6 years till i left to start working for myself. Opened own garage 2 weeks after leaving, set up as car mot station and a few years later added bike mot testing as well. Also worked part time for local training school doing cbt training, trained up for direct access and did my cardington assessment.
Continued to run garage and work part time training up to test standards at local school.
Packed in bike training about 4 years ago as needed more leisure time. January 2021 is the start of my 31st year running the garage but now looking to kick back and retire soon. Just turned 56 and spent 40 years on the tools so had enough now. Watch this space

[Taff]

20 something years later I was leaving having done 22, mostly on the Lynx, Royal Navy and Army variants, but I did start off on the Sea Harrier for a few years cruising and getting pissed in the Med.

Ever come across a navy Lynx engineer called Alex Gidley?

hmm, Gidley is a name I recognise but I can't say I know him tbh

[millemille]

20 something years later I was leaving having done 22, mostly on the Lynx, Royal Navy and Army variants, but I did start off on the Sea Harrier for a few years cruising and getting pissed in the Med.

Ever come across a navy Lynx engineer called Alex Gidley?

hmm, Gidley is a name I recognise but I can't say I know him tbh

He's a customer and has mentioned in passing, a few times, Lynx related stuff. Although looking at his CV he was 845 sqn, which was Seakings, and 1710 sqn, which I think is crash repair outift?

[Taff]

Ever come across a navy Lynx engineer called Alex Gidley?

hmm, Gidley is a name I recognise but I can't say I know him tbh

He's a customer and has mentioned in passing, a few times, Lynx related stuff. Although looking at his CV he was 845 sqn, which was Seakings, and 1710 sqn, which I think is crash repair outift?

Ah, when I was on 847 we were part of the Command Helicopter force, 845 & 846 sea king and 847 army lynx so everything we did was alongside 845 & 846, and then in my last job on 815 I was regularly calling in 1710 to do repairs that were beyond out capability.
our paths probably crossed at some point

[neilf]

Left school 39 years ago, did an apprenticeship with British Gas, left came back became a technician, left again and have spent the last 14 years running my own business assessing gas engineers. Spent sometime training assistance dogs as a hobby but that doesn't count.
I suppose I will spend the rest of my working career doing this. Its a great lifestyle business only working about 25 hours a week.

[maccecht]

Joined the Army Royal Engineers at 16 to get away from the troubles in NI in 1977 done my trade apprenticeship my basic training and the bastards posted me to NI for 2 years in 33 Sqn Germany Falklands twice once to wreck it second time to fix it did 13 years total got bored it was peacetime FA happening so left in a huff. Got into construction started with a company called Mowlem they went bust in 2007 went to McLaren construction been there ever since as a project manager .