Playing in the rain

I’m starting this post on the train from Euroa to Melbourne.  It’s been a pretty incredible few days.

The most striking part of the weekend was Friday night.  I’d planned to get the train from Southern Cross Station to Euroa to spend the weekend up country.  The weather had other ideas; they looked like this -

Storm cells, Melbourne, 14 Dec 2018

When I saw the map of those storm cells I decided I’d be more use turning out with my SES unit than having dinner with Mum and dad.  I caught a tram through a deluge of rain and then drove over to Northcote LHQ.

Oranged up and ready to roll!

The unit received about 40 requests for assistance and I was sent out in Rescue 3 with Thao and Gabriella. Thao was crew leader and I was driver.  Our first job was repairing a roof from the inside (replacing a tile, which I’d only done from inside a roof in training). The second job was essentially structural damage to a roof and way beyond our ability to fix.  We assisted the households to take steps to mitigate the damage.  By this stage it was getting on for 2300, which meant food and coffee were in order.

Northcote Rescue 3 at Northland McDonalds

This was followed by one more job, sandbagging a garage which was likely to flood in another downpour. Operations wound up for the night. We returned to LHQ and were dismissed.  It was a strange feeling to be on one’s way home and to see people drinking on their patios or on their way home from a night out.  One had the odd impression of two entirely different worlds existing in tandem without much touching each other.  This, I suppose, is the case with much emergency response.

I was in bed by 0200.  I knew I was still probably needed at the farm and so I was up again about 0620 to get the 0700 train from Southern Cross to Euroa.  All credit to the V/Line conductor who understood why I hadn’t been on the previous nights train and didn’t require me to buy another ticket.  It seems silly to say it but buying breakfast from the trains buffet felt kind of glamourous, even if it was merely coffee and an egg and bacon roll!

Dad picked me up from Euroa and we headed out to the farm.  They’d had perhaps an inch of rain up here, which won’t go astray at all.  First job of the day was feeding out to cattle and tracking down some kind of damage to the backhoe.  As the day went on I couldn’t help but monitor the storm cells hammering Melbourne.  Towards the end of the day Dad and I headed over to the new property at Nagambie.  It’s a fertile looking place with good soil and water storage.  All being well we’ll get cattle on there in the next fortnight or so.

 

 

I was stunningly tired by evening and crashed into bed by 2100 and was asleep by 2200.  And I slept well.  All the way up to 0055 when my goddamn pager went off!  I was of course far too far away to be any value, so I turned over and went back to sleep as well as I was able till about 0830. 

The rain came back this morning and so today has been on the quiet side.  Rain meant that drenching cattle wasn’t an option, and so the highlight of the day was a couple of hours FaceTime with Grace and Rachel who are all geared up for Christmas.  I love how natural communication by technology has become for them.  I’m sure that they’d prefer to have a normal home life with a normal dad, but since that not an option, well, Dad is a face in a screen and that’s how it is.  They know I love them and I’m as much “there” as I can be.

And now?  I’m on the train for town (just passed through Broadmeadows). This is the last week that the office will be open before Christmas.  I will be busy; and hopefully all will be well.

Racing to a train

Hi everyone,

Today had a big gulp of unexpected good news.  About midday I was working on a talk that I'm giving tomorrow for a club over in Tatura when my pager started the constant high-pitched howl it makes when we're being called out to a rescue.  It was one of those jobs you usually class as 'nightmare scenario', a car versus train accident.  I was duty officer, so I called dispatch and acknowledged the job, and then sent a message asking all available members to turn out.  The accident was closer to me than the SES shed, so I decided to go there straight from home.

The good news I mentioned took the form of a follow-up pager message advising that nobody was trapped, but requesting that SES attend anyway, presumably in case further assistance was required.  I crossed paths with our truck on the way and hopped aboard.

In line with SES policy, I don't feel I should talk here about the scene and so on here.  The account offered by the Shepparton News says that -

Police, CFA, Ambulance and SES services attended a level crossing on Pogue Rd in Toolamba after the driver of a vehicle hit a V/Line passenger train on the Shepparton-Seymour line at around 12 noon.  Paramedics said the male driver of the vehicle was lucky to be alive.  He was treated on scene for minor injuries and was taken to the Goulburn Valley Hospital.  CFA incident controller Colin James said all the passengers on the train escaped without injury.  Passengers told The News that they heard a loud bang and saw debris flying everywhere.

Two of our members had gone direct to scene, but the fire brigade was already smoothly evacuating passengers from the train.  Once we'd checked and confirmed that there was nothing we could do to add value, we fired up the truck and returned to the shed.  At some point in this process, the News was interviewing passengers from the train.

It always feels like a bit of an anticlimax when you've gone like a bat out of hell driven at a safe and legal speed to get to the scene of an accident and found you're not needed.  In this case especially I don't mind at all.  Much better a smashed car and a dinged train and a somewhat injured driver than that a family somewhere has to arrange a funeral.

Cities where we belong

Yesterday took me out of my area.

 

A few days ago I had a call from a recruiter asking if I was looking for work.  As my contract at GMW has only about 10 days left, I certainly am and I said so.  We arranged to meet at his office in the city yesterday to discuss what he could put me forward for.

 

I spent the morning at work and then drove down to Seymour to get the train to the City.  I didn’t fancy slogging through city traffic to get to the interview.  I fancied driving back through Friday-before-Queens-Birthday-long-weekend traffic less.

I’ve always liked travelling by train.  It’s a lovely rhythmic form of transport.  It’s so easy to understand why it’s inspired music and poetry.

I got into Southern Cross Station about 30 minutes before the interview.  Southern Cross is the main interstate and regional rail hub for Melbourne (Flinders Street Station is the hub for metropolitan and suburban trains), so it’s a big, wide set of platforms and rail lines, with both electric and diesel trains coming and going.  I was pretty pleased to take a quick photo that had a tiny echo of Monet’s Gare St Lazare.  It seemed a good augury.

Claude Monet, La Gare Saint-Lazare

Image from here

 

The interview was a bit forced.  I have little desire to return to legal practice or to Melbourne.  That’s where the money is though.  I plastered on a smile and a reached into my bag of trumpery emotions and located some enthusiasm, and that got me through.  Pay me enough and I’ll run anyone’s cases for them.  Law, logic and Switzers may be hired to fight for anybody.

I had some time to spare after the interview before my return train (this wasn’t accidental).  I went for a walk through town in search of a Book Grocer.  Even though I worked in the city for years I was never sure if there were multiple Book Grocer shops, or if it was the same store leapfrogging from one shop to another.  I liked Book grocer because they have a flat pricing policy ($6.00 for any book, regardless of whether it’s a dinky paperback or a leatherbound Shakespeare on good paper) and because they only sell odds and ends: books that had been remaindered, or imported but never sold, or that had been self-published.  I’ve been able to buy some real gems there.

 

In the event I bought a copy of Alexander the Corrector, which looks like a nice historical cameo from the eighteenth century.  There was a little girl in the shed with (I suppose) her grandmother.  She was agonizing over whether she wanted to buy one book or another, which is a wonderful dilemma to see a kid wrestling with.  I would have loved to have given her a $50.00 note and told her “loving books is a great thing: go nuts!”.

 

One of the good bits about Southern Cross Station is that it houses one of Melbourne’s few remaining Starbucks.  People get sniffy about Starbucks, but they serve the best mocha I’ve had anywhere.  At the end of a chilly afternoon in Melbourne with a long trip back to the Goulburn Valley ahead of me it was about the most comforting thing I could imagine.

 

I wasn’t sorry to get to Platform 8 South and get on the train.  Albert Camus said that “they are often secret loves, those that we share with a town”*.  I suppose every love between two persons is really a relationship between three: the people, and the city or town or countryside they share.  When the relationship between the people goes kaput, what they share with the place changes too.  It might even be lost altogether (which is why I don’t think I could ever live in the town where The Ex and my daughters live).  Melbourne will always be a part of me: I’ll always understand what Paul Kelly means when he sings about going leaps and bounds “down past the river and across the playing fields, the fields all empty only for the burning leaves” in May (you really only understand that song after you’ve spent an autumn and a winter there).

 

 

I can’t shake the feeling of being a only sojourner in the Goulburn Valley, rather than a person who really lives here.  I’m actually kind of okay with that.  It means that there’s somewhere else in the world that I belong.

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* “Ce sont souvent des amours secretes, celles qu’on partage avec une ville”: Albert Camus, ‘L’été à Alger’, Noces (1950).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emergency Responses at Railways

This note is based on the Victoria State Emergency Service's Standard Operating Procedure 23: Operations Involving Rail Track Transport.

 

Train Network Hazards

Rail networks around the world tend to use a mix of electric and diesel trains.  This poses particular considerations for emergency responders.  In the State of Victoria, the suburban rail network is electrically powered with overhead wires carrying 1500 volts.  The country rail network is overwhelmingly powered by diesel locomotives.

A number of factors will affect train stopping distances.  However, under normal circumstances, the following distances will apply -

• Inner suburban train travelling at 50 kilometres (about 31 miles)/hour - 160 metres (about 174 yards)
• Suburban train travelling at 80 kilometres (about 49 miles)/hour - 360 metres (about 393 yards)
• Heavy freight train in a country area travelling at 160 kilometres (about 100 miles)/hour - 4 kilometres (about 2.5 miles)

Image from here

 

Scene Hazards

In general, the area within 3 metres (3 yards) horizontally or vertically of the nearest rail should be considered a danger zone.

If engaged in operations at a train station, the area on the tracks between station platforms is especially hazardous because there is often no escape route save for climbing back onto the platform.  This area should not be entered without a lookout being in place.

Image from here

 

Arrival on Scene

The control centre for the affected railway should be contacted to confirm that they are aware of the incident and can determine whether the trains should be halted on the line.  A crew leader should consider requesting that the railway operator make a technical expert available to advise on operations involving a train, although in the first instance contact should be made with the train's driver or conductor.

Rescue vehicles should not be parked across railway lines.  A crew leader should seriously consider sending one or more crew members up and down the line with a portable radio to watch for oncoming trains.

 

Operations on Scene

If working with an electric train, do not assume that the power is off without confirmation from the railway operator.  On any rail line, take care around points or other interlocking parts: these can move without warning and crush or sever hands and feet.

Advise the driver and the railway control centre before commencing work near or under a train.  Trains can move if air pressure in the braking system is lost, and derailment or obstacles may cause a carriage to be unbalanced and unstable.  A railway technical expert should be consulted before taking steps to lift the train from the tracks: lifting can cause the train to derail and be extremely dangerous.

Watch for Audible Track Warning Signals (pictured).  These are warning devices which explode when a train runs over them.  Do not stand within 40 metres (43 yards) of such a device as an explosion may cause hearing damage.

Image from here

 

Lookout Person

A lookout should be posted to watch for oncoming trains.  Given the stopping distances mentioned above, the lookout should be stationed 1.2 kilometres (0.75 mile) from the scene in a city area and 2-4 kilometres (1.25-2.5 miles) in a rural area.  To warn the driver of such a train, a lookout should walk towards the train (while clear of the track), while holding both hands straight above their head or while waving a red flag.  At night a clear light should be waved rapidly.  They should alert the crew at the scene by radio.

 

Passengers

In general, passengers should remain on the train if there is no threat to their welfare.  Advice should be sought from the railway operator on this point.  Once evacuated, passengers should be kept together in a safe area away from the rail line.