“I’m an engine driver, on a long run”
Let’s not kid ourselves, the Underground is like a cult. Our uniforms that attract stupid questions like magnets, the head nods to anyone else with the logo, shared exasperated glances across crowded platforms, jumping gratefully into the cab when faced with the crammed and smelly nightmare of a crush-loaded rush hour train. Trying to learn an impassive expression to hide behind when people start staring in the wake of vague announcements. Listening to the trains rattle and hum, even though it isn’t my line, almost hoping something goes a little bit wrong just so you can see what really happens when the shit hits the fan.
It takes some getting used to. The first day in the depot was like the world’s most unsettling (and lame) amusement park. Huge signs everywhere bellowing their instructions to dress up like a radioactive satsuma or be mercilessly killed, eardrum-piercing whistles telling you the huge lump of metal right next to you is about to come shrieking and clunking out of its shed. Dirt, God, so much dirt. Lifting seats, unearthing secret compartments and the well-hidden gizmos that make it almost impossible for anyone to go hurtling towards death and dismemberment. Diagrams full of dancing coloured lines that mean nothing at all, suddenly transformed into vital veins and capilliaries that your mind learns to trace instantly. Now when the train cries out its dismay or sudden impotence, the sound alone is enough to tell you exactly where it hurts.
Not that you treat these metallic monsters as wounded children, motors and electricity don’t care how much you want to make everything right. Fix them as they demand or stay stuck forever, what do machines care if they grind to a sudden halt? Forty years these particular ones have been rattling along the same tunnels, trapped in a continuous shuttle from North to South and back, returned to the yard at night to be poked and prodded by men (yes, only men it seems) who have brake grease in every line of their flesh. So many things that can go wrong, one component enough to cripple the system, both on the trains and all those miles of tracks, not to mention the hundreds of signals. It’s frankly a miracle that it doesn’t go up the wall more often.
Strange vocabulary assimilated in hours, it’s only when you talk to a civilian about the combine, the pipe, or getting juiced that you realise they’re not quite getting it. Trash-talking the other lines like playground rivals, which you swore in the first week you’d never be sad enough to sink to. Collecting an anthology of macabre one-unders, unable to avoid the fixation that seems to grab everyone who hasn’t experienced it. The stories never come from the actual driver involved, but some are legendary, and you unconsciously store them for down the pub or for the day when you’ll be the seasoned pro scaring a newbie.
It’s not just a job, as trite as that might sound. It’s a whole bloody lifestyle.
