A Grand Day Out (II)

The other week, I entered a competition in an, ahem, “gentlemen’s magazine” that I happen to subscribe to, and I won! A tour of the Docklands Light Railway in East London (you see? It wasn’t THAT sort of “ gentlemen’s magazine”), to celebrate the DLR's 20th birthday, complete with lunch.
A 5am start saw me on the first train of the day, and safely in London by 10.20. I had intended to attempt my Job Evaluation on the way, to explain my day away from work (it is allowed), so I borrowed the Boy’s Laptop while mine is in Computerhospital. Needlesstosay, I achieved very little on the way up as it got too crowded. Besides. the form is 34 pages long and full of bullshit, and it irritates me intensely. I did manage some more on the way back.
Canary Wharf never ceases to amaze, it gets taller and more awesome every time. All those expanses of water with buildings growing out of them.

It appears to be in an up and coming and effluent area.
Caroline seemed a nice woman (*plans jokes about dirty sex, but can’t be arsed)
So. Here is the DLR guided tour:
After a presentation and lunch and a goody bag (DLR watch, DLR USB memory stick, DLR pen, DLR badges, DLR jelly babies, DLR books and maps, DLR bag), we were taken to the control centre and shown all the coloured diagrams and CCTV. Then, and get this, we got Our Own Train.

Driven carefully out of Poplar Depot by a driver and then released to computer control non stop to Beckton Depot. The trains get within a couple of hundred yards of each other (It’s a “moving block” signaling system, doncha know).

There followed a guided tour of the depot (once the site of the largest gasworks in Europe, and it shows. Brrrrr), and then, now accompanied by a group of Japanese MBA students (students in suits!), and after a delay (they were trying to get empty trains out for the rush hour), our private train set off, thundering through stations, hooting like a runaway train. I had to leave at the first stop, but the others (all from the home counties) were going onto to London City Airport and the line towards Woolwich. I made the train at Paddington by minutes (barely time for a cigarette).
Apparently a trip to Beckton Depot, with lunch with a director (and no private train or goody bag, or control room tour) has gone on ebay for over £125 , so all in all, a jolly good prize.
Pity that M and her sister and brother in law hadn't been bothered to get me some wine in when I got home (*moans. *wanders over to supermarket)