Toadfish Monastery

In an age of remote operations and semi-automnous vehicles, not to mention hundreds of discarded communication satellites,  is there still a place for Heinlein's heroic space cadets and Clarke's Relay Stations, staffed by engineers in blue coveralls or rolled shirtsleeves and a pipe?

An amusing little read from the Rocketpunk Manifesto blog:

http://rocketpunk-manifesto.blogspot.com/2008/02/hard-sf-so-hard-its-impossible.html

One thing that I have always found interesting and fun in a somewhat oddball sort of way is to see what other people are carrying with them. Are you one of those minimalists who travels for four weeks to Indonesia with only your passport and credit cards? Or are you one of those who lug around with everything but the kitchen sink?

As I mentioned in my introductory thread, I work as a freight train driver here in Sweden, and I tend to carry a lot with me to work, especially since I often have duties where I lodge away from my home depot.

So, this is what I carry in my company-issue backpack:

A quite extensive first-aid kit
Sanitary wet wipes and disinfectant alcogel
A huge handkerchief
A toiletry bag with the essentials
A small travel pharmacy -Ibuprofen, multivitamins, that sort of stuff.

A set of thermal underwear
A set of tea candles and waterproof matches
(If I get stuck in the woods with a power outage, the heat disappears quite quickly from the loco cab. Not fun if it is -20 degrees outside)

A travel alarm clock
A Leatherman multi-tool
A few spare gaskets for air hoses between wagons
A piece of special heat & weather -resistant chalk for marking defects on freight wagons
A roll of extra-strong duct tape
A pair of heavy-duty work gloves
A hi-vis vest

A set of camping knife, fork & spoon
A "Lokmugg", a special large stainless steel mug perfect for use on the hotplates in the driver's cab, and engraved with the emblem for my training class as well as my name and graduation year as a mainline train driver.
A small bottle of homemade spice mixture
A ziploc bag of strong tea-bags (PG Tips or Yorkshire Tea)

Unholy amounts of paperwork:
Documents for the train(s) I am about to work -duty timetable, freight manifests, RID/Dangerous goods listings, wagon lists etc
Copies of any local instructions relevant to the places or trains that I will work
"Linjeböcker", Line description books. These are A5-size loose-leaf folders giving details of the railway lines in a district, showing where all signals, tracks, sidings etc are located, what control centre or signal box controls what area, who controls the electrical supply, any special regulations for a certain place or line etc. We have to carry these for every district we work a train over.
Various forms and report sheets for stuff
Other good-to-have paperwork -duty lists, phone lists, maps and so on

A PDA with lots of company internal documents in electronic form (local instructions, fault-finding guides for locos, company procedural documents etc etc), as well as the rule book for the national rail network. This is actually not a company issue item, but I got tired of dragging around on one A4 and one A5 binder chock full of papers, and switched over to electronic form instead. Also, I can play "Bubble Breaker" on my PDA.

"The little Green Book" -a small A6-size waterproof binder with a guide for faultfinding, diagnosing and reporting of freight wagons and dangerous goods.

Usually also a small notebook and a pencase with some pens and pencils

A MP3-player

Often also a small CD case, with CD:s to listen to in the cab (we have car stereos mounted in the cabs of most of our locos, seen as a mental health preservation device when on long-distance runs)

A packed breakfast/lunch/dinner -whatever. Can actually get quite large, if I am to be away for an extended period of time. And while we do have breaks and lay-overs, they can be at all sorts of hours and in all sorts of places -not neccesarily ones with an open restaurant or grocery store, or even any sort of civilization at all. I usually also pack some snacks and fruits.

Some "energy bars" as emergency rations if I happen to get stuck somewhere. While middle Sweden is not as bad as the far north, some railway lines still run quite a bit from the nearest road or cleared land, and you could get stuck for quite a while if something happened.

A water bottle

Something to read - right now a collection of Avram Davidson's "Dr. Ezterhazy" stories.

A miniature plush rat -a gift from Darlica, to keep me company in hotel rooms far away.

And a change of underwear & t-shirt etc, as well as perhaps an extra sweater or so, if I am staying away for more than a day.

In my pockets are:

Private mobile
Company mobile
Private keys
Work keys -a big lump of them
A small electric torch
Wallet
Fisherman's Friend throat lozenges
Pens & pencils
Sunglasses
Odds & sods
And probably some lint, too.


I have never dared weigh my "work-pack", but it is not light! I have colleagues who travel with significantly less, but I (and Darlica) like to come prepared for just about anything. And isn't it always so, that when you take something out of your pack, you find yourself needing it shortly afterwards?

So, dear Monastarians, what do you lug around in the course of your day?

Hi everybody! I am new to the site, so an introductory post might be in order.

I got lured to this forum by Darlica, who also happens to be my Other Half. We live together in a small-ish flat in Stockholm, stumbling over each other, books, computer cables and artist supplies.

Having gotten a degree, first in history and social anthropology, and then studied systems development and man-machine-system interaction, it is almost entirely logical that I have worked as a train driver for the last fifteen years or so. I started out doing Metro work, but have recently moved on and now work for a freight company, driving goods trains over most of the southern half of Sweden.

When not indulging in trains, I like to read a lot, grow plants -mainly medicinal herbs and spices, especially chili varieties, play RPG:s and board games, cooking and baking, and tickle Darlica. I have also been very active as a union representative for the trade union I am a member of, but have recently cut down on my activism, since I was on the verge of a burn-out.

Age-wise, the thirty year crisis ceased to be a joke quite some time ago, and I am now looking confidently towards the rapidly approaching forty-years crisis

My name, Lindorm, is the name for a local variety of dragon or wyvern-like creature living in southern Sweden, especially in the area where my mother's family comes from. They are generally portrayed as being somewhat grumpy loners, a bit of shrewd philosophers, and sometimes quite helpful to people they took a liking to.