Dispatches from a Cargo Cultist

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

Gaffer and then the shark! I want to know how one ended up in the metro.

[Lindorm]

What have I set in motion now...

I'll start with the shark story, since it is short and easy to write. I'll post the gaffer tape story later this evening or early tomorrow.


...Aaaaanyhow, one thing I learned quickly whilst working as a Metro train driver is that the impossible usually happens on a regular basis, miracles about once a week, and unbelievable coincidences are 26½ to a dozen. A Tim Powers story is generally a good description of a slow day in the Stockholm Metro.

A friend of mine who works in the rail industry within Britain once forwarded an internal delay report to me, stating that a train was delayed due to a Portakabin mobile toilet having been blown on to the line one stormy, and landed in front of the train. I had a good laugh, and forwarded the mail to a few colleagues in the metro. One of them, H, then a line controller and mobile supervisor, now a line manager, responed by asking me if I had heard the story of the shark at Station X? I hadn't, so I called him up and asked him to tell me the story. Here goes:

H and I have always agreed on one thing: Sundays are deceptive, fickle and untrustworthy days. Especially afternoons and evenings. Sundays are usually slow, with low passenger loadings, few trains out and about, nothing much happening, dragging you into a long, boring and dull shift, that never seems to end. And all too often (but not so often as to make it a regular occurence), just as you are about to enter a blissful state of coma, Something happens. What Something is, varies from time to time, but it is generally a case of mayhem, chaos or utter and complete weirdness.

H was the mobile operations manager for the northwest sector that night, out and about in his response car. He had been checking up on a false alarm from a water pump at a station, when his mobile phone went off. It was the duty shift leader for the line control centre for the metro line we both worked on. The shift leader was a bit agitated, and concerned about the mental state of one of the emplyees, specifically the station attendant at station X.

The station attendant had been calling the line control centre several times, being very upset about something. Unfortunately, the station attendant's first language wasn't Swedish, and since he was a bit agitated, he had apparently forgotten most of what swedish he knew, but he was trying to say something about big teeth in the booking hall. Was there someone trying to bite the concrete wall or eat a litter bin? Had there been a fight, and there was now blood, teeth and sundry body parts all over the floor? Had someone tried to bite the station attendendant? Apparently not, but they could not understand what the problem was, with the only clarification beiung something on the lines of "teeth swimming".

Now, station X is a bit of a dull backwater, but it has not been known to promote insanity among the station staff posted there, at least not more prone to do so than any other station on the network. Was the attendant drunk? Possibly, but it was a sunday, and all the state liquor monopoly stores are closed on sundays. Line control being in a quandry, they did what confused controllers usually do, and dispatched H to the station to check up on the station attendant.

H arrived at the station, and entered teh staff rooms through the back door. He was somewhat nervous, isnce he didn't know what was waiting for him. A drunk psycho station attendant, wielding a ticket stamp as a weapon? He was met by a charming, elderly, small man of north african extraction, wearing immaculate uniform, who offered him a cup of mint tea, and then threw out an arm towards the booking hall with a "Regardez!"

There, in the booking hall, was a shopping cart.

In the shopping cart was a small shark, about a metre and a half long, of a variety that is native to the west coast of Sweden. It was not stuffed, but it was quite dead, and somewhat smelly, too. The shark was not in possession of a valid ticket or permit to travel.

H contacted line control, who asked him to repeat what he just had said, and then asked him to please remove said piscine from the public view, and perhaps he ought to call the police and inquire as to if anyone had reported a lost shark. H did call the police, whose reply was on the lines of "What? followed by Don't ask us, ask the National Musuem of Biology, they ought ot open on monday.

H finally took matters in his own hands, and threw the shark into a skip standing next to a building site a short way from the station. He then went back to the station and had another cup of tea. Since the station attendant had been on his meal break when the shark was placed in the booking hall, it has never been revealed who placed it there, and why.

The shopping cart was appropriated by the station cleaner, who needed something to cart around his anti-graffitti materials in.

[pieces o nine]

The shark was not in possession of a valid ticket or permit to travel.

BTW: ye tell a good yarn, lad.
Ye could 'ave posted this in thee "Long Winded Tales of the Ocean" fer the pyrates.   

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

Deeply curious. 

[Pachyderm]

An excellent tale, well told. Are you sure you aren't a skald?

Now, about the gaffer tape...

[anthrobabe]

You do tell stories well.

sound like Sundays around here--just when the coma sets in--WHAM it his the fan.....

[Lindorm]

Thanks for the nice words, everyone. 

I thought I had the gaffer tape girls story saved on my computer, but apparently I had not. I've been really busy lately, so I haven't had the time to re-write it from scratch, but hopefully, I'll be able to do something about it tomorrow.

[beagle]

You have Sweden's justifiably high (so I've heard) reputation for material in this area to live up to.

You could always supply the stories in serialized form, like the tales of the Thousand and One Nights, and if you ever run out we will make you eat Bart's famous fish head stew for breakfast next day.

[Lindorm]

Aaaaa-choooo!
This was a dusty thread, but I'll risk resurrecting it.

I really ought ot write up the story of the gaffer tape girls someday, oughtn't I?

Meanwhile, things have been somewhat grim on the railways -the economic slump hit us hard, and quite a few people were made redundant at the beginning of this year. Unfortunately, most of those redundancies were operational staff (driver, shunters, etc), so when summer and the vacation periods came on, we suddenly had no staff left to operate the trains. Whoops. The managing director got the sack this autumn, and the new MD started out by launching a reorganisation of our bloated headquarters, who were sacrosanct in the first round of redundancies, but now seems to face quite a few axings, while we have actually been recruiting some new operations staff in certain places. So it goes.

Otherwise, things have mostly been puttering along in their normal pace -which, since we are talking of the railway here, includes quite a bit of insanity and oddness.

There was the day when  all the diesel shunting locos in the yard I am based at broke down. First, the guys doing the shunting in Södertälje Harbour collided with a lorry that ran a red light at a railway crossing, so they needed a new loco. Then, one loco refused to move in any direction, unless you cut out half the traction motors, followed by the third loco that had an interesting little fault with the load regulator: every time you notched the throttle up over step 3, the motor went to idle and the fuel pump shut off. Great. Fortunately, we had a last diesel shunter available, that just had come out of maintenace in the workshops, and I was sent to pick it up. When I got to the loco, I was greeted by a charming little fountain of greenish water from the long hood of the loco. Yup, coolant leak. At first, the guys in the workshop tried to fob it off with the explanation that they had probably just overfilled it a little, or perhaps there were some air pockets in the coolant loop. When I explained to them that I cxould actually see the coolant level decreasing in the sight glass as I talked to them over the phone, they fell silent.

Not much was done that day -we did manage do to some shunting of the unelectrified tracks in the goods yard with a electric loco and a loong rake of wagons to reach the wagons parked on the unelectrified tracks, but the outlying industries and sidings had to wait.

And then, we had the afternoon when a newish and rather unexperienced driver didn't read his wagon lists and duty sheets properly, and so sent a train on it's merry way to Malmö in the south of Sweden. Problem was, those wagons were supposed to go on the ferry to Finland next morning.

The funniest part of the whole story is that the woman handling the bookings of wagons to Finland has her office next to the main goods yard in Malmö, and sent us a fax on the lines of "I see some wagons I can recognize outside my office window. Please explain why I can see these wagons, and why they aren't in Moominland. "

Then, there was the time when I was out shunting a local industry south of Stockholm -a factory making pasta, cake mixes and industrial flour mixes e t c. Their loading tracks are situated on a very steep incline, and the tankers loaded with bulk flour are quite heavy -around 90 tons per wagon, so you have to stay on your toes, especially when it is wet and slippery. One early autumn day, with a fine drizzle, I almost ran over a bunch of suits who were standing in one of the loading bays, busily taking photos of the bay, and the train, and just about anything, and didn't really understand why I was braking so heavily, blowing the whistle on the loco and waving to them to get out of the way. Must have been because I was such a cheerful chap, mustn't it?  I did manage to stop in time, so no harm done, and they eventually slunk away after I made my foul mood known.

The catch? The suits  were a bunch of Six Sigma Production Process Quality Improvment "experts". I am not sure how production processes get improved by being run over by a train, but then I am not a consultant, either.

All in a days work...

[pieces o nine]

...

The catch? The suits  were a bunch of Six Sigma Production Process Quality Improvment "experts". I am not sure how production processes get improved by being run over by a train, but then I am not a consultant, either.

...

I believe you've hit upon a solution that would significantly help *many* industries under the assistance of 6Σ...   

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I had the title of 'consultant' attached to my job description for a while, although in reality I was a developer and occasional project manager. True consultants walk in suits with an air of superiority (or perhaps their heads are buoyant?) and incapable of being run over by a train... until they are!

[Lindorm]

...

The catch? The suits  were a bunch of Six Sigma Production Process Quality Improvment "experts". I am not sure how production processes get improved by being run over by a train, but then I am not a consultant, either.

...

I believe you've hit upon a solution that would significantly help *many* industries under the assistance of 6Σ...   

So, when we reach 3.4 flattened consultants per million corp-speak catchphrases, we will achieve enlightment and the rapture will be nigh? Or perhaps Cthulhu?

[Aggie]

I had the title of 'consultant' attached to my job description for a while, although in reality I was a developer and occasional project manager. True consultants walk in suits with an air of superiority (or perhaps their heads are buoyant?) and incapable of being run over by a train... until they are!

Dunno about suits, environmental consultants walk around in fireproof coveralls and try not to get run over by heavy equipment.

[Pachyderm]

Ecological consultants tend to wander round idly wondering when the bleeding will stop...

[Bluenose]

Quite a number of years ago I used to know a consultant who had a very simple - and effective - modus operandi.  What he would do when called in to a job, after having all the discussions with management etc, was to put on a pair of overall and go out onto the factory floor and get to know the workers.  After a period of suspicion (what's he up to?) the workers would usually tell him what was wrong and - more importantly - how it could be fixed.  He would then take the info back to his office, write it up in a nice shiny report and send it in with an invoice for big fat fee.  He had a reputation for getting excellent results and made a lot of money.  He said it spoke volumes about the management of many companies that this approach never occurred to themselves.