76017 being prepared for today’s service

My second full turn at Rolvenden signalbox. It all went well until a crossing move involving the down Pullman and the up A set.

When changing the points to allow the Pullman to depart I got an “out of correspondence “ light and no indication to show which way the points lay. This locked the signal as it would have been unsafe to allow the train to pass over points whose lay we didn’t know.

I tried working the points again to no effect. In these circumstances a points operator is appointed to wind the points into the correct position and clip with a G clamp. With this achieved I was able to dispatch the Pullman.

This hiccup delayed trains for over 30 minutes. The crews worked their magic and caught up and we ended up finishing on time.

Oddly enough when the points operator wound the points for the next train the out of correspondence light went out and I had the correct indication in the box. A mystery!

Those 30 minutes were a little fraught but we got through it and were fortunate to have a points winder in the yard.