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MONDAY 27TH MARCH 2006

Today we had to start early which meant getting the same train from Farnborough as Pat (one of the guard managers at Basingstoke responsible for me and my fellow 'student' Matthew), this train being the 07:33 arriving 07:58. We waited for a short while before a man walked us to the relevant building which was only about 10 minutes from the station.

Upon arrival we went up to the fifth floor and into the South West Trains reception area. It was a while before everyone arrived however once they had we were taken into a room. There were 17 people who had been accepted into the company, plus Matthew and myself, which made 19 people. We sat in three groups of five plus one group of four and these were to be our 'teams'. My team consisted of myself, Matthew, a future Fratton administrator, a future Wimbledon control centre assistant and a future station assistant at Clapham Junction. We introduced ourselves to our group and appointed a team leader who then had to introduce each one of us to everyone else in the room. We also had an 'Employee Handbook' each which covers most things you could possibly need to know about the company and global things covering all aspects of working with South West Trains.

We were then each given three/four pages of questions that we had to find out in our teams by looking at various source materials including route diagrams, the employee handbook etc. We also learnt about various key figures and statistics such as the amount of journeys, amount of stations, amount of managed stations, number of passengers etc. You tend to think that much of a company's traffic in and around London are commuters but in fact this isn't the case. The only reason this seems true is because there are so many of them travelling but in just a short space of time. 40% of customers are commuters, 40% of customers are leisure travellers which leaves the remaining 20% of customers being business customers. These are the three groups that South West Trains uses to identify it's passengers.

We then had a break and I looked out of the window and in this space of ten minutes the 'Blue Pullman' just happened to run by ECS. Normally this train is top-and-tailed with the two 'Blue Pullman' liveried Class 47s but for some reason only one of them was on the working. I texted dad and 15 minutes later it passed his window at work. I also met someone who I had seen on various internet forums for a couple years but never spoke to. His name is Francis Oldfield and he seems very friendly - good to see a fairly familiar face. I am in the same course as him on Wednesday too!

After that break we had another set of questions to answer and discussed various issues that were displayed in a power point presentation. Lunchtime soon came around where South West Trains provided yet another delicious buffet lunch (we had one on our last Wednesday's company day too!).

After lunch we learnt about the company's vision - "We will give our customers the best service they have ever had". We discussed what exactly this meant and the various ways it could be interpreted. We then wrote our responses to three questions onto our team's flipchart and discussed our findings with the other teams. A lady took over from there and told us about passengers' expectations, why the various staff roles are important, why the company should set a good image for itself etc. We also discussed why and what the media feel and say about the railways and how they find the bad points in good news such as you tell them that you have given Yeovil and hourly service then they turn around and say "but it takes 10 minutes longer, doesn't it?". After that we had to think up of questions to ask the manager.

Session four then took place after a brief break and this consisted of the various benefits of working for South West Trains and the values & behaviours. The values and behaviours are:

• Teamwork
• Learning
• Respect
• Professionalism
• Communication
• Honesty
• Recognition

Also discussed were the business goals and how to deliver them. Then, after a short recap of the day, we were given our own South West Trains watches and the day ended after seven and a half hours. I wonder where I'll be tomorrow in my official cabride!

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