An inspection pit is a trench in the workshop floor that a bus is driven over so an engineer can stand underneath it. Pit three has a light on a cable and a creeper trolley for lying on. The light comes on at two every night. The trolley rolls from one end of the pit to the other, slowly, with the stops an engineer makes under a bus, and there is no bus over pit three, and there is the sound of a spanner.
I am the workshop foreman at a bus depot and pit three is the one I do not allocate.
The pits.
Four trenches in the workshop floor, a bus length each, with steps at one end and a light on a reel and a creeper trolley, which is a board on wheels for lying on under an axle. A bus is driven over the pit and the engineer goes down and does whatever is on the job card, and the job card is signed when it is done.
Pit three's light comes on at two.
What happens.
The light on the reel comes on, and it moves, the way it moves when somebody pulls the cable along with them. The trolley rolls from the steps end to the far end, slowly, with stops. At the stops there is the sound of tools. A spanner on a nut. The ratchet. A hammer, twice, the blows a man gives a thing that is stuck. A grunt. The trolley rolls on.
It takes about an hour. It is the time it takes to do an underside inspection on a double decker, and it goes down the pit in the order an inspection goes, front axle, gearbox, prop, back axle, and at the end the light goes off and the trolley is at the far end and in the morning it is at the steps.
There is no bus over pit three. The pit is open to the roof. Whatever is being inspected is not there.
What has been checked.
The light, replaced. The trolley, taken out and put in the store, and the sound of it rolling came from the empty pit anyway, and the trolley in the store had moved.
The pit, at two, by me, down the steps, at the bottom, with the light on. The trolley came past me. The board on its wheels, on the concrete, slow, past my boots, with nothing on it, and stopped a yard on, under where the gearbox would be, and the spanner started, and I looked up and there was the roof of the workshop and the lights and nothing else, and the spanner was working on nothing, and I could hear the nut coming loose.
Who.
I did not have to ask, which is the case with most things in this depot. The old hands have it as a story. An engineer, in the eighties, on pit three, under a bus, at night, on his own, which was allowed then, and the bus had been left in gear and the handbrake had not held and it had rolled, a foot, and he had been under the gearbox, and that had been enough.
The job card, the old hands said, was found on the bench, half signed. Front axle, ticked. Gearbox, not.
He is finishing the inspection. Every night. Front axle, gearbox, prop, back axle. He gets to the gearbox and he does the gearbox and he goes on, and he has done it every night for forty years, and nobody signs the card.
What is done about it.
Pit three is not allocated and the workshop runs on three pits and the office has asked why, and I have said pit three has a drainage problem, which it does not.
What I do.
I run the workshop.
I made a job card. A blank one, the current form, with the fleet number left empty and the job written as, underside inspection, nightly, and the four items listed, and I put it on the bench by pit three at close.
In the morning it is ticked. All four. In pencil, in a hand that is not one of my lads', and at the bottom, where it says engineer, there are initials, and where it says checked by, there is nothing.
So I check it. Every morning. I go down pit three, which is empty, and I look up at the roof, and I look at the four items on the card, and I initial checked by, and I write the date, and I put the card in the file with the others, and the file has a section now, at the back, for pit three, and it is thick, and it is the only section in the file where every inspection has been done.
The trolley is at the steps in the morning. Where you leave it when you have finished and come up. He comes up now. He did not, before. The trolley was at the far end, where he stopped, and it is at the steps, and the light is wound onto its reel, and I think a man who has been under a bus for forty years is climbing out of the pit at the end of his shift because somebody, at last, is checking his work.