I rotated through the Christchurch wagons and locomotive maintenance depots and ended up in the Performance Engineering office. This allowed me to take part in a variety of work through different departments in Rolling Stock Asset Services.

6.30 AM 

I start the day with breakfast and pack my lunch for the day. I wear my steel caps, work pants and KiwiRail high vis gear to work every day, since I worked on-site around the locos.

8.00 AM 

Get to work and settle in by planning out what I want to accomplish that day. I’d have a catch-up with the other interns and the performance engineer. Each Monday I would set the week’s goals, so the rest of the week was prepared.

9.00 AM 

After I have set myself up, I would go out to the yard and complete tasks. One task I had was to collect serial numbers of components on the locomotives so I would go all around the yard climbing up and down all the locomotives. I also would go for walks when I found myself sitting for a bit too long or stuck on a task and needed a breather. There is always someone around to ask questions to when you don’t know something. Everyone always seemed happy to teach me and pass on a bit of their knowledge or give me a bit of their story.

11.00 AM 

Some days are cooler than others like when a steam train from the west coast came through for a service! I was lucky to see it because the train was on its way to the North Island for permanent relocation.

2.00 PM

As an intern, I sat in the national Performance Engineering Team’s meetings. This would take place in the afternoon and the most recent short failure reports were discussed. I wrote up a short failure report and reported during one of these meetings. Writing up a short failure report felt a lot like detective work with all the investigations to find out the source of the failure.

4.00 PM

It was time to go home after a productive day. Finishing at 4.00 pm meant I got a bit more of an afternoon. There is a flexibility to start times so I could start earlier and finish earlier if that’s what I wanted but starting at 8 and finishing at 4 worked well for me.

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