‘Without us, no wheel would turn’: the unsung heroes keeping England’s transport moving

It’s close enough to see the shimmering air and smoke as nose tyres hit the tarmac. “An A380 will put down as much rubber as a car’s entire tyre,” Jack Quantick-Thorne says. He knows – part of his job is to ensure the runway team scrapes it off and patches things up overnight. And it is all recycled, he adds.

The airfield operations officer is not in the limelight much, but is one of a host of unsung workers keeping transport moving. And some jobs far from the public eye turn out to be not only essential, but surprisingly challenging.

Jack Quantick-Thorne, airfield operations officer, Heathrow

Passengers might only catch a glimpse of Quantick-Thorne from a window seat on landing, if he grabs the paddles to marshal a plane into the exact designated spot at the stand. “People just think you’re that person with the table tennis bats,” he grimaces slightly, as the Guardian requests a demonstration. “That’s like 5% of my job.”

In fact, most planes are now brought to the stand via laser-guided electronic displays. But human marshalling remains a crucial backup. Brandishing the paddles, Quantick-Thorne beckons in a taxiing British Airways arrival, the pilot peering down from the cockpit and steering 50 tonnes of plane straight towards him. The nosewheel travels bang on the guideline, stopping exactly in position for the airbridge to swing in and allow passengers to disembark.

Nerve-racking? “No. When you’ve got a really big plane, an A380, you need a second marshal right by the wheel to check it’s stopped in the right place,” he says.

Back in the car, the job continues: “I’m patrolling, I’m looking around, scanning everything – is the refueller doing his job properly, has the aircraft got chocks under its wheels?”

That includes monitoring the road system under Heathrow’s airfields, recognising every vehicle and checking any infringement: drivers here can also clock up points on their licence, if he spots them.

Officers also need to look out for wildlife – particularly birds, a serious danger for jet planes (and vice versa). How does he deal with them? “We’ve got methods of dispersal,” says the airfield operations officer.

These, marvellously, turn out to be speakers on the roof of the van, which play a range of bird sounds: “If I saw a flock of starlings, if I played a starling noise, the starling would think, ‘Oh, maybe there’s a predator nearby,’ and they fly off.”

And, he demonstrates, “I’ve got common gull. Black-headed gull. I’ve got a falcon”.

Are there falcons? “No,” he explains patiently. “So you think about it from a bird’s point of view. If there’s a pigeon over there, best play a falcon so it will fly off.”

If he now knows birds, it’s the planes that drew him here. He was previously at Nats, the air traffic control centre in Swanwick, managing the planes, but never up close. There is more to it than the paddles – but, he confesses, he takes every opportunity to use them, and records each plane that he has marshalled, including every aircraft in BA’s short-haul fleet.

Being a pilot is the dream, he admits, but the prohibitive training costs – £100,000 or more – put it out of reach. For an enthusiast, he reckons the job is the next best thing. Last year he had to tow the Concorde that still stands at the edge of the airfield across for an exhibition: “It was the first time one had moved in years – incredible to see in the rear-view mirror.”

Chris Thackaberry, network traffic controller, Transport for London

The day starts in Victoria Station House overlooking the bus terminus, a grand old building that looks considerably less so inside, where Chris’s desk is surrounded by hundreds of cardboard diversion signs.

About 500 of the capital’s 19,000 bus stops are on his patch in Westminster – home to some of Britain’s most congested streets, where dozens of bus routes cross. Roadworks are the bane of the bus and Thackaberry’s job is to keep them moving – armed with a van, pliers and zip ties.

Sometimes he can plan for roadworks months ahead. But other days are less predictable, when life suddenly blocks a route: “It could be a broken-down vehicle or a burst water main, but I’ve had windows falling out of buildings, I’ve had a collapsed horse on a bridge. I had an upside down Lamborghini in Piccadilly … I don’t know if it was sticking to the 20mph limit.”

His incident response van contains an orderly standing desk area and even a printer to rustle up more signs if needed, as well as spill dry sacks, ready to suck up any diesel or oil leaked over the road.

It also has two cylinders affixed to the wall containing “spit kits” – swabs to pick up any saliva aimed at staff, with clear bags to seal, ready to take the evidence to the police. “It’s just part and parcel of when you’re working in London, for anyone in uniform.”

In a sweltering Trafalgar Square, as he hunts in the midst of four lanes of traffic to hitch his cardboard signs to any available piece of spare street furniture, the complexity of the puzzle becomes clearer.

“There’s so many routes go through here, we’re fighting with ourselves for space.”

Sarah, railway signaller, York

Gone are most of the signal boxes of old: these days, Britain’s railway is mostly controlled from one of 12 remote centres. From a windowless room in York, trains right down the East Coast mainline are guided on their way.

“In the old days, it was lever pulling,” says Sarah. “Now it’s a click of the mouse instead. Like a computer game scenario, but it’s real track, real trains, real people. We have to manually click, signal to signal, for every train that comes through our patch.”

Signallers have five screens at eye level showing the railway, and five above with timetables and traffic management information.

“When you first start the job, it feels so far removed. There’s no windows, it’s like a black hol