...when I worked for the Railway, one of my assignments was in converting all the historic systems that ran on the ICL1900 series to the newer ICL2900 series. Though they were written in what was ostensibly a "portable" language, the architectures of the machines were completely different, and the conversion was a far from trivial job (particularly the data).
We contracted a San Fran firm who had automated tools to help with the job, but these ran on IBM machines. At the time, the only IBM mainframes BR had were in Blandford House, near Euston, and ran TOPS, the on-line, operational wagon (and loco) control system.
There were two machines (for fail-over) and the off-line/standby machine was largely idle overnight. We used to travel up from Reading for the night shift to use it to convert data. On shift change, the two night operators would do a quick health-check of the on-line machine, look at us and say "the other one's all yours", pull their sleeping bags and mats out, and curl up under the console and off to sleep.
We largely taught ourselves IBM operations! ;-)
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