Monday was strike day, I’d been monitoring the Central Line at home while I got ready for work and when I left we were running EPP and HAI into HOL on the east end of the line and WHC to EAB and WER on the west. By the time I’d got in, booked on and been handed a job someone had decided to run LES to WHC. I have absolutely no idea of the logic behind this decision, I am but a mere TOp and have no insight into the workings of the higher minds that run the Tube.

Half the stations were closed and nothing was open between BOS and WHC. This doesn’t mean that there were no staff there rather that there were insufficient numbers to meet the legal minimum staffing level. If any of these properly “under ground” stations had been totally unmanned then we would have had to tip the passengers out at the last open station and run through empty. Fire Regs.

The other minor problem was that Auto can only handle one station closed at a time, if there are two consecutive stations closed it goes through the first one but stops at the second so we had to drive the trains manually. So much for us Central Line drivers being nothing more than “door openers”, yah boo sucks GLA Tories!

Anyway after I’d done my first WB trip to WHC NHG reopened. Unfortunately I was changing ends so I didn’t hear the radio message from Wood Lane informing us of this so when the signal cleared I cheerfully announced that the train wouldn’t be stopping till BOS. When I pulled into NHG and saw passengers on the platform I had to call Wood Lane to ask if the station was really open. During a previous strike a Jubilee Line TOp opened up the doors at Canada Water when it was closed and the poor punters were stuck in there for 40 minutes. Whoops.