Sometimes the announcements from Wood Lane are clear, precise and understandable, sometimes they just spout garbage. Yesterday we were told that a passenger had collapsed on the WB platform at PER, that staff were dealing with the situation and that we should approach with “more caution”. About 20 minutes later we were told that the ambulance crew had removed the passenger from the EB platform and that we could resume “normal speed”.

Now I’m sure you all know that normally the trains on the Central Line drive themselves in Auto and they will run at whatever speed the system tells them to; in Auto there is “normal speed” and nothing else unless Wood Lane put in a “temporary speed restriction”. If they wanted us to reduce speed while going through PER then usually we would have been instructed to switch into Coded Manual between HAL and GRE or GRE to HAL depending on which side the passenger was; maybe the passenger was in such agony they rolled from one side to the other

All I can assume is that this particular bod has come over from another line that doesn’t use ATO and forgot that here we don’t normally drive “on the handle”. Or perhaps we just need a bit more training on announcements.