I have experienced quite a few strange things in the
years I’ve been a TOp but yesterday was something new; getting out of work
early because we didn’t have enough staff.
My duty was one of those unbalanced affairs that the clever people who write the rosters and timetables at 55 Broadway come up with, little work
on the first half, everything on the second with nearly 4 hours between the end
of the meal break and the finish.
The problem was that HAI had quite a few duties uncovered,
one of which was meant to take me off at LES at the end of my second half and because of the absences all the spares were busy. Normally if
there is no one available to take you off you have to take the train to the nearest depot or sidings
and we get hit for the overtime but as my second half was so lengthy I’d have
gone over the 4 hour 15 minute limit. So instead of going WHC-WER-DEB-WHC-LES
I was told to go WHC-WER-HvN and stable. I suppose they could have short turned me at LES EB or
MAA WB but as this was in the middle of the evening peak I guess Wood Lane
thought it would be too much hassle and it would be simpler to just get me out of the way.
Wood Lane radioed me to inform me of this fortuitous
decision when I was at WHC EB, when I got to SHB the platform dot matrix was
still showing DEB but when I got to HOP it had changed to HvN. And then it got weird, at NHG it was displaying
WHC, back to HvN at QUE and WHC again at LAG.
It alternated all the way through to BAN and LIS which both showed me as
WHC but after BEG it stuck with HvN.
The fun was you could spot which SATS were paying
attention and which weren’t; the attentive ones were peering at the front of
the train as I arrived on the platform to check where I was going, the less attentive
ones hadn’t bothered looking at the dot matrix until I arrived and started the
PA “This train calls all stations to….” before they noticed the error.
I ended up getting off the train in HAI depot about the
time I should have been leaving DEB on the WB, all of which illustrates that
putting more trains on a timetable and actually running a service are two very different things.
Perhaps they were considering sending you via WOO and HAI :P
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't just your train. I was waiting for an Epping or Debden train that I could physically fit onto at Bank eastbound at about 6:45 one evening last week. I was very surprised that the DMI could even display a White City indication! That was a Hainault via Newbury Park train as well iirc.
ReplyDeleteChris, as I always recommend to the customers at my station, take the first train and change at the last possible station before the route diverges. Sometimes, even with a "Good Service" message going out, trains are reformed (destinations changed) further down the line. This happens on a lot of Underground lines.
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