There was a strike that didn’t happen on the Jubilee Line
over aggressive management practises but which the media trivialised as being
about tea and toilets. Harry Beck has
been honoured with a Blue Plaque at the house where he was born which is in the
street next to mine. As the wonderful Diamond
Geezer pointed out he only lived there until he was two then moved to Highgate,
the house he lived in when he drew his Tube Map is in West Finchley and there’s a
Blue Plaque already there so this seems a bit of duplication.
There seems to be a shortage of TOps on the west end of
the line, I’ve covered for WHC and WER over the last few weeks as well as the usual HAI
and LOU duties. At one point we had HAI
spares covering LES turns because our spares were all running for the other end. We’re supposed to be getting loads of new
TOps to enable the introduction of new timetable with more evening and weekend
trains as well as later running and a Sunday service on the W&C but we’re
struggling for staff to cope with the one we have at the moment.
The new timetable has now been put back to September
which isn’t anything new, I can’t think of one instance in the 15 years or so
that I’ve worked for LUL when a timetable has been introduced when it was first
meant to but this time the trouble of the Bakerloo Line with detraining at
Queen’s Park seems to have given management reason to reconsider introducing the same
regime on the Central. No doubt the bods
up at Timetables and Rosters are busy juggling times in order to give us the
extra minutes to close up trains and make sure that they're empty.
The only major hiccup was with the
planned engineering work last weekend, we were meant to be shut down both days between LIS and LES then round
the Loop to GRH. I was working Saturday
with a rather bizarre duty, I started
off on “Duty Manager’s Instruction” for a couple of hours, took the replacement
bus to STR, jumped on the mainline train into LIS and then made my way to
WHC. Having watched “Kung Fu Panda” I
went to LIS and back, had my meal break, did an EAB and back before heading back
to LES to finish my duty.
Not that I was alone spending more time travelling and sat around than driving
a train, there were some LES duties that ended at WER then coming back
across London in taxis after the close of traffic while HAI TOps were getting
taxied from there too. The night turns
were getting taxis to LIS, doing the last trains and then getting a taxi to LOU
to bring the first trains out in the morning.
Because of the cold weather Wood Lane were thinking about running sleet
trains and as both west end night turns would be coming east they were going to
send the night spare in yet another taxi to WER. Apparently we’re trying to cut costs on the
Tube…..
All of this was pretty pointless as the shutdown got cancelled,
the rumour being that someone left the juice on in a section where work was being
carried out and a piece of equipment got welded to the track. The engineers refused to continue on safety
grounds and Wood Lane were asking if the DTSMs could ring round everyone who
was due in Sunday to ask them to come in at the regular start times. How exactly how five DTSMs are meant to ring
up all the TOps late on a Saturday night is beyond me but the idea was quickly
rejected and the next day we ran a special ten-minute service while the replacement
buses sat unused at LES and STR.