Wednesday 31 August 2016


My apologies to Olivia, the new TOp who forgot to open the doors on the first weekend of Night Tube, it seems whoever told me the story embellished it somewhat and she never actually left the cab.  To be fair at one time or another we’ve all forgotten to open the doors when finishing our shift or going on a meal break but none of us were unfortunate enough to have a BBC 3 camera crew in attendance.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p045vbdl/night-tube-the-first-weekend

I’ve not heard any entertaining stories from the second weekend of Night Tube but there was a rather unpleasant rumour going round that some female TOps were refusing to walk down Wood Lane between WHC station and the sidings under the Westfield as it was unsafe to do so alone.  I've asked around - DTSMs, union reps, Night Tube TOps - and it seems it simply isn't true, it never happened, a steaming pile of grade A bullshit, complete and utter bollocks.

One of the people I spoke to even gave me the name of the person who started the rumour and sadly it doesn't come as a surprise, the person mentioned has made disparaging remarks about female TOps in the past.  Thankfully I've also been told they're going to be leaving soon and I suspect they won't be missed.

The Notting Hill Carnival came and went, despite there being record arrests this year we didn't seem to have much trouble on the Tube apart from the overcrowding.  The platform at NHG got so crowded on Sunday afternoon that we were having to hold trains on the WB, moving up one station at a time while the platform was cleared and by the time I left NHG I was 16 minutes late.

Yesterday was my rest day so I went to Dagenham to see Old Mother shrugged which now takes a lot longer as the Gospel Oak to Barking Line is closed for electrification work but travelling on the District Line I saw a gentleman returning home with his costume after what appeared to have been an exhausting weekend.  Must be hard work dancing two days straight, no wonder he'd dropped off!




5 comments:

  1. We're so short staffed on our end of the line that we've had unstaffed stations with faulty OPO Monitors and so they had to stop a train on the W/B, have the driver run over to the E/B to give the driver assisted dispatch before heading back to his own train. That's the first time I encountered that?

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    1. The Rulebook says that the line controller must "non stop" a Category A platform if staff are not available for assisted dispatch, what it doesn't say is what to do if a TOp discovers that the platform monitors aren't working although rather than waiting for another TOp to come and assist I'd have thought closing the doors by the porter buttons would be the safest (and quickest option) option. I'll raise it with my H&S Rep

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    2. Yeah station is definitely cat A on both platforms.

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  2. If this is true......then assume it's ASLEF drivers (being a ASLEF site) because no way on earth would RMT drivers stand for that sort of nonsense at all! A Farce if true!

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    1. I spoke to one of the Night Tube part timers a few weeks back, when they were training they had a visit from the ASLEF and RMT reps. The ASLEF reps spent their allotted time explaining what a union does, the benefits a union offers and the importance of joining a union. The RMT reps spent their allotted time slagging off ASLEF.

      All the trainees in that group joined ASLEF. Thank you for your negativity.

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