I am now on Twitter

https://twitter.com/ShruggedAslef

I am also working on a new blog (not about working on the Central Line) which I hope to start later this year when the weather gets a bit nicer.

Seven years ago today I started blogging so it seems somewhat appropriate that I mark that anniversary by ending it.  I'm all blogged out, I keep thinking I should write something, I start to write a post and then simply can't be bothered to finish it.  It was fun for most of the time but from now on I will stick to posting comments on The Guardian website (mostly on London and transport issues), occasionally on the Evening Standard when I can do so without a feeling of vague disgust, District Dave's London Underground forum and WHU606.

A lot has changed on the Tube with ticket offices closing, station staff undergoing a complete re-organisation and Night Tube but my job is relatively the same as it was in 2010.  They can mess around with station staff, managers (currently undergoing another change with TOSMs and DTSMs being merged back into one grade) and technical staff but they still need one driver per train.  The big change will come with the introduction of driverless trains but even that will only happen if the TOps agree to it as was the case when they converted M1 in Paris.  I might get to enjoy the blissful irony of driving a driverless train but it now looks as if the Bakerloo Line will get the new trains before we do so I'll probably miss out on that experience.

I've got 10 years, 8 months and 20 days until I retire (although I might go a couple of weeks early, have Christmas and New Year 2027 off),  I'm going to dedicate more time to looking after Old Mother shrugged (now 87), looking after myself and getting out in London a bit more.  I've got memberships for both the Tate and the National Portrait galleries but haven't used either in the last six months, I've not been to the theatre in over a year while the last film I watched was "La La Land"!

If you're ever up by the Lea Bridge Road end of Leyton High Road and fancy a drink pop in the William IV, there might be an ex-blogging TOp propping up the bar on his Rest Day.

As I said in my last post I've had a lot to deal with recently and also I had two weeks annual leave at the end of November so I've not been keeping tabs on anything that didn't directly involve me at work.  That was why I wasn't aware until recently that RMT station and revenue staff have been refusing to work overtime since 23rd November with TSSA members joining them on 8th December.

Conveniently each Tube line has a Twitter accounts which records every closure along with the reason why they were closed so it was pretty easy to scroll back though the history to check.  In the last three  weeks HOP has been closed ten times due to "staff absence", if the Twitter feed is accurate then the worst instance was when it closed on 17 December at 18:34 and didn't reopen until 07:21 the next morning.  QUE has been closed five times, CHL four times with single closures at BOS, LIS, BAN, STP and BEG.  I'm sure if anyone had the time and inclination they could check the Twitter feeds of all the other lines to record all the closures.

Of course these are all Section 12 stations with minimum staffing levels, what isn't recorded on Twitter are the non-Section 12 stations (like Latimer Road) that can be left unstaffed and still remain open.  What I find utterly amazing about all this is that it is less than a year since Fit for the Future - Stations was rolled out with a complete reorganisation of station staff and the 37 station "Groups" replaced by 96 "Areas" so staffing levels shouldn't be this low this soon.

What it suggests to me is that there aren't enough Reserve staff available to cover sickness and annual leave.  When I first joined the Tube as a Station Assistant in 1997 I was on the Reserve of Edgware Road Group which covered Paddington, Edgware Road and Bayswater, I was familiarised at all three stations but how it works now that Paddington is an Area on its own I have no idea.

When management announced that the ticket offices were closing they promised that all stations would be staffed at all times when trains were running but they've not even managed to last a year before that promise has been broken.  RMT and TSSA are going on strike over this on 8 January and I can't say I blame them.

I’ve been rather busy with things recently and as I said in answer to a comment left by Lime Street Lad I’ve been feeling “blogged out”.  I thought I’d check in to confirm that I’m still alive and not retired, that’s still 11 years, 1 month and 20 days away – not that I’m counting.

When Fit for the Future - Stations was introduced TfL claimed that closing ticket offices would mean more staff available to assist passengers out on the stations but that didn’t seem to be the case Saturday night.  Around 19:00 we were told that HOP was closed although Wood Lane declined to give us a reason but when I checked the TfL website during my meal break it said that HOP was closed due to “staff absence” which made it sound as if it was all unexpected.  Temple was also closed for the same reason and around 23:00 CHL followed suit.

In the past there have been instances where stations in open section were left unstaffed if there was no Station Supervisor available to cover the night duty, SNA, BUH and THB were often candidates but apart from strike days I’m struggling to remember when Zone 1 stations were shut down because they fell below the minimum staff level.  So less than a year after LUL reduced station staff numbers by 952 and less than six months after Night Tube it seems that we don’t have enough staff to keep all our stations open, so much for promises of a world class Tube for a world class city!

In other news I’m sure some have noticed that recently the Central Line has got rather noisy, not with all those people listening to their smart phones on headphones but a very loud track noise.  At first it was noticeable at LIS-BEG EB and WAN-LES Outer Rail although now the LIS-BEG stretch doesn’t seem as bad as it was a few weeks ago.  Instead in the last few weeks it seems to have spread to WAN-RED Inner Rail and also to HOP-NHG EB where it seemed to get increasingly worse as the week went on.  Apparently there is remedial work planned involving some sort of rubber padding, let’s hope it works and it doesn’t spread to other sections.

Other than that I’ve had the pleasure to travel a bit and try public transport in other cities this year.  The Washington DC Metro seems quite dated and uncared for, the stations are almost Stygian in their depressing gloominess and the entrance to Dupont Circle station is like descending into the mouth of some benighted underworld on an endless escalator.  Some of the trains date from the 1970s and while some are only a dozen years old their design is virtually identical to the originals.  The brakes are savage, the seats are shiny plastic, my travelling companion was wearing a leather coat and the first time we came to a stop she slid off the seat.

I tried not to laugh.........

I went back to Paris in September although once again I didn’t get around to riding the driverless M1 or M14.  I like the Metro but at some stations the distance from the ticket hall to the platforms and the interchange between some lines can be so lengthy that you wonder why you bothered coming below ground as it might have been just as quick to walk it on the surface.  Oh the little cardboard five day tickets seem ridiculously flimsy and eminently loseable compared to Oysters

If you want a tour bus just ride the 42 which starts from the Gare du Nord, passes the Opera, the Eglise Madeleine, the Place de la Concorde, the Champs Elysees, the Champs de Mars and the Eiffel Tower although I could live without the cobblestones on the road.  I also discovered a taxi with a glass roof which was perfect for looking up at the architecture as we drove through the streets, we could definitely use some of those in London. 

Oh and if you’re going on the Eurostar book the 13:13 return from Gare du Nord as the complementary lunch was superb.  Finally I went to Manchester and was thoroughly impressed with the trams although the Old Trafford tram stop is a long hike from the stadium, especially after you’ve lost 4-1.

I'll be finishing before well before midnight on Christmas Eve, I'm not working Boxing Day or New Year's Eve so at least this year I'll be able to celebrate a bit.

Safe travels, peeps.

I try to avoid reading the Evening Standard but yesterday I neglected to take a book to work and there’s not much to do when you’re sat at the end of the line waiting for the signal to change.  I picked up a stray copy and having completed the Sudoku in far less time than it’s supposed to take I was left with the choice of either staring into space or reading the damn thing.  Amongst the usual puff pieces about the owner, friends of the owner and various members of the Delevingne clan there was a small article at the top of page 4 in the “News in brief” section about the introduction of one-hour “hopper” bus tickets next Monday.  Buried right at the bottom was a rather interesting and I would say rather important bit of news.

Apparently when Sadiq Khan appoints his new TfL board it will include a union representative, to be chosen by the unions.  This is nothing new, the New York Transit Authority has representatives from three unions on its board while union representation on boards is quite common in Germany.  Back in February Khan said that he’d “make sure there are zero days of strikes” while he was Mayor, hopefully having someone from the staff side at the heart of the decision making process will mean that in future LU management will be less confrontational in its approach to its employees.

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!

Two more jolly tales of Night Tube, the first concerns the much publicised simulation of vomit with vegetable soup during the test run on the weekend before Night Tube started.  Allegedly the staff given the task of applying the “vomit” were instructed to distribute it as widely as possible and they accomplished their task with such enthusiasm that the next morning we had to cancel a few trains as they were still being cleaned when they were supposed to enter service.

As the first night was undoubtedly a big event there were plenty of press and media in attendance along with more managers than you could possibly need.  One film crew was allowed to accompany one of our more photogenic new TOps as they worked their shift, filming events as they unfolded.  As the new TOp finished their shift at LES they closed down the train, removed their RKL220 key, stepped onto the platform and handed over to the relieving early turn TOp, all with the cameras recording every moment.

The relieving TOp pointed out that they’d forgotten to open the doors so the new TOp jumped back in the cab and pressed the open buttons.  The relieving TOp then suggested they might want to put their key back in because the buttons don’t work when a train is closed down.

All with the cameras recording every moment.

And so Night Tube has finally arrived.  The predictions of trains being mobile Sodom and Gomorrahs proved to be unfounded, perhaps deterred by the noticeable presence of the BTP who seemed to be everywhere, desperately roaming the line trying to find a train or station that didn’t already have BTP on it.  While things seem to have gone well from the public perception there have been rumours that things didn’t go quite so well behind the scenes and while I would usually try to verify whether these rumours are accurate I’m going to share them anyway simply because its too tempting not to.

The first thing I heard was that a number of the part time TOps didn’t last long enough to even see the start of Night Tube, the numbers quoted vary but it seems that when finally confronted with the prospect of working Friday and Saturday nights for the foreseeable future it was too much for them.  The plain fact is that we do have a high turnover with staff, for some the reality of working on the Tube isn’t quite as attractive as they imagined it to be, whether it be the shifts or what the job actually entails.

As most staff start out as CSAs this usually isn't a problem but it slightly different if they’ve spent four months training up as a TOp only to decide they don’t want to be a TOp after all.  Even if they’ve been a CSA or some other job that involves shift work they aren’t necessarily going to enjoy being a TOp, when I trained there I was with an SAMF for London Bridge who was also going to WHC, they lasted 6 months after their "sweat day" before they went back to stations because they couldn't stand the isolation of being in the cab on their own.

Another rumour was that there was a signal failure at LOU at some point which as I mentioned has trains moving in and out of the sidings throughout the night, something I’m told has already been the subject of complaints from the residents in the vicinity.  Also at LOU one of the new TOps supposedly managed to SPAD the signal on the middle platform coming out of the depot, not easy as the signal is a long way past the stopping mark.

However the prize for most interesting rumour must go to the tale of the TOp who went into HAI depot and seems to have got somewhat confused.  From the platforms at HAI there are two ways into the depot, either you go straight in or you go up the wash road, into the sidings behind GRH (known as the North Neck), change ends and then into the depot itself.

Allegedly the new TOp took the train through the wash, up into the North Neck, thought that was where they were to stable it and started walking back to HAI station.  All ended happily but I’m sure somebody will be checking to see which IOp signed off that particular TOp as fully trained on their HAI depot moves.

If any of it happened, of course……..

Recently I suggested that the rise in accidents at the Platform Train Interface was a result of stupid people paying more attention to their smart phones than where they were going but it seems the stupidity level has been given a boost.  Earlier this week “HSE Bulletin 22 in 2016” went up on the notice board to highlight the danger of Pokemon Go on the railways.

No, honestly, this is not a joke.

According to the bulletin “There have been reports of players attending railway stations and level crossings to try and capture the Pokemon characters they believe to be around.  Players are often so absorbed in the screens of their phones that they fail to appreciate their surroundings and the inherent dangers around them or whether access to an area is restricted.”

Got to catch 'em…SPLATT

Today is the start of the last week of WTT67 as next Sunday we enter the wonderful, wacky world of Night Tube, indeed one of the LES Mafias has already out up duties for the week ending 13th August.  Chris Taggart's objections were overruled on Tuesday and according to the report of the RMT National Executive Committee the Victoria Line “have had their roster issues amended” although I’ve not heard if the amendments meet the approval of the TOps on the Victoria Line.

We are told that LU will be "managing the noise and vibration issue that Night Tube presents to many residents living above or near the Tube".  Apparently the Central Line Track Team have installed "resilient track fastenings" which act like shock absorbers to muffle sounds at "key rail noise locations".  Obviously this will have no effect on the train whistles as they go in and out of LOU, HAI and WHC at regular intervals throughout the night.

Yesterday when I Googled "London Underground" and "news" I was presented with a story about a fight at York Hall in Bethnal Green which ended with a man being fatally stabbed on the forecourt of a BP petrol station.  Most news agencies described the incident as taking place "outside" the Tube station, with the Daily Mail describing “massive puddles of blood”.  It is higly unlikely that any Mail reporter actually went to the scene to verify this as if they had they might have noticed that both York Hall and the BP petrol station are a good 200 yards up Cambridge Heath Road from BEG.  Sadly this is just one example of many over the years where reporters seem eager to link the Tube with any negative story regardless of how tenious that link may be.

On the subject of "inaccurate" journalists I have been told that recently a pair of reporters turned up at an address in East London wishing to "doorstep" a senior union official at his home about an upcoming strike.  When they discovered he wasn't there they proceeded to question the lady who answered the door about her opinion on the subject and when she asked how they'd come to have that address they told her they'd been given it by the union.  This seems highly unlikely as while the lady in question was once in a relationship with the union official they separated more than a decade ago and she moved to that address after the separation so he's never lived there.

Obviously things are harder than they were back in the days when if the newspapers wanted to know something they just hacked your phone......

WTT69 is due to be introduced on the Central Line from Sunday 7th August to allow a test run of Night Tube services on Friday 11th and Saturday 12th with services to commence on Friday 18th.  Last week we were told that the new rosters had finally been agreed and that Night Tube was good to go but it seems that not everyone is happy.

Central Line General Manager Chris Taggart thinks there are too many DMIs (Duty Manager’s Instructions) where TOps become “spare” at the end of their shift although as I mentioned earlier the Duty Manager’s instruction is normally “sod off home”.  What makes this slightly bizarre is that the agreement was signed off by managers further up the chain than Taggart so effectively he’s arguing with his bosses.  There’s going to be yet another meeting over this and we should know what’s going on later this week.

Despite all that it seems that things on the Central Line are positively rosy compared to the Victoria Line where once again DMIs seem to be an issue although in this case it’s not management but the unions who are arguing against them.  I am told that at Brixton there is a local agreement that TOps work a maximum of five “rounders” – Brixton to Walthamstow Central and back – on a duty but some duties on the new roster have five rounders with a DMI on the end which means they could be asked to do a sixth rounder.

The situation has got so bad that RMT are balloting for strike action while I’m informed that the local ASLEF reps at Brixton and Seven Sisters have resigned en masse because they don’t feel they are getting enough support for the Functional Reps.  One suggestion is that this could go to ACAS with a six week “cooling off” period but that would mean Night Tube on the Victoria Line being delayed until September and whether they’d go ahead with Night Tube on just the Central Line is questionable.

If I've got any of the facts wrong please feel free to correct me, I'm simply reporting what I've heard around the depots (and I only got back off Annual Leave yesterday).

Alfred Hitchfox is doing well, I saw him picking through a box of KFC yesterday

WRONG!!!!

I’ve checked WTT69 and it seems that a lot of the depot/sidings moves I mentioned yesterday are actually stabling trains before our “normal” finish time but there will be 26 depot/siding moves between our “normal” last and first trains on a Friday night/Saturday morning; five starts, five finishes at HAI, four of each at WHC and LOU.  LOU and HAI are right in the middle of housing estates so I suspect the number of complaints to TfL from residents there, along the Open Sections of the Central Line and next to Northumberland Park depot on the Victoria will significantly rise after the second weekend in August.

I met Alfred Hitchfox in the staff car park yesterday as I was going home after work, I'm informed not only does he have a taste for pigeons but he's also doing his bit to reduce the local rat population and seems to enjoy digging up the flowerbeds of the Train Crew garden.

I was given my copy of Working Timetable 69 a few days ago with orange pages for Fridays added to the white (weekday), green (Saturdays) and yellow (Sunday).  The proposed rosters are still under negotiation, management and our union reps have been discussing them for several weeks with the main bone of contention the distribution of "dead late" and “middle” turns.   Previously HAI and LOU had more dead lates than middles while LES had more middles than dead lates but when the first draft of the rosters came out it had switched around so some people are less than pleased (apart from me, I love later starts).

Since then there’s been a bit of swapping and as well as disagreement with management there’s also been disagreement between union reps, not RMT vs ASLEF but the reps of both unions from one depot arguing with the reps from another!  I think we’re up to version three now and it does seem as if things are slowly taking shape although one rather bizarre detail is still there. Up until now WER duties were numbered 200-something, WHC 300, LES 400, HAI 600 with the W&C duties 700.  For some reason the suits have decided to change this after all these years, in the new rosters WER are 900, LES are 600 and HAI 400.  I’ve no idea what WHC and LOU or why they’ve decided to do this but it seem rather an odd thing to do.

Even odder are the actual Night Tube duties that the part timers will be doing, for starters all duties are eight hours long although most of them aren’t driving up until the end of their shift, getting relieved a good while before their finish time but at least it will be unlikely they'll be claiming for overtime if there's a sigal failure.  One of the strangest duties drives a train for 2 hours 50 minutes, stables at LOU, brings a train out of WHC sidings 3 hours 10 minutes later and finishes at LES after 1 hour 42 minutes with 47 minutes left before their official booking off time.

Rather than trains running through the night it seems that trains will be taken out of service at regular intervals throughout the night which I assume is so the train maintainers can do their stuff.  There are fifteen night turns on Friday at LES and in those fifteen duties there are 28 instances where the train either goes in or out of a siding or depot.  So rather than drunks sleeping from one end of the line to the other until they eventually wake up they will have to be roused and persuaded to leave the trains before they can be stabled which from my many years of doing last trains I imagine will lead to a degree of aggravation. 

It’s also going to be very annoying for the residents of LOU, WOO and HAI as the trains have to sound their whistles when going in or out of a depot or siding as a safety measure to alert the staff working there.  I've no doubt this all looks pretty easy and problem free when you’re sat in an office somewhere but I suspect not only will there be tears before bedtime there will also be tears during and after.

On a somewhat happier note LES has a new attraction, if you’re coming out the Grove Green Road exit in the evening keep an eye out for the fox that appears to have taken up residence in the car park.  It’s perfectly relaxed with people, as long as you don’t threaten it then it will let you get quite close and just carry on sitting around or wandering about sniffing things.  Its not quite so tolerant of the local pigeon population from the occasional stray wing I've seen lying around but with its obvious taste for death and destruction I think we should name it in honour of the area’s other famous resident 

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Alfred Hitchfox

Yesterday for an hour and 40 minutes there was no service between MAA and LES due to a "one under" at LEY.  Had this happened last year we could have reversed at LIS or HOL but as mentioned last month Museum siding at HOL has been removed and currently LIS sidings are being used for storage.  Reversing over the crossovers at LIS and BEG would mean using one platform for arrivals and departures which would lead to serious overcrowding so instead the main central 16km/10 mile stretch of Central Line serving a dozen stations was shut down.  This is progress?


By the time I started work we were running again but obviously everything was late which was further exacerbated by a signal problem at WHC.  Things were still running late when I finished 7 hours 20 minutes later with all WB trains running to WER and a shuttle service running NOA to EAB plus no outer rail service on the HAI loop.  Strangely the platforms were more crowded around 20:00 than they were at 17:00 and my last EB trip wasn't helped by the train repeatedly changing the destination describer from EPP to WER or occasionally sounding the chimes to warn that the doors were closing after they'd started to close.  Not a happy train.....


We had conformation of the TOp reductions for Night Tube, LES will lose 5, HAI 14 and WHC 6.  As I mentioned this is not because the rosters were expanded for Night Tube last year and are now being reduced, this is from the full time TOps we had under WTT 67.  I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens next.

When I joined LU nearly 20 years ago as a humble Station Assistant last trains meant that one of us would go down on the platform while another waited at the ticket barriers to call down over the radio if any last minute passengers were on their way.  When everybody was on board the bod on the platform would give a signal to the TOp that it was okay to proceed.  In April we received a new issue of Rule Books and one little amendment seems to have been overlooked. In the last issue of Rule Book 8 "Managing the platform train interface" under Section 3.6 "Last Trains" station staffs’ responsibilities were listed as....

 

"When the last train to a destination is departing you must:

• hold the train as necessary to maintain connections
• the announcements to tell customers this is the last train
• dispatch the train using the appropriate dispatch sign.” 

The first line has now been amended to read "For the last train booked for connection to a destination you must"

 

The booked connections are listed on page 5 of Working Timetable 67, they are the last EPP and HAI at LES, the last WB and EB trains at MIE to connect with the last District Line trains and the last WER and EAB trains at WHC.  Anywhere else the TOp is no longer required to wait for station staff to show up, this seems to have caught out a few people including so I'm told the controllers at Wood Lane and when I got back from annual leave a few weeks ago notices had gone up pointing out the rule change.  No doubt this is another result of FFTF, it just gets better and better……..

Yesterday at 11:14 the Victoria Line Twitter feed announced that King’s Cross had been evacuated and closed due to “staff below minimum numbers” although at 11:35 it was announced that it had re-opened.  I’m pretty certain that King’s Cross has the largest staff of any station on the Tube, according to the Fit for Future station by station review for the Metropolitan Line it now has 7 CSM1s, 14 CSS1, 91 full time and 7 part time CSAs although some of them are the new “customer facing” CSA2 grade.

On a Sunday the minimum staffing level is 11 rising to 15 between 11:00 and 20:00 but on this particular Sunday there was no Circle Line due to engineering work with the Met and the H&C reversing at KX so for that 20 minutes it must have been pretty hectic at Euston Square or wherever they decided to tip out the trains.  My guess is that one or two members of staff who should have been there at 11am were delayed, possibly because like the District Line TOp I had in my cab on Saturday they forgot there was engineering work and their usual route to work was unavailable.  I guess it isn’t just the passengers who don’t check engineering work notices!

On Night Tube it seems the general opinion is to wait and see what happens.  One thing I neglected to mention about the TOps being displaced is that neither WHC or LES were getting any extra TOps for Night Tube.  Had the original plan gone ahead both depots would have had the same number as under WTT67 so these are not extra TOps who were added for Night Tube, under the current proposals both WHC and LES will have fewer TOps

Please feel free to correct me if I've got anything wrong, I usually do.........

And just when we thought everything about Night Tube was settled it seems that management can't leave anything alone.  The week before last I heard that when the new timetable is introduced along with the introduction of 37 part time TOps working Friday and Saturday nights the number of full time TOps will be reduced,  I've now learnt that there will be 8 less places at LES, 10 at WHC and 15 at HAI with the WHC TOps said to be going to Queen's Park while the ones from the east end of the line will find themselves at Earl's Court on the District Line.  What makes things even more unpalatable is that the number of TOps at LOU has been expanded, I'm informed they've had 25 brand new TOps join over the past year and I believe that WER has also had some fresh arrivals.

Management will give a annual bonus (I believe the figure is £6k) to the displaced TOps but as with Night Tube they don't seem to realise that money isn't everything.  One of the LES TOps who will be forced to move only got here from WHC recently and understandably she is less than happy, had she stayed at WHC she'd have been better off.  This issue will be raised at branch meetings over the next few weeks but even among those of us senior enough not to be effected the overwhelming attitude seems to be that this is grievously unfair and we are prepared to take strike action if necessary.

Maybe management could try asking for volunteers rather than imposing displacement, maybe there are some TOps who would take £6k for a move but speaking for myself its not worth having to get a staff taxi back across London after a dead late.

Back in December when we had a knife weilding maniac causing mayhem at LES I found myself stuck up the west siding at WHC next to an engineering train and got talking with the driver. The drivers of engineering trians get to work all the lines apart from the W&C so unlike most TOps they can compare and contrast. According to him the Central Line is not the worst at recovering the service after an incident, that honour goes to the Piccadilly but the Central is definitely the second worst.

The Piccadilly could have some serious competition in the near future as from 21 May the British Museum siding west of HOL will be decomissioned and it seems at some point soon we will also lose the little used crossover at QUE. Our reversing points for the middle of the line will be at LES, the crosover west of BEG, the two sidings east of and crossover west of LIS, the siding west of MAA and WHC. At the moment the sidings at LIS are unavailable as they are being used for some sort of storage, no idea what that's for and no idea when we'll be getting them back.

I'm certainly glad I won't be working at Wood Lane the next time we have a service suspension

While I'm overjoyed that Sadiq Khan will be our mayor for the next four years I'm rather saddened by the news that Richard Tracey, purveyor of moronic opinions on how the Tube should work since 2008, will no longer be around to entertain us.  Maybe he simply ran out of stupid ideas or maybe he finally realised that everything he had said that related to transport was so much dingoes kidneys but for whatever reason he decided that he'd had enough.  Even if he had decided to carry on it would have been the same outcome as Labour won Merton and Wandsworth.

This week Zac Goldsmith announced that he would raise £25m to pay for an extra 500 police on the Tube by scrapping TfL staff nominee passes, a variation on last year’s proposal by Andrew Boff and the Tories on the London Assembly to “save” TfL £22.3m a year, utter nonsense then and utter nonsense now.  Rather than being the equivalent of a Zone 1-6 travelcard as claimed nominee passes are valid on TfL services only so if TfL were paying £22.3m for free travel they be paying themselves.  What the Tories actually mean is “lost revenue” rather than cost, what the nominees notionally would have paid in fares if they didn’t have the free pass but I suppose if you say that TfL are spending tax payers’ money on free travel it sounds “sexier”.


How did they come to the figure of £22.3m?  In 2014 nominees made just over 3.6m Tube or rail journeys and just under 4.8m bus or tram journeys, the average Tube fare was calculated as £3.60 by taking the arbitrary figures of the cost of a single Zone 1-6 peak time journey, £5.00, and a single Zone 1-2 off peak journey, £2.20.  The average bus and tram fare of £1.92 was reached by simply adding the single bus fare, £1.45, to the single tram fare, £2.40, and dividing by two regardless of the fact that far more journeys are on the buses than trams!


TfL disputed these totally worthless figures and estimated the lost revenue as not more than £7m although even that might be an overestimation as there’s no guarantee all the nominees would continue to use public transport if their free travel was withdrawn.  So rather than funding an extra 500 police on the Tube withdrawing nominee passes would provide 140 at the very most but even that raises the question of whether the Tube actually needs more police or whether they’d be more useful elsewhere in London where officer numbers have dropped by 1535 according to Sadiq Khan.


Maybe Zac Goldsmith shouldn't have been so keen to adopt one of Boff's ideas, the party faithful had so little regard for him that he came fourth out of four in the mayoral candidate selection ballot with just 4% of the votes although their judgment of him seems well deserved.  Last August Boff put a video clip of himself on Twitter saying “I love the DLR, no driver, no one to strike” but three months later a strike by RMT meant there was no service on the DLR for two days.  That’s pretty stupid but not as stupid as the clip still being there six months later.


https://twitter.com/andrewboff/status/629251056015437824