I managed to get on the right train Thursday, everything went to timetable, not one call from Wood Lane, not even any serious delays on any other lines and if anything there were less passengers than Wednesday. I’m spare Friday so in all likelihood my next report will be even duller.

Even though I’m back on nights next week as it’s the week after New Year everybody will be partied out and I’ll be over at WER most nights so the possibility of amusing drunks will be greatly reduced. Shame I couldn’t get the last EPP on Christmas week, I did that a couple of years ago and it was a bonanza of oversleepers. The saddest case was the suit on Christmas Eve, I tried in vain to wake him at EPP and ended up taking him to LOU. Between me and the Super we managed to get him on his feet and then while I stabled the train in the sidings the Super shepherded him out the station.

Christmas Day is the one time stations are guaranteed to be unstaffed and one of the rare occasions the late turn Super gets the padlock and chain out to lock the gates. When I got to the gates the Super was waiting to close up and go home so I asked if he’d found out where the suit was trying to get to. Slough. Ouch, a good fifty miles round the M25, at half past midnight Christmas morning, wonder what the minicab fare was on that?

Dead early, 05:25 start. I managed to turn off my alarm and only woke up with just enough time to get dressed and get to work. We’re running a Saturday timetable but on a weekday roster so we have loads of spares sitting around. More passengers around today but still not up to normal levels, a lot milder and very foggy early on at the extreme ends of the line.

On normal Saturdays and weekdays number 01 duty takes the first WB train to WER and number 02 takes the first EB to EPP. As this isn’t a Saturday but we are running a Saturday timetable someone decided that they would swap 01 and 02 around which I didn’t realise until I was sat in the cab of the first EB train. I had to walk all the way back along the platform while a couple of hundred delayed passengers scowled at me and I cursed the miserable desk jockeys who generate the timetables and rosters.

Apart from that everything went fine until the very end when a defective train at MIE WB shut everything down all the way back to EPP and had me sat at SNA for about 20 minutes. Eventually they tipped one out at LES and sent it up to the shunt signal so they could get my train in. The line was still suspended LES – LIS when I left.

Tomorrow I’m doing number 01 and I’m going to check which train I’m on before I get on it.

London was pretty empty yesterday, the only time any platform looked remotely crowded was around 16:00 EB at BOS and OXO. Every time I saw a train going the other way the cars were sparsely populated, we are running a Saturday service and it certainly is more than we need.

Evidence of how quiet it was came at the start of my second half, when the train pulled in I noticed that the front double doors on the leading car hadn’t opened and on investigation found that some scallywag had carefully peeled one of the Central Line maps that runs above the seats and then stuck it across the doors. Damn they use strong glue on those things. One assumes that the front car must have been empty at some point on it’s EB journey in order for the culprits to perform their act of mischief and escape detection.

Despite the scarcity of passengers we still had enough delays, it seemed as if we’d only resolved one before Wood Lane were calling “platforms and hold” for another. An “incident” here, a “passenger alarm” there, all little niggling delays but nothing major. The major delay was down to a signal problem at BEG EB which I ran into on my first half, halfway into the platform Auto packed in and when I switched to Coded I couldn’t get a brake release. Now this could have been a “platform plunger” but I had codes which shouldn’t have been there if that were the case.

BEG is in a “controlled area”, one where the signals are semi-auto. Oh well I’d better explain basic signalling to you, I will try and keep this simple. Two types of signal, auto and semi auto. A signal tells you what’s going on in the section of track between it and the next signal. A green signal means the track is “clear” and that it is safe to proceed, a red signal indicates “danger”, that there is something ahead.

All sections work as a basic electrical circuit, if the circuit is broken the signal in front of them goes to danger, a trains wheels will break the circuit so any signal will go to red if there is a train in the section ahead. An auto is just a simple circuit while a semi has to be activated by the signaller or signal computer. They are used in conjunction with points and will only clear when the points are set in your favour and obviously there are no trains in the section ahead.

At an auto under a given set of conditions I can pass a signal at danger under my own authority but where there are semis, a controlled area, I cannot so four cars into BEG EB platform I had to call Wood Lane to get the okay to pull in the rest of the way while the bemused passengers on the platform stared in at me; now I know how Clive feels. The problem persisited for most of the afternoon but had been resolved by the time I came EB again.

9am – 5:30pm, stupid time to work. Who could possibly live like that? Rest Day today, West Ham on TV again and then three dead earlies, 05:30 starts, ahhhhh that’s more like it.

ON STRIKE, BACK TOMORROW

Friday was as quiet as Thursday, it had a sort of Saturday feel to it, not the last minute rush the shops were hoping for. Tomorrow I will be on strike for the first time in all my years on the Tube and I’ll be manning the picket line at my local pub on the High Road watching West Ham v Fulham. As I said yesterday this could all have been avoided if LUL had offered to reduce the number of TOps working Boxing Day at any time over the past month and when they made the offer on Wednesday morning they knew full well it was far too late to do anything.

So if I wanted one thing for Christmas I would ask Santa to bring us senior management with a bit of imagination, a bit of vision, with an actual desire to provide the best service we could for our passengers and to treat the staff as a valued resource rather than something to be defeated at every turn. As I think I’ve mentioned before things definitely seemed to be improving under Tim O’Toole who worked in US rail freight before he came to LUL so maybe we need to attract the brightest and best from the railway industry rather than simply promoting from within.

LUL is part of TfL and the chairman of TfL is the Mayor of London so if you want real change on the Tube then in May 2012 you need to vote for a Mayor who is actually committed to improving the Tube. I’m not going to suggest one person or one party but have a good read of the section on transport in each each candidate's manifesto then ask yourself does what they say seem reasonable and more importantly is it possible. If all they talk about is buses, bikes, cable cars across the Thames, airports on islands and smashing the RMT then perhaps they aren’t really that interested in the Tube.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

London was spookily quiet Thursday, at 8am it felt decidedly off-peak which was made even odder by the Evening Standard announcing that shoppers were flooding into the West End; not on the Central Line they weren’t, matey. Despite being the only London paper ES does seem to restrict itself to regurgitating press releases rather than actually looking for substance behind the claims and this seems to have been a bit of wishful thinking on behalf of the West End shops which some hack had written up as factual.

And on that note I can confirm that the Boxing Day strike will go ahead despite LUL trying to get it stopped in the courts. We all got a nice note from Howard Collins telling us that at ACAS on Wednesday morning LUL had generously offered to reduce the number of TOps working on Boxing Day and that nasty ASLEF had refused.

Actually ASLEF should have agreed if the amended timetable, roster, etc could be in place by start of traffic Friday in accordance with LUL’s own rule that any alteration to duties must be made at least 48 hours in advance. LUL would then have to admit that it was impossible as these things take weeks to check and double check and then send out to the depots where local alterations can be made.

This was what we wanted from the start and it is a fine example of how frustrating management can be that they only make this offer when they couldn’t possibly give it to us rather than when we first asked for it over a month ago or even after the strike ballot had been announced. With the Royal Wedding coming up expect LUL to avoid talking to the Unions about arrangements until mid-April.

The first half of my duty finished with me stabling a train at HAI so when I arrived at Plat 3 I went through the train closing up and checking that the train was passenger free. As I sat back down in the cab and waited for the shunt signal to clear I got a call on the “cab to cab; there was a TOp at the other end if the train who informed me that he had been sent to take this train west.

As I headed off to the train crew accommodation for my meal relief a passenger complained that they’d been directed up to the train on Plat 1 for the first WB and there were still a lot of passengers sitting there waiting despite the station PA announcing the change of platform.

I was going to pass this information onto the station staff when I got to the DMTs desk but when I got there the DMT informed me that Wood Lane had been trying to contact me over the station PA as they now wanted me to take the train sat on Plat 1 into the yard.

As I closed up on Plat 1 several passengers expressed their understandable frustration at being sent to a train and then being turned off. They have my sympathy but communication of "real time" information with staff and passengers remains one of LUL’s failings. Sadly if Wood Lane decide to swap trains around at short notice it's not them that get the grief it's those of us out here on the "front line".

After the chaos of the last few days Tuesday was going quite nicely until an hour before I was due to finish. With just a run up to EPP and back to LES to do there was a “next platforms and hold” call for the entire line as Wood Lane had lost all control of the signals east of LIS due to a power supply failure. Thankfully power was restored after a couple of minutes but as an after effect the escalators at BEG weren’t working and a few platforms didn’t have any CCTV.

Now as I have explained before if we don’t have CCTV in the cab we get Wood Lane to “watch” us out but if they don’t have it either then a member of station staff has to come down to give us the “right” and stand by an emergency platform plunger or “code buster” in case something goes wrong. What this little device does when activated is to put the signal code at the platform to zero, effectively giving the train a red light.

What the Line Controller instructed us to do was to “self despatch” if the platform was straight, without the failsafe of a member of station staff which is a big no-no and as we have seen up on the Bakerloo just because the Line Controller or the signaller instructs to do something doesn’t mean if something goes wrong you will no be offered the chance to join the fastest growing club in the UK, the dole queue.

So when I rolled up at DEB EB to find my screen blank I hit the whistle to attract the attention of the station staff and when none appeared I got on the radio to Wood Lane. Sure enough the Controller asked me to “self dispatch” and I refused, insisting on someone being there on the platform before I moved. I tried the whistle again and this time the Super appeared, I closed up, received confirmation that it was okay to go and set off again. I got a quick turnaround at EPP and when I reached BUH WB there was a member of staff on the platform waiting to give me the right.

With cuts to station staff coming in February and a leaked memo admitting the possibility of some stations being without any staff at certain times what will happen if we have a similar CCTV failure. I for one will certainly not be risking my job and my pension to keep the service running.

Other than that Auto was just not happy with the weather conditions. I gave up after we’d pulled up halfway into the platform for the third time and just stuck the train into Coded Manual for the rest of the trip. What with that and the CCTV I was only five minutes late getting to back LES. Wednesday is my rest day, I’m off to buy sprouts.