Thursday was chaos.  For some reason a signal fault in the LEY-LES area meant that we had no idea where any of the trains were, neither the predictor nor Trackernet was working .  I’d never experienced this before but it meant that the TOps had no idea how late their trains were, if they were going WB or EB, or even if they’d been cancelled.  Wood Lane were too busy trying to sort out the mess to answer questions so we just waited until a TOp arrived expecting to be relieved then called the DTSM to tell them which number train they were trying to offload so that the DTSM could call up the appropriate TOp.

My duty was a five and a half hour snip, LES-NOR-WHC with 45 minutes for grub then WHC-EPP-WER-LES but 10 minutes after I was due to pick up the DTSM told me that my train was in LOU sidings.  After two trains went through to HAI via NEP I got an EPP train which ended up terminating at LOU, not a good time to be on a train in uniform.  My NOR became a WHC but the time I’d walked into the sidings, got the train out and reached LES I was an hour down and should have been at NOR waiting to come back EB, I was only at HOL when I was meant to be getting off.

I arrived at WHC with exactly 30 minutes before my next pick up but that turned out to be running 10 minutes down.  I spent the rest of the shift heading off as soon as I’d changed ends and by the end I was back on time.  Then I had to spend an hour and a half moving the goldfish from one tank to another as the room where their tank is situated will be fumigated today as someone complained that they were bitten by something while in there.  Clive, Slick and Jagger looked about as happy as the passengers on the train at LOU, I never knew goldfish could look vexed.

Only one incident of note, a “platforms and hold” for a train with door problems at BOS WB around 17:15 Sunday evening.  I was at TCR gazing at the taillights of the train at OXO for ten minutes as my meal relief ticked away before Wood Lane announced that the door problem couldn’t be fixed and that the train would be tipped out.  Shortly after we were given “clear signals and codes” and when I arrived at OXO the front end of the platform was noticeably more crowded that the tail end, obviously as that is where people arrive on the platform and then don’t walk any further.

The difference was even more noticeable at BOS, about a dozen people on the back half while the front half was so crowded had you tried to get any more people on the platform you’d have ended up with bodies on the track.  And this despite the pleadings of the station staff to move down the platform away from the entrance, they just stood there like cattle.

People were still trying to cram onto the front half of the train at MAA but when I pulled out at LAG I could see on the CCTV that I had empty seats on the rear two cars even though hardly anybody had got off from that end.  What makes this even more bizarre is that at LAG, QUE and NOG where most people got off the exits are towards the middle and rear of the train so heading towards the back end of the platform would save time and shoe leather.

Answers on a postcard, please.

Okay I’m back again, I won’t go into the whys and wherefores for my absence but one is that there’s been very little happening when I’ve been at work.  We managed to have three “one unders” on the Central Line within two weeks but I was either having a day off or it was before I started so I only got the tail end of the disruption.  There have also been a number of “platforms and hold” for various reasons, handles down, signal failure, train faults, passengers ill but they all seem to have been either in the other direction, behind me or so far in front that they’d been resolved before I got there.

I actually had a new experience a couple of weeks ago with a signal failure at NOA, at STP I was told to reverse over the rarely used crossover at QUE, something I’d never done since I started as a TOp.  For years this was out of commission, I’ve heard various reasons, one being that when they introduced the 92 stock trains they were taller than the old stock and used to hit the tunnel wall when going across the points, another being that there were problems with the track bed.  Whatever the reason we perform the move at a stately 10kph.

Unlike MAA, HOL or LIS where you sit in the sidings until it’s time for you to come out again at QUE the WB train goes into the EB platform so I had trains stacking up behind me and had to head straight back as quickly as possible.  All I had left to do was go to HAI and into the depot which I did a lot earlier than timetabled but I didn’t get much of an extended meal break thanks to either the staff at HAI station’s dislike of making PAs or Wood Lane’s inability to communicate with them.

When I got back to the station there were trains on Plat. 2 and Plat.3 but the dot matrix board by the gateline indicated that the first WB train would leave from Plat.1 in 15 minutes.  A train duly arrived, I got on board, it sat there for well over the 15 minutes and then the train on Plat.3 closed its doors and left without a soul on board. Fortunately I was sat in the lead car and all the other passengers where further back along the train otherwise as the only uniformed presence I might have been the victim of severe scowling.

Last week I got held outside WOO on the WB, I could see the train on the platform and assumed that it was tipping out to go up 21 road.  I did my PA within the required 30 seconds to inform my passengers of the cause of the delay and after two minutes called up Wood Lane to see if there was a problem.  The train was indeed going up 21 road but the points had failed and Wood Lane told me that they were going to “jiggle them about a bit” to see if they could rectify the problem.  And so I passed on that information to my passengers, the first time I’ve been able to use the word “jiggle” in a PA announcement.  It will not be the last.

My apologies for not writing, my personal life has been rather fraught of late and frankly I simply wasn’t in a writing mood.  Since my last post we’ve had an outbreak of Spice Girls and royalty with Kate Midddleton being given a “Baby on board” badge.  Unsurprisingly they are now in great demand  having sat unwanted in boxes at 55 since 2006 but my friend was ahead of the trend, three years ago she asked me to get some for her and all the other ladies in her “Bump Group”.  Today is her daughter’s 2nd birthday, thankfully she wasn’t born a day later and thankfully she wasn’t a he, she’d have ended up as Humphrey.  Philip Larkin was right.....

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.

Fun and games on a Sunday.  The first half, a simple LES-WER-LES went without incident for me though when I was going WB trains were held WHC-HOL on the EB with the current discharged HOL-LIS for a “person on the track” at HOL.  It turns out someone thought it would be a good idea to step off the platform at the headwall to relieve themselves.  I bet they didn’t think it was such a good idea when BTP arrived and dragged them off to the cells.

My second half was a rather bizarre LES-WOO via HAI-WHC-LOU then empty to WOO, round the loop to HAI and into the depot before going back on the cushions to finish at LES.  For a start why go to HAI and have to change ends on the platform when you could just as easily go in via GRH?  Why go up to LOU rather than straight to HAI via NEP in the first place?  Why not put it into LOU sidings?  Why waste all that time running empty and riding the cushions?  Sometimes you have to wonder at the thought process that goes into writing timetables and duties up at 55 Broadway.

However I never got west of LES, on the approach to GAH on the way into town Wood Lane gave us a “platforms and hold” for a track circuit failure just west of BEG, a track circuit being part of the signalling system for those of you not in the know.  Trains were able to go through the section to LIS in restricted manual one at a time but we can only do 15kph while in RM rather than 65kph in Auto or Coded so it was causing delays and trains were moving up one station at a time. 

I was ten minutes late by the time I reached LES WB and as I was only due to go into the depot after one trip rather than add another train to the queue Wood Lane decided to send me up to EPP, back down to WOO in service, reverse off the platform back around the loop empty and into the depot early.  Subsequently I was rolling into the depot over an hour earlier than I was timetabled, just as Wood Lane announced that the problem had been fixed and we’d be running as normal.  Which was nice…..

Just a short note to say that my two weeks off were very enjoyable but returning from the sub-tropical delights of Miami to the frigid and damp climate of London in February brought my chest infection back with a vengeance.  Following another course of antibiotics I returned to work Monday but to be honest not much has happened so I’ve not bothered writing.

The introduction of the proposed new timetable, with us closing the doors from the cab rather than going back and checking the cars are empty when going up sidings factored into the timing, has been postponed until September possibly due to the current dispute up on the Bakerloo Line.  I have heard that they’ve managed to solve the delays caused by TOps refusing to reverse via the sheds at Queen’s Park unchecked by withdrawing a few trains from service though if that is true or not I have no idea.

The foul weather has predictably been playing merry hell with ATO but other than that not much to report. The only thing of note is that we get regular announcements from Wood Lane that all lines are providing a “good service” apart from the Bakerloo which is experiencing “operational difficulties”. That translates as subsequent to the “kid on the track” incident the TOps are refusing to close up the doors from the cab when reversing up the sidings and are walking back checking that the carriages are empty without any assistance because they were all relocated when they had the last major reshuffle of station staff.

I read on Mayorwatch that some of the Tory Assembly Members have come up with the wizard idea of taking away our nominee passes as they reckon that giving free travel on the Tube, Buses, London Overground and the DLR to one of a staff member’s family (who also has to reside at the same address as the staff member) is costing them £35.8m in lost revenue.

Now I’m not 100% sure but I’m reasonably certain that both staff travel and the nominee passes are included in our salary packages so if the Tories want to withdraw them then LUL will have to negotiate with the Union at the next pay talks. As there are currently 21788 nominee passes in circulation I calculate that we can be expecting £1643.11 each to compensate for the loss of the passes, something I’m sure a lot of staff will be quite happy to accept as not everyone has someone they can nominate.

Talking of London Overground they’ve recently been rated as the best railway in the UK which is amazing as it’s predecessor, Silverlink Metro, was regularly rated the worst. It’s been so successful that they are going to add a extra carriage to the trains to cope with the demand. A big “Congrats” to my friend Scottish Andy who joined as a guard when LO was just starting up and has risen to semi-managerial status.

Meanwhile the cable car continues to struggle to attract passengers and the bike hire operator Serco is criticized for failing to get the bikes in the right places, you either can’t find one or you can’t get rid of one because all the racks are full. The few New Buses currently in service are still trolling along Route 38 and they will take over Route 24 in it’s entirety by the summer but with over 6000 buses on the streets of London and with only 600 New Buses on order it’s impact is hardly going to be monumental.

The obvious difference is that Ken gave us LO, Boris gave us the rest. Giving the people what they think they want is one thing, giving them something they actually need and will use is another.

That’s me done for a bit, I’ve got one last trip up to EPP and then back to LES then I’m on Annual Leave for two weeks. It’s my birthday tomorrow and at midnight I intend to be in a pub with my best friend, Luvvey Darling, spinning vinyl on a pair of turntables and getting horribly, unahsamedy, pig-hugging drunk. Happy travels, folks.