problems on the High Barnet Branch

Same here from Camden. Got on the train around 8:40pm after work. Took ages to get to East Finchley where I got off. Waited 20 minutes for a 263 before deciding to walk towards home to keep warm. There was a broken down one just under the railway bridge. Luckily a working one came along just as I was walking up near the KFC. Took a while to get home on the bus for obvious reasons.

Gotta hand it to the train driver. Kept everyone informed. He told our train that apparently a train had stalled on the HB branch near West Finchley (or maybe he said Totteridge - I had my walkman on). He wasn't sure whether he was going to Finchley Central or Mill Hill East. TBH, I was worried he was going to terminate at Archway! At the speed we were travelling I wouldn't have been surprised.

What was good was I travelled out from central London about 7pm and the trains were being held at stations until the next station was clear. The driver was also making plenty of announcements. At least that kept most people happy as they could have a stroll on the platforms (at the drivers recommendation) and also not being held in tunnels.

It's political. It seems that since PPP the most important measure of train service performance is the "snapshots", which are taken at selected times right through the day, and measure the number of trains actually in service compared to the number timetabled to be in service.

An emergency timetable will, by nature, drastically cut the number of trains, and therefore have a big impact on the line's performance figures.

On the Northern Line, what would be done is for an Edgware to Kennington via C.X. service to be run using Golders Green drivers, maybe 20 trains in service, and a High Barnet to Morden via City service with, I think, about 35 trains, using East Finchley and Morden drivers.

This sort of service is ideally suited to a situation where there is massive late running and service suspensions in multiple areas. Once late running is over an hour, the problem is that drivers who are meant to be picking up trains after their meal relief are quite probably still driving their first train, so even those trains which are more or less on time then get held up.

Unfortunately London Underground is no longer concerned with delivering a train service, but instead is about meeting certain measureable performance targets. Unfortunately these performance targets do not always accord to delivering the best possible service to passengers in a given situation.

Nice to see it's not only the NHS and police that have to meet target figures.

Well done to those peeps who done their best to keep the service going at all.

Luckily no snow here on the Romney Marsh!

I think no to all three. Some cars do have de-icing gear to stop the current rails freezing.

Why did I suddenly imagine a 73ts with a plow as high as the train itself? Those average plows arent exactly small, are they?

so was this morning a success or a failure?

I checked the TFL site - suspended between HB and Archway - so I got the overgound to Moorgate and tubed it back up, only to find it was running from HB by then...

What are the predictions for this evening?

likewise (well, I took the overgound to Moorgate)
The gap between this and my next post will tell you a lot about the time taken to get from Camden to HB

Yeah, I got into work more or less on time. Pavements are treacherous though!

I saw selective door opening at Ealing Broadway on the District for the first time the other day: it wayyy confused people

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