A Stock Refurbishment Sequence?

If you find some pictures of A stock in the early 90s you'll understand why they were done. The 80s-90s saw two major peices of work carried out to the A stock. The first 1985-86 was their conversion to one person operation (OPO). This did not appear extensive but was. For a start the A stock was not handed and could couple at any end. The OPO programme not only removed this feature but created 88 non-operational cab ends. The OPO programme replaced guards, the guards panels, provided high intensity headlights, missile proof windscreens and new wipers. These were only provided (initially) to the enabled cabs. The expected date of withdrawal for the A stock was about 1999-2000 but in about 1992 it was decided that they were in good enough condition to last another 10-15 years - a good decision in my opinion.

The refurb nearly didn't happen due to lack of funds. 5132-6132 initially were used for a trial refurb (there are pictures about). On refurb, all remaining non-OPO cabs received a new wiper and high intensity headlights.

It is interesting to consider that if the Met had not been part of the Circle Line, but been a stand alone fleet, would it have been converted to OPO? Perhaps not?

Surely the money saved on not converting those 88 cabs for OPO operation will have out-weighed any costs due to having trains the wrong way round when swapping units about.

metman said "The Watford north curve is very much in use and even with the problems it casues - it wasn't worth the hassle to remove it."

What a pity. It shouldn't cause problems or be thought of as a "problem". It should be thought of as an asset, not as a problem.

metman, Do you think this is a case of 'blinkered think" by 'the suits'? I think that looking into the future, this could be seen as a wonderful asset for new traffic patterns that will be needed before mid-century.

metman asks "The North curve could provide new journey options but one has to ask what is the traffic demand for travel between Watford (Junction?) and Ricky/Amersham/Chesham?"

I think the question should be not "what is.....", but "what will be...." in 20/30 years from now.

Never forget the WLL was closed to pax once through lack of pax demand, and even in the 60s we were told that it would never re-open as it had been tried and failed. (50+ years earlier!!)

On refurb am I right to say that the Guard's panels were completly removed, I think the panels were still there, but paneled over.

The luggage racks have been removed on withdrawn A stock and being sold by the LT Museum. It would been nice to had a pair of guard's panels. However, I was thinking about getting an A stock deadman and complete control desk from Booths as well as a set of the A stock OPO headlight units.

I'm pretty sure that the guards panels remained after refurbishment, but covered over as you say. I think that their conversison to OPO involved fitting door control buttons in the driver's cab, which were wired to the guard's panel, which then effected the door opening and closing. If you sit in the rear car of an A stock, you can still here clunking behind the panel where the guard's controls are.

Oops! Post duly corrected to OPO! ;D

I suspect it wouldn't be a major job to reinstate the guard's panel. Wouldn't it be nice if they could do it in time for the last official A stock run on the Met? Won't happen, but we can dream eh!

Yes the old tilting quarter lights, they did used to rattle a lot. The new hopper windows are lovely, very smooth. I nearly always open them, especially in the Finchley Road tunnels -you can hear the motors, PCM and line breakers working away. Soon, it won't be possible to open the windows on a Metropolitan Line train.