Technical questions for London-based novel

Wasn't that when the driver got out of the train in the tunnel for some reason, then the train motored up?

There was also the story of the Piccadilly line driver who rested his bag on the traction brake controller. He got out to unstick a door but when he did, the door circuit became complete and because the driver's bag was heavy enoufh to depress the TBC, the train started up and left without him.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/runaway-tube-driver-jailed-1445495.html

I think semi-automatically operated is a slightly confusing term, stick to ATO (Automatic Train Operation).

Yes, I believe so. Unless it's a Northern line train traversing the Kennington loop, but it would be out of service anyway.


No, train doors currently have to be opened by the train operator. However, there are rumours that I've heard around about of a possible future upgrade where the doors will open on arrival, unless explicitly prevented from doing so by the driver placing the doors under their control.


Yes.


Again, as with ATO lines, the trains will keep running until they get into a station. If they cannot, because their station is currently occupied, they will wait until the train ahead departs and they can occupy the platform. There will be no need to restart, once the train ahead moves off, the train will take its place as soon as it is able to do so. However, obviously the train ahead won't move off until everyone's back in the room. I can't comment on your 50 m figure, but I kind of suspect it won't be an absolutely universal value, but I could be wrong.


Er, oooh. In my experience, I think that the DLR's doors can be opened by the PSA like on the Underground lines, where the member of stuff opens all of them, or they can be released for passenger operation like on many mainline services. I'm not sure whether they can be released automatically. You're probably right that they can but I don't know. The self-closing thing, yeah, they'll close to keep the elements out, but they won't lock by themselves, so you'll be able to reopen them.


I don't think Joe Public can do whatever he likes on a DLR train without a key, but I'd rather we didn't go too deeply into the security procedures on the DLR or any other network, for reasons that I hope are obvious.


As others have said, LU is supplied from the National Grid, and so is the DLR, so if the grid is down the Underground is down. Not sure how you'd take the whole grid down and yet leave LU's power supply intact even if it did have its own power plants, but I'm sure you've thought about that But no, it couldn't run normally. They are looking at providing batteries on the NTfL that good the train to the next station, though, I believe. Not sure about on any currently-existing stock, though.


Well obviously the dead man feature is still there when the train's being driven manually, but I don't think there's anything for Auto, unless you count not being able to have the cab doors open.


Well it's certainly been repeated in such reputable publications as London Reconnections, but I'm not sure I can improve on that in terms of a citation.

Thanks for correcting some of my mistakes


This point I'm not entirely sure about. I know the RAIB has been known to make errors, but items 38-9 of this report into a derailment near West India Quay seems to suggest this isn't completely accurate:


In the glossary, the report defines ATP manual like this:


This old forum posts also hints at some kind of Protected Manual equivalent.