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Post by countryman on Jan 27, 2018 9:03:03 GMT
I was in London yesterday. I took my daughter, and we went our separate ways, arranging to meet at Hounslow West at 20.00. When I contacted her to see whether she was on schedule she told me that she had been stuck at South Ealing with the train doors open for 20 minutes. After a while they got moving again, apparently very slowly, and headed for Hounslow. Whilst I was waiting in the 'booking hall', I look at the departure board, and three trains were announced on the westbound platform, heading for Heathrow, but with some large gaps. However for the eastbound, only two trains announced, one for Heathrow, and one for Cockfosters. Also, my daughter claims, and Ihave reason to doubt this, that her train was overtaken along the line by a District Line train. Can anyone shed any light on what was going on?
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Post by aslefshrugged on Jan 27, 2018 9:12:21 GMT
A signalling problem at Northfields according to the Piccadilly Line Twitter
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Post by PiccNT on Jan 27, 2018 12:27:30 GMT
I got well and truly stuck in this and was on my train for 4:55 for the first half of my duty. District Line train accepted a wrong signal at Acton Town and as a result headed towards Northfields. As if that wasn't bad enough, on leaving South Ealing after almost tipping everyone out (left 3 customers on in error), he then had a SPaD at WR36. if you are not familiar with that area, it can be confusing. WR36 does not clear if the route is set towards Heathrow on the WB fast.
So, that resulted in him having to do a wrong direction move to get back behind WR36 and basically it caused chaos. Poor guy must be devastated.
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Post by piccboy on Jan 27, 2018 12:59:13 GMT
I got well and truly stuck in this and was on my train for 4:55 for the first half of my duty. District Line train accepted a wrong signal at Acton Town and as a result headed towards Northfields. As if that wasn't bad enough, on leaving South Ealing after almost tipping everyone out (left 3 customers on in error), he then had a SPaD at WR36. if you are not familiar with that area, it can be confusing. WR36 does not clear if the route is set towards Heathrow on the WB fast. So, that resulted in him having to do a wrong direction move to get back behind WR36 and basically it caused chaos. Poor guy must be devastated. Did he not have a Pilot? a Pilot should be aware of any signalling systems and can therefore guide the District driver through.
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Post by countryman on Jan 27, 2018 13:00:03 GMT
I got well and truly stuck in this and was on my train for 4:55 for the first half of my duty. District Line train accepted a wrong signal at Acton Town and as a result headed towards Northfields. As if that wasn't bad enough, on leaving South Ealing after almost tipping everyone out (left 3 customers on in error), he then had a SPaD at WR36. if you are not familiar with that area, it can be confusing. WR36 does not clear if the route is set towards Heathrow on the WB fast. So, that resulted in him having to do a wrong direction move to get back behind WR36 and basically it caused chaos. Poor guy must be devastated. My daughter was as Hammersmith at 7.25, and got to Hounslow West at ~8.15. Does this tie up with the above?
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Post by PiccNT on Jan 27, 2018 13:01:58 GMT
I got well and truly stuck in this and was on my train for 4:55 for the first half of my duty. District Line train accepted a wrong signal at Acton Town and as a result headed towards Northfields. As if that wasn't bad enough, on leaving South Ealing after almost tipping everyone out (left 3 customers on in error), he then had a SPaD at WR36. if you are not familiar with that area, it can be confusing. WR36 does not clear if the route is set towards Heathrow on the WB fast. So, that resulted in him having to do a wrong direction move to get back behind WR36 and basically it caused chaos. Poor guy must be devastated. Did he not have a Pilot? a Pilot should be aware of any signalling systems and can therefore guide the District driver through. I can only assume that they thought he could make it from South Ealing to Northfields and then pick up the Pilot for the reverse in Northfields Depot and back to Acton Town. I could almost throw a ball from South Ealing to Northfields!
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Post by PiccNT on Jan 27, 2018 13:04:30 GMT
I got well and truly stuck in this and was on my train for 4:55 for the first half of my duty. District Line train accepted a wrong signal at Acton Town and as a result headed towards Northfields. As if that wasn't bad enough, on leaving South Ealing after almost tipping everyone out (left 3 customers on in error), he then had a SPaD at WR36. if you are not familiar with that area, it can be confusing. WR36 does not clear if the route is set towards Heathrow on the WB fast. So, that resulted in him having to do a wrong direction move to get back behind WR36 and basically it caused chaos. Poor guy must be devastated. My daughter was as Hammersmith at 7.25, and got to Hounslow West at ~8.15. Does this tie up with the above? Yes. I was due to arrive at Acton Town at 20:31 but got there rather later than that. I joined the queue of trains at Hyde Park Corner!
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Post by MoreToJack on Jan 27, 2018 13:18:49 GMT
Just a reminder that this is a public forum and comments made can be see by the whole world. Bare this in mind when discussing incidents in detail and consider how you might feel if the roles were reversed. Happy to keep the discussion going for now but I'll be keeping an eye out.
Taking my mod hat off, do you know that the driver was male? Let's not make assumptions about gender, gang. (I don't know, it's a legit comment. We need to get away from labeling all railway staff as "he".)
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Post by PiccNT on Jan 27, 2018 13:29:20 GMT
Just a reminder that this is a public forum and comments made can be see by the whole world. Bare this in mind when discussing incidents in detail and consider how you might feel if the roles were reversed. Happy to keep the discussion going for now but I'll be keeping an eye out.Taking my mod hat off, do you know that the driver was male? Let's not make assumptions about gender, gang. (I don't know, it's a legit comment. We need to get away from labeling all railway staff as "he".) I believe so, he was seen by one of my colleagues.
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Post by superteacher on Jan 27, 2018 13:32:22 GMT
Gosh what an unfortunate combination of circumstances. As a slight aside, are there set rules requiring drivers to have a pilot when they are off their normal trained routes? Or is it down to the driver to decide?
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Chris M
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Post by Chris M on Jan 27, 2018 13:40:12 GMT
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Post by superteacher on Jan 27, 2018 13:44:18 GMT
True, but Dave was an instructor operator so not sure if that made a difference?
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Post by PiccNT on Jan 27, 2018 13:49:50 GMT
The Rule Book states that if you do not have a full working route knowledge of any section of the line over which your train is to work, you must request the assistance of a pilot.
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Post by superteacher on Jan 27, 2018 13:52:06 GMT
The Rule Book states that if you do not have a full working route knowledge of any section of the line over which your train is to work, you must request the assistance of a pilot. Which I take it means any route that you haven’t been road trained on?
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Chris M
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Post by Chris M on Jan 27, 2018 13:53:17 GMT
The Rule Book states that if you do not have a full working route knowledge of any section of the line over which your train is to work, you must request the assistance of a pilot. The driver being the only person who can say whether they have a "full working route knowledge" or not, I presume.
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Post by PiccNT on Jan 27, 2018 13:55:01 GMT
The Rule Book states that if you do not have a full working route knowledge of any section of the line over which your train is to work, you must request the assistance of a pilot. Which I take it means any route that you haven’t been road trained on? Yes, that's correct. Although it doesn't mention it in the rule book, we can also request a pilot if we haven't been over a particular stretch of track for over 6 months. An example on our line would be running down the local when the District is not running or certainly for us based at the East end of the line, going into Uxbridge sidings.
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North End
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Post by North End on Jan 27, 2018 13:56:49 GMT
True, but Dave was an instructor operator so not sure if that made a difference? Not really. The only difference might be if you have a line where not all depots cover all moves (I think this applies on the Picc for example where east end drivers don’t do the Boston Manor end of Northfields Depot), however IOs are generally expected to know everything. However in the case of South Harrow or Northfields no one on the District would officially know it, unless they are an ex Piccadilly operator transferred within six months, and even then they’re not trained for a District Line train, which is larger and longer. So officially, once off route the train should be stopped and a pilot sent out to the train. It’s all well and good being helpful, but this is quickly forgotten when something goes wrong. One day there will no doubt be a proper screw-up involving a train being somewhere it shouldn’t and then things will get tightened up. It wouldn’t be that hard to train District drivers to Northfields and schedule in a couple of familiarisation moves, but where do you draw the line? Something could then go wrong at Northfields and the train ends up heading towards Hounslow. At least there’s the likelihood of a pilot being available at Northfields, now it’s a crew depot again.
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Post by superteacher on Jan 27, 2018 14:02:59 GMT
Of course we don’t know the details of the conversation that the driver had with control (and we won’t speculate on that) but ultimately it is the driver who makes the final decision to move the train, and of course they can refuse to move it if the resultant move goes beyond the scope of their training.
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North End
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Post by North End on Jan 27, 2018 14:06:11 GMT
The Rule Book states that if you do not have a full working route knowledge of any section of the line over which your train is to work, you must request the assistance of a pilot. The driver being the only person who can say whether they have a "full working route knowledge" or not, I presume. The problem is quite often the driver doesn’t know what he doesn’t know until it’s too late. A comparatively simple move can easily go awry if something unexpected happens - for example a signal failing to clear and a more complicated move becomes necessary. But, yes, the onus is effectively on the driver. In an ideal world everyone would be trained and familiar with everything, then there wouldn’t be a problem. In the real world it’s much harder - how many ways can one reverse south to north at East Finchley, for example?!
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Post by countryman on Jan 27, 2018 15:41:55 GMT
Back in my OP I mentioned that the departure board in the Hounslow West booking hall showed a departure to Heathrow on the eastbound platform. Anyone know whether this happened, or can happen, or was it just an error?
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Post by superteacher on Jan 27, 2018 15:50:56 GMT
Back in my OP I mentioned that the departure board in the Hounslow West booking hall showed a departure to Heathrow on the eastbound platform. Anyone know whether this happened, or can happen, or was it just an error? Not a possible move so presumably a glitch.
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Post by rheostar on Feb 3, 2018 9:56:27 GMT
When this sort of incident happens, the District line train will have to be worked to South Ealing. The South Ealing CSS will pilot the train to Northfields, then a spare T/Op (if available) will pilot the train into the depot and back out again.
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