WTT42

At a wild guess I'd say Arnos Grove

The spares will be kept in Cockfosters Depot for use as required.

The way its actually worked out is rather complicated, and thats mainly because of the duty sheet constraints that we worked around in providing the spare trains - and to be honest I struggled to understand them myself!!

From memory, it goes like this: there are three spare trains per night.

WTT 42 offers times for which they can be used - the times are meant for events which are expected to finish around a time when the Picc line is operating at 21 TPH (when the Picc line is operating 21 TPH, then no spare trains are required the research conducted by others shows this is sufficient)

So this typically would be on a weeknight when an Arsenal match would finish at 10pm roughly - but thats one example.

Mondays - Saturdays, the spare trains start and stable at Northfields Depot - so they will run to Oakwood Depot to stand spare as required, to return to Northfields Depot by a specified time.

Sundays, the spare trains are sourced from Cockfosters Depot.

Amazing how the London Underground service frequency can be dictated by a bunch of footballers, or a pop "singer" deciding they're going to spend a bit longer pretending to sing or whatever. What's the problem in setting a finish time for such an event and scheduling extra trains for that time and then sticking to it!

What about using the King's Cross Loop as a siding? This is hardly ever used anyway, and wouldn't block the area for early reversals.

The nature of these events means that the finishing time can sometimes be unpredicable. You can't stop a football match halfway through extra time, or stop Madonna from doing an encore because the first train is about the leave the sidings! Within reason a public transport system should fit around its demand, not the demand fitting around the transport system.

It's common practise on many metro systems for spare trains to be added to the service when required after a big event. Unfortunately as LU's infrastructure pre-dates most stadia, then it doesn't have the luxury of having train stabling at the point of the event. This makes the timetabling for events harder. However, on the other hand LU does have a very good off-peak service, with spare capacity for events, making the need for extra trains lower.

so does ythat mean less pic traines to uxbridge is this luls attempt to start pulling pic services out of uxbridge like they are considering when t5 opens

I don't see that being practical. Could only hold one spare train to run EB to help with EB traffic from Arsenal station.

Getting that spare train to Kings Cross Loop in place, would be a big pain as well. The train would have travel EB to Kings Cross, and reverse - into Kings Cross loop, which would cause a big hold up, even if you're a running a basic 5 minute train service.

Using Green Park/Down Street siding was considered at one stage - but that idea was abandoned. And as another poster has indicated above, drivers don't sit on empty spare trains in sidings for extended periods of time.

Mentioning Kings Cross loop is interesting though - I don't think Picc drivers are even road trained for that area. Kings Cross loop is frequently used by Northern Line trains to reverse, to recover from late running. (as the loop is accessible from both the Picc line and the Northern line) - and its only able to hold one train AFAIK. The Northern Line would hate it if the Picc started using Kings Cross loop!

Does/would the time spent in the siding on an empty train in sidings be counted as part of a driver's driving hours, even if they are not driving it? If so then this reduce the flexiblity as there are a maximum number of consecutive hours driving a driver can legally do - they might leave the sidings with only 30 minutes left before they needed a break, whereas if they were in a depot waiting they would start with the maximum time?