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Post by PiccNT on Jun 9, 2018 23:59:58 GMT
That's what was originally planned - Track Replacement Work Between Moorgate and Liverpool Street. From 21:15 Friday and all day Saturday and Sunday.
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Post by PiccNT on Jun 1, 2018 10:57:11 GMT
Slightly off topic but you can add that the RMT are balloting for industrial action on both the Central and Piccadilly Lines over "a complete breakdown in industrial relations". Time to watch Groundhog Day again.
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Post by PiccNT on May 22, 2018 9:45:56 GMT
And on the WB Picc, we would call the signaller if the description of our train was incorrect at Hammersmith. Over the past few days with the new equipment, it has been wrong more than right. Fortunately, the station staff call the correct destination either from the description on the front of the train or from Trackernet but is confusing. There is a standard announcement at Hammersmith and Barons Court stating that the description may be wrong and to check the front of the train.
I love the train describer at Barons Court WB. It amuses me to see that 95% of the time, it is completely wrong!
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Post by PiccNT on May 9, 2018 8:52:18 GMT
That suggests the District will no longer serve Ealing Broadway. I've never worked the District or Piccadilly but I'm pretty sure the depot can be accessed from Acton Town so District line trains can access it from there rather than having to go to Ealing From what I understand, Ealing Common depot can’t be accessed from the WB line at Acton. That's correct. Only accessible at the moment from the two EB platforms.
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Post by PiccNT on May 2, 2018 8:44:33 GMT
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Post by PiccNT on Apr 16, 2018 14:42:45 GMT
The dispute, as I understand it, was not over whether the driver should have been disciplined, but whether the management followed due process in doing so. The rules are there to protect both sides - failure to follow them can lead to problems such as claims for unfair dismissal. From what I understand, the driver was not disciplined. If however, he was allowed to continue driving after another action plan and he had another safety critical incident, that then would go to case conference as part of the conduct code. Again, from what I understand, the Acton Town management decided that based on his performance and I presume feedback from the Instructors, he was offered the chance to go back to stations, something that he may have agreed to. I have no idea if he was coerced into agreeing with this but at least he was offered another job. More than most other employers would do! Sometimes people are just not cut out to be drivers for whatever reason. This guy obviously had problems undertaking this role without incident. We have such people on our line and some are hanging on praying that they don't have any more incidents. Safety critical incidents are just that, safety critical and if you continue to have them, is it safe for you to be allowed to continue in this role? Management obviously took the view that he couldn't be allowed to continue given the risk involved.
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Post by PiccNT on Apr 16, 2018 11:34:48 GMT
MOD COMMENT:
1. We don't do politics on this forum. 2. This is an emotive topic, but we need to be respectful of each other's opinion and post in an appropriate manner.
As you were . . .
Anyway, my personal opinion:
If there is a rule of action only being taken after a certain number of SPAD's, then regardless of opinions that rule needs to be applied consistently. Otherwise, there is no point in having rules or policies.
A driver having three SPAD's in eleven weeks rings alarm bells. As aslefshrugged mentioned, humans do make mistakes and there are safeguards to mitigate the frequency and consequences of them. However, this case does highlight issues with this particular driver, and in the public eye, the union will look bad in "defending" them, because that's how they will see it. The rule is, as I understand it, a certain number of safety critical errors that may include SPaD's.
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Post by PiccNT on Apr 4, 2018 11:49:26 GMT
What evidence was there to suggest that he forgot about it :-)
One of our drivers had an incident with the headwall and his head whilst on the Northern Line. Perhaps taking too much interest in a passenger on the platform rather than the approaching headwall! Fortunately he lives to tell the tale.
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Post by PiccNT on Apr 4, 2018 11:33:04 GMT
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Post by PiccNT on Apr 1, 2018 22:35:15 GMT
I'm down (no pun intended) there on Tuesday night as part of a rusty rail move. If I have time, I might take a few photos.
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Post by PiccNT on Mar 21, 2018 11:17:33 GMT
New one on me but someone will no doubt enlighten me. So next Tuesday and Wednesday, the Rail Roughness Measurement Train formed of 1973 stock will be running on all parts of the line except Rayners Lane to Uxbridge. Do we have a train hidden away somewhere with some special equipment on it? Fish?
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Post by PiccNT on Mar 2, 2018 13:03:02 GMT
Well I'm hoping for a less eventful evening tonight. Last night was another challenging shift. Slow all the way West although it seems a lot of people didn't risk going to work yesterday. Was supposed to go to T4 but got reversed at Hounslow Central (customers delighted to be tipped out on a freezing cold platform) and slow all of the way back to Arnos Grove. The Hammersmith problem reared its head as I was going through there on the East. Issue with WD32C so trains were being routed through Barons Court sidings and then that stopped and then started again. Then there was another problem at Acton Town and I think we could only use one platform.
Was supposed to do Arnos-Cockfosters-T4-Cockfosters-Depot for my second half. Train massively late so it was reversed at Arnos and set off about 20 minutes down. Then it dawned on me that my arrival at Gillespie Road station would coincide with some extremely unhappy Gooners flooding out of the stadium. Sure enough, stacks of glum faces and I also got held there for a few minutes as there was a bit of a headway behind. Seeing so many miserable looking Gooners was of course the highlight of the evening. So off I went again and picked up a load more of them at Cale Road. Some got off at Kings X but train still very busy.
Got to Covent Garden, closed doors. No pilot light. Sorry, doors closed visual. Great, car 5, something had snapped between two sets of double doors and I now had two doors that slid open and closed by themselves. EVERYONE OFF! Relieved Covent Garden of one of their members of staff to ride in the car. Next stop Northfields but took an age to get there due to the problems at Acton.
Ah, I thought. I can relax on the cushions going back to Cockfosters. Called the Controller and he kindly asked me to grab another train out of Northfields Depot. So me and the CSA (he loved all of this) got our train and headed back East. In the end, got back and stabled about 30 minutes down.
It's been a challenging week. Tonight, there will be no problems!
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Post by PiccNT on Mar 1, 2018 9:07:43 GMT
Apparently there are now signal failures at Hammersmith, Kings Cross and Arnos Grove. Can’t all be snow related, surely. Arnos Grove snow related with a point failure Kings Cross a defective trainstop so not snow related Hammersmith already been mentioned And Acton Town it seems there was a problem clearing routes in and out of the East and West sidings. Moving onto today, appears there was a gapped train coming out of Platform 1 at Cockfosters causing the service to be suspended Oakwood to Cockfosters and the remainder of the trains coming out of the West end of the depot. Looking forward to going in later. Last night my first train was cancelled and my second train diverted from T4 to Rayners. Bit chilly walking out of the depot at 1am this morning!
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Post by PiccNT on Feb 28, 2018 10:02:48 GMT
I will find out the actual problems when I get to work this afternoon. Maybe we need to take all of the points out at Acton and extend the T4 loop to Uxbridge :-)
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Post by PiccNT on Feb 27, 2018 1:15:48 GMT
On a similar note, does it still announce that, "This is a Piccadilly line service to Heathrow Terminals 1,2,3&5" whilst at T1,2&3? Yep!
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Post by PiccNT on Feb 26, 2018 1:56:11 GMT
You are indeed correct. I had a Hatton Cross reverser last night and it did exactly as you state. Once it tells you that the train is the terminal 1,2,3 and 5, it then says the next station is Hatton Cross where this train terminates! Will report it when in work tomorrow.
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Post by PiccNT on Feb 22, 2018 13:59:02 GMT
Not noticed that myself. I am going to T5 & T4 this evening so I might run an experiment.
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Post by PiccNT on Feb 17, 2018 13:05:33 GMT
I'm off this weekend but there seems to be a lot of drivers missing for one reason or another. At my depot, we have about 20% of the drivers missing (out of about 130) without taking into account annual leave. High levels of sick leave along with such things as being on light duties or taking medication that prevents you from fulfilling a safety critical job. We don't have any vacancies at our depot so it isn't about poor manpower planning.
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Post by PiccNT on Feb 14, 2018 10:26:27 GMT
Had a few issues last night as well. The equipment that scans the train numbers at Acton Town to set up the appropriate route went wrong. A few frantic calls on the train radio asking T/Ops what their train number was followed! Caused blocking back certainly to me at Knightsbridge. Then the train in front of me was reversed at Barons Court and I got another platform load of people on my train. Got to Heathrow T5 13 minutes late but achieved a PB in getting there, reversing in the sidings and back EB and gone in 4 minutes! Well, grub time was approaching and got to Acton Town on time.
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Post by PiccNT on Feb 14, 2018 10:15:45 GMT
In our stock defect book for the 1973 stock, we have a specific instruction if the front tripcock is operated. "You must not move your train until you have received authority to do so". So although there is nothing in the Rule Book, that is a standard instruction that we must follow on our line.
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Post by PiccNT on Feb 3, 2018 1:34:54 GMT
On our line, the Night Tube drivers have at least one Rayners Lane and one Uxbridge rostered over a 6 month period. Problem if you're on annual leave when you are supposed to go and some of the drivers request a pilot that normally turns out to be one of the duty managers.
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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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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 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 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 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 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 PiccNT on Jan 20, 2018 4:50:51 GMT
Wow, that was a fun shift this evening! Care to elaborate why? Because of the broken rail at Wood Green, it was necessary to introduce an emergency timetable. At one stage, I counted about 15 T/Ops at Arnos Grove with one of the Duty Manager's renumbering trains once they started to appear EB after the ERU had put in a temporary fix. One of my colleagues that had driven over the broken rail said the train dipped as it went over it. Didn't sound great! So anyway, my duty started at 16:55 and i was supposed to go to Terminal 4 and then back to Acton Town, have my meal break and then pick up another train at 20:40, take it to Terminal 5, back to Acton Town, jump off at 21:52 and then pick up another at 22:14, back to Terminal 4 and then to Cockfosters and into the depot at 00:31. What I ended up doing was picking up a train at Arnos Grove, taking it to Cockfosters, back to Terminal 5 and I thought I may be relieved at Acton Town to have my meal relief albeit about 30 minutes late. No sign of a relief so I carried on. Attempts to speak to the Controller along the way came to nothing, he was probably too busy to answer my calls! Got to Arnos Grove, no sign of anyone again so carried on again. Controller answered my call at Southgate and asked me to put the train I was on in the depot. By the time I got in there it was about 21:45, walked back up to our accommodation building, spoke to my Trains Manager, said that I hadn't had my meal relief yet and so basically that was all I ended up doing. There is a TSR of 10 mph over the affected section. Not sure when that will be fixed as Night Tube will be running so no engineering time until end of traffic on Sunday.
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Post by PiccNT on Jan 19, 2018 23:46:27 GMT
Wow, that was a fun shift this evening!
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Post by PiccNT on Jan 18, 2018 10:34:06 GMT
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