Remember how quiet & empty the Jubilee used to be?

I remember that too, I was relatively young when the extension opened but I took a trip to London with my parents around 1997-8, and the Jubilee line was very quiet. I remember my parents remarking that they were surprised it was still open (obviously not being aware of the imminent extension!)

The western part of Jubilee (west of Waterloo) is still rather quiet outside of peak hours - in my experience it usually gets overloaded between Waterloo and Canary Wharf.

It is quite a pain in the peaks though - I'm travelling from St. John's Wood and sometimes have to skip 2-3 trains because there is just no space to squeeze myself in...

And with impending apocalypse re-opening of East London Railway I bet Canada Water to Canary Wharf will become even more of a battlefield.

If ELR will re-open in mid-2010 (and not earlier!) and ATO on Jubilee will be (just) one year late (as the latest predictions go) - prepare for 6 months of mayhem!

Trying to get to Stratford in the evening peak from London Bridge and points east is just the same. Even that's not as bad as the Central Line though - I've had to let five eastbounds go at Liverpool Street before now. You're not even always guaranteed to get on an Epping train at Leytonstone, especially as Hainault feels like it gets more trains (and thus less of them are crush loaded, merely full)

For someone traveling towards Hainsult, it feels like Epping gets more trains!

Given the large number of companies that have moved to Canary Wharf in the past 10 years, the weight of traffic on the Jubilee should be no surprise really; I rely on it myself. Whenever the Jubilee has problems at rush hour, you can really see the effect, as Bank often has to close due to the surge towards the DLR!

I do agree that the Central line is often worse, though!

The crush loading on the eastbound Central in the evening peak happens from at least Bank (and probably west of there), and at the front half of the train at least, until South Woodford/Woodford on the Epping Branch. I don't know about the Hainauilt line.

You may well be right - but I remember the Charing Cross - Baker Street section as also being very infrequent compared with other lines. I'm sure I easily remember standing at Green park and often waiting over 8 minutes.

I wonder how busy Charing Corss (Jubilee) would be were it to re-open now? I suspect it would easily be as heaving-full as the rest of the line, now - as times have changed beyond all recognition since then and ridership is way up across the system.

Wasn't that only during the morning peaks?

Before the extension, the line had some of the best punctuality / reliability figures on the Underground - equalled only by the East London Line.

Some early Sunday morning frequencies were more like every 20 minutes between trains

West Hampstead was a regular destination, and was hated by drivers. You only just got going and you were terminating again, and had to walk through the low/cramped 83 stock whilst in the siding at West Hampstead, cracking your knuckles on the arm rests as you went. One timetable had trains stuck on Charing Cross-West Hampstead trips for large chunks of the day. It must be one of the few occasions where if you asked a driver to extend to another destination - and hence do more work - they would be only too willing ;D

The line was controlled solely from Baker Street, and normally solely by the signallers in the Signalling Control Centre (of which I was one). We basically "ran" the service in terms of regulating it, getting it back to right-time after incidents etc. etc. A wealth of experience existed in the room which enable some pretty swift service recovery to take place. The whole line worked as a very tight-nit team.

But in late 1999... don't get me started... ;D ;D

Really? Although I believe you, I can only find very limited evidence for West Hampstead reversers on paper:
WTT 6 (16/5/88): 335/0745
WTT 7 (16/2/89): 337/0844½, 324/0854½, 325/1734, 304/1744, 311/1754½

WTT 8 (29/8/89) has the self-contained pattern of short turnbacks either side of Charing Cross during the peaks, and as the frequency reduces during the peak shoulders into/out of the lunch slack the pattern changes to 'if you reversed short last trip, we'll let you go to Stanmore', with a few frequency adjusters of 'oh, you only made it as far as Willesden Green last trip, we'll let you go out to Wembley Park, and if you're really good you might eventually get to Stanmore the trip after that'.

By WTT 11 (28/9/92) the West Hampstead reversers seem to have gone, although the service was more centred around a nucleus of trains doing a pattern of Willesden Green - Charing Cross - Wembley Park (and vice versa), with no chance of an escape out to the fleshpots of Stanmore. Happily for the T/Ops, this seems to have changed in WTT 12 (27/3/94) with trains alternating either side of Charing Cross - short trip/long trip/short trip/long trip. In fact out of all the scheduled trips short trips either side of a Charing Cross arrival/departure only happen 11 times on the weekday galley - unfortunately this situation didn't last long and the short trip trap comes back in WTT 13 (29/5/94); however, the longer journey times due to the slightly iffy embankment south of Queensbury (3½ min added both ways) explain this shift in reversing pattern. No booked West Hampstead reversers, though. The same is true of WTT 14 (28/5/95), although the Queensbury slack had gone, there was another minute added between Green Park and Charing Cross (which was explained in the next WTT - 15 (2/6/96) as being due to the step-plate junction for the JLE; this is repeated in the preamble for WTT 16 (26/1/97) with the same short trip trap and no West Hampstead turnbacks. The same is also true of WTT 17 (28/9/97), which ws only 'tweaked' due to the issuing of Met WTT 307 - which brought in a whole raft of revisons (2 more in service during the busies and 'stepping back' brought in at Aldgate). The last 'old' Jubilee WTT (18:29/3/98) also had no booked West Hampstead shorties and the short trip trap; even though the step plate had been completed, so ½ min was taken away from Green Park - CHX - Green Park, but added both ways Willesden Green - West Hampstead, so the WTT had still stabilised at these short distance shuttles interspersed with alternate Stanmores. Of course, the JLE was impending so there was no need to return back to the glory days of WTT 12, where the T/Ops got more of a chance to see the scenery!

The short trip trap has only really (after a cursory look through the library) been repeated during the second phase of the Wembley Park works (TTN 2/05) when there were quite a few North Greenwich - Willesden Green shorties during the peaks to balance out the effects of non-stopping the Northbound platform at Wembley Park.

There was a joint Jubilee/Bakerloo trainmen's depot who were road trained on both lines,several times in the first year of operation Bakerloos ended up at Neasden overnight due to problems north of Baker St on the Bakerloo.

I can recall West Hampstead reversers being pretty common in the peaks, so they're definitely not a figment of the imagination.