S Stock Arrival

AND STILL NOT ONE DEPOT ROAD LONG ENOUGH TO TAKE THEM, OR ONE ROOF TALL ENOUGH TO REMOVE THE AIR CON UNITS.......

major problems ahead......

Are the sheds at Neasden really all that small (in height)! Presumably then if a train needs it's air con unit removed it will be sent to Upminster or Ealing Common, seems to be plenty of above roof height at these, especially in the lifting shed at Upminster. No specific need for S8s to be fully maintained on their "home turf", C stock come to Upminster for wheel set turning on the Wheel Lathe, they are also visiting Ealing Common for some other "mods".

It's a railway project in the United Kingdom, and some of us have seen things 1 too many times before. You would only need to work where I do to become a little cynical when people tell you it will turn out OK.

Hopefully this one will be the one to give us all some faith that things can go right.

I think you're unnecessarily generalising on the intelligence of the public. Doors have been operating like this for years on the mainline aircon services without incident - people do get used to changes.
And for those of us like myself that sit on an A stock at the end of the line for 10-15mins in the middle of winter having the doors mostly closed is a massive plus point.

Admin comment:

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If we're to assume you've complied with that rule, then rule 4a comes into play - in particular the bit where it says "personal attacks, aggressive posting, etc are not acceptable here".

PLEASE TONE IT DOWN IN FUTURE!

It's been a while since I've had a nose round Ealing Common, so I can't remember what facilities they have, but Upminster has easily got the height:

Lifting shed is to the right of the image:


Not the best of shots, but this inside the lifting shed - the D stock door to the left of the image should help gauge the room available:

Exactly! This is the type of lateral thinking that the depot project are looking at as we speak. Have you thought about applying for an Operational Task Manager position?

Ok, I take it back - not everyone has a "we're all doomed" perspective.

I'm afraid these automatically closing doors are a nuisance. I was hit by one the other day as I was boarding a train at St Pancras. It banged into me and I dropped my ticket and railcard, which I had just shown to the barrier people. The railcard fell into the wet pit under the train. I left my name and address with the platform staff and asked them if they cold pick it up after the train left. They agreed they would. I then had the business of explaining to the on-board ticket inspector why I didn't have my railcard. Fortunately I was sitting next to someone who said, "That story is so unbelievable, it must be true." We all had a bit of a laugh and the TTI (What do you call them these days?) rang through to St P to see if they had got it out of the pit. They did. Good job done by everyone, except the design person with the idea that passengers enjoy being clobbered by unexpectedly closing doors.

tubeprune: Surely there was a door alarm sounding?

Ahh, I just read your 'footer' note and now realise that you were citysig in another incarnation! D'oh!!

Pot/Kettle etc... ;D

In all seriousness, yes there are issues and where the depot is concerned there are major one's. There are issues 'all over the shop' if I'm honest but at least we now have sight of them and are trying to push the relevant project teams into doing something (in some cases anything!).

Tubeprune's troubles refer ...

Once in a previous life, I caught the electric commuter train from Pretoria to Johannesburg early one morning having arrived in the capital city on the overnight service from the Eastern Transvaal. The commuter trains had a lovely pair of co-acting sliding doors that were entirely manually operated at all stages of the journey, and in a Highveld summer they were usually left wide open during travel to help cool things down a bit inside. There was a vertical steel pole fixed in the middle of the door opening which left about a two foot gap (60 cm for our younger listeners) to get in or out.

A currently rare quality - called common-sense - stopped you from falling out whilst the train was in motion: at a good lick of speed too! For those unaware of the common 'Soweto' type EMU that were used on this service you can find an image here (Many thanks to Andre Kritzinger).

Anyway, to continue a nearly total off-topic contribution to this 'S' stock thread, young Hutch - sporting back-pack luggage - sprinted for the freshly departing Johannesburg train (he could in those days!) and leaped through the open doors of the rapidly accelerating service only to be brought up short of complete entry by the bedroll on his rucksack that was somewhat in excess of 2 feet wide (younger listeners see above). An increasingly rapid departure on the outside of the train made me thankful I was not on the Underground, although the OHLE masts were starting to seriously worry me! How do you take a back-pack off and keep hold of the train at the same time?

I learned after that!

I am familiar with these trains. They had Vacuum brakes! The doors were like those on the District's old pre-Q stock, the H Stock.

The South African model was necessary because the door engines and piping on air door trains was stolen by the passengers, the copper piping being valuable. We tried to find a secure solution when I worked at Union Carriage.

With doors self-closing at termini at different times as and when passengers board, people are going to be subjected to a never-ending cacophony of alarms during layover as each doorway is opened, then closes, then is opened again, then closes, etc etc (as occurs e.g. on Tramlink where it's akin to sitting amongst a flock of geese - ARK, ARK, ARK.......ARK, ARK, ARk....). Great!