Special arrangements for tennis @ Wimbledon

I'm afraid not Chris!

On a weekday, and let's assume we're looking at the 'return traffic'....

Your spare trains will come from 'early stablers' after the peak - you can't use anything above what's out on the railway as anything in depot will either be undergoing exams, booked up with defects or held as spare for any train going defective on the road.

So, the first 'early stabler' is designated as a 'football spare' and does have a rostered spare driver; this train is shown as being available from 1919 Ealing Common Depot and must be stabled at Ealing Common depot by 2305.

So let's look closer at how it would work.............

In reality, that train will actually come from Ealing Broadway (1912) via High St Ken (1935 - 1940). It must leave High Street Ken by 1940 as 152 is due in platform 3 then (platform 4 already has a scheduled reverser). Assuming everything is running right time, that's a very tight turn around let alone if we're running a few minutes late or well off book.

To be useful at Southfields it'll have to go via Wimbledon, so if it leaves High Street at 1940, it'll be Wimbledon (2001 - 2011) making it Southfields on the East at 2015. That might be ideal, then again it might not - but it's the only shot you'll get with this train due the availability of paths/platforms.

You could put it in Parsons Green and use it as required, but it'll still need to go via High Street Ken and will need to be tipped out in that 5 minute turn around - it'll go in any of the roads to the west of Parsons Green. It could be shunted around to the east of Parsons Green, but you couldn't do it without affecting the through service. You are then told it's required - by the time you've got it out onto the Westbound, and the driver has changed ends to take it via Wimbledon (thus causing a delay to the westbound service) it'll be a good 30 minutes.......potentially it'd miss the the crowd it's aimed at with that sort of lead time. Before any bright spark suggests it, looking at the WTT, I would suggest that leaving it in one of the platforms at Wimbledon wouldn't be wise; in any case I doubt the Network Rail signaller would agree to it.

That's just one train.

The next Ealing Common stabler - for which a spare driver from Acton Town or Earls Court would have to be sought, arrives at Ealing Common depot at 1956. Subsequent 'early stablers' would require the same and arrive at Ealing Common at 2002, 2025, 2117 & 2137.

Given the timings for the first example, and taking consideration of the paths/platforms available in the Earls Court & High Street Ken areas, how useful will any of those later trains actually be?

Remember, this all assumes everything is on time, not canceled and not deliberately on an 'early stabler' because the depot requires the stock.

You also have to keep in mind drivers hours - what is the window for Wimbledon finishing times? Drivers can only be on a train for a maximum of four hours (roughly!), and if they're spares, the DMT will have to juggle their book on and meal break times to get any meaningful use out of them - spares book on at different times and you won't have as many available as you may think, particularly as uncovered duties need to be covered and they may be needed to cover operational incidents (ie, reforming, late meal relief, etc).

Not as easy as it is to type "use a spare train & driver" is it?!!




On a Saturday yes, but not on any other day of the week. But even those football trains are only so useful.

Taking what I said above into account, and the unpredictable finishing time of Tennis, it would take a lot of work to get the best use out of them.

So not only would you rather have an unsafe station (closed due to overcrowding), you'd also see the crowds pushed back out into the street, which will the affect the surrounding area and generate stories of how the District line was badly managed and the station couldn't cope.

Is that the result you'd rather service control aimed for? I thought the ultimate aim was to provide a useful and safe service for our customers!

Yes, people on the ground are best placed to deal with what is happening on the ground. The controllers will always welcome information - what they choose to do with that information is different for every controller though, and they will weigh it up against the rest of the line/branch. Bigger picture and all that.

It may well have been the case that station staff had indeed told the controller what they were doing and/or that the flow of people though the station hadn't peaked. I don't know as I wasn't there (or indeed even working on the day(s) in question), but neither will you have had the big picture either.

There is a cut-off time: it's 2130 (or earlier if it's getting dark earlier.....). But even you can't make a 5-set match last till 2130 if the guy wins in 3 straight sets!! And if it does finish at 1930 - or 2000 - or 2030 etc., you can't then keep all the spectators imprisoned till 2130 because that's when the extra trains are booked. Which is why I said above that Wimbledon is uniquely unpredictable.

And then there's the days (not this year) when rain stops play as early as say 1700. Not easy for the railway to manage.

And then you had the night last week when it finished after 22.30 - totally unpredicted. Southfields nearly closed that night..........

In the days of 4-SUBS, etc., there was a lovely SR green enamel sign next to the junction saying 'POINT PLEASANT JUNCTION' in white lettering. I passed it regularly as a kid on trips to London from Feltham with the school. I used to wonder where the line came from in the London direction. I have never been over that connection, though I did the Down incline in 1980 on a Class 50-hauled tour. And thanks for the updated info!

the ladder connection doesn't go all the way across to the up slow.

That's what I thought...so Up trains have to use the Up Windsor Slow and then presumably cross-over at Clapham Junction if required. The relevance is that this restricts, in theory, the capacity.

AIUI for those not in a hurry (the majority) it's a good 15-20 min walk at least. And that's after getting out of the venue.

I made it sound like a military operation because within the control room it is just that - doing things willy nilly and without planning or forethought is the worst thing a controller can do!

The first train in my example (train 34) has a crew relief at Acton Town west at 1854 (driver just booked on for duty at Acton Town), so diverting the train at Earls Court means you must use a spare driver. The diversion will also give you a 16 minute gap to Ealing Broadway. If a 30 minute gap on the Olympia's is considered a disgrace, what is a 16 minute gap on the far busier Ealing Brodaway service considered to be?

Whilst it might well have been a deft move on the day in question, it doesn't look too simple/pretty on paper.

Using 125 may have been an option - you could even use train 40, which stables earlier - the gap would only be 8 or 9 mins to Ealing on either of those which would certainly be preferable to a 16 minute gap, but it would depend on the availability of spares, whether the depot wants the stock, the state of the service at the time and even whether the trains are not canceled already.

This is why I insist it's very easy to sit at your computer and bounce all these apparently simple and blindingly obvious solutions around, but it's a damm sight harder to make a judgment call on the day as there are so many variables at play.

Things like Football are generally highly predictable - the Tennis at Wimbledon is at the opposite end of the spectrum with even the weather potentially the most variable of the lot.

That's a big no no - it would have to be arranged in advance and is subject to minimum periods of notice as agreed with Unions; I can't remember the time period off hand, but I'm quite certain we are talking days here.

'stepping up' (using a driver that's already booked on early to cover a duty with an earlier start time than the one they've booked on for) is also frowned upon by the Unions. Although it's a possible 'get out of jail free card', it wouldn't apply at the time of day in question as there are no other relevant duties booking on to play with.

It's certainly not something that ever comes into play in this sort of scenario.

Preferable ! Thats only +6mins on the usual headway anyway. Rather better than +15 to Olympia !!

The efforts to get past Acton Town often result in trains being more than +6 anyway !!

Only two stations would be directly affected Chiswick Park and Ealing Broadway.

If there are spares aplenty, and usually a spare or two can be russled up, then T103 could be made available much earlier from High Street from 1745, the East End football train 27 is at Wimbledon 1750 and could remain on the branch. The second East End spare train could be at High Street for 1845. none of these would cause a significant gap at the East End, though any train would have to end up at Upminster or have a compensating stock balance train end up there. However where theres a will there's a way.

T125 is a push in train (on the east only running as far as Barking) this could probably be taken for it's whole pm peak (I don't know what it's driver duties do, so spares permitting).

The easy option of stealing a train, sometimes both trains, from the Olympia service, demonstrates a shocking lack of customer care and focus.

I rather feel the organisers of these big events also need to have some regard to the effect they have on both their attendees and those incidentally affected rather than to expect the transport providers to simply jump to their whim. Generally i do not consider is appropriate that bread and butter (highest fare paying) commuters should be sacrificed at a whim for the sake of providing an enhanced service for one off users.

Does Centre Court really hold such numbers as to warrent all these extra trains ? !!

Whilst we may well be quoting or responding to each other's comments, I am mindful that this is not a private message conversation but a publically viewable one - one where the vast majority of readers are not LU staff.

It may seem like I am teaching someone to 'suck eggs' but what I'm actually trying to do is allow our non LU readers to follow the thread with some form of understanding - and perhaps offer some justification or sound reasoning to back up my viewpoint.

I have not intended anything I've said to be read as a personal comment/reply and I'm disappointed if you've taken it that way.

During the first week of Tennis I was on earlies, and the second week I have been in training - I therefore have absolutely no knowledge of what has or hasn't occurred on the District line with regard to the Tennis.

I'm sure I did say that somewhere

All I have talked about is how, given the controller training I'm doing at the moment, I'm seeing things from a different angle to the one I saw as a driver.

EDIT: Actually, I didn't make it clear I haven't worked this year during Wimbledon - sorry I didn't make that clear and I apologise for any confusion caused.

...and I was responding to your inference that extra trains can't easily be provided to serve Wimbledon when the tennis is on (ref. the part of my post which you neglected to quote).

Presumably if Chelney Hackney is built and the proposed take over of Wimbledon Depot takes place, this arrangement of having to send trains al over the place to get to Southfields Northbound will be moot?

Not entirely true - we have been watching it, and have once or twice done some wondering, but in this thread the posters (apart from Ben's last ) have been genuinely trying to bring sense to an actual operational problem.

But is it just cost that prevents a couple of 'push-ins' being rostered in advance for the whole afternoon from say 1600 onwards? Yes, it means pre-planning both for the t/ops, the stock and the WTT, but all this is feasible assuming the will to do it and that the planning starts well earlier in the year. Or is the feeling in the ivory towers that it's just not worth bothering with - hence giving the lie to the attitude that the casual visitors take precedence over the regular travellers.