The December changes in action

I travelled eastbound through Edgware Road on a H&C at about 15:50 this afternoon.

As far as I am aware, Edgware Road to High St Ken was suspended this afternoon due to signal failure at Edgware Road (possibly this fault was on all day) - at least thats what intranet said earlier.

*Other* stations general PA said something like ''District Line part suspended between Edgware Road and High St Kensington'' - or words to that affect.

What I then heard at Edware Road station, I am 99.99% certain was something like ''The are currently no Wimbledon trains from this station due to a signal falure. Plaase take the next westbound Circle Line train and change at Gloucester Road''.

I can only assume is manual PA then someone dropped into auto-pilot mode, or (questioningly) this is a locally pre-recorded message that someone called up without thinking about it ??

If it was a one off then maybe excusable human error, but if that was recorded and being broadcast over and over one has to ask why no-one put a stop to it - there is a double error there - quite apart from no Circles go that way anyway, that direction was suspended, so no-one should be directed that way at all.

My journies OK this morning at BAS westbound
1 Hammersmith via Paddington 3 min
2 Hammersmith via Paddington 5 min
3 Hammersmith via Paddington 7 min

Exactly what I need

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Nick

We don't do things lightly. If I needed to do that then I will. The option and signalling is there for me to choose should I wish. For all we know the train may not have been able to continue any further east than the shunt limit.

Our chair is always available for anyone who knows better to have a go themselves ;D

The Tower Hill wrong signal was booked for a 5 minute delay, while the Mansion House delay was 7 minutes (and this was train 77 diverted there from the ERD service!). I understand they were blocking back to Barons Court before we were asked to take the IR service off!
It's good to talk ;D

Valid points! Given the Circle is now an end to end service I would think it less disruptive in future to reduce the Ealing - Tower's to Ealing - High Street's and put a few to Ealing Common Dt (or Parsons Green) (but not today obviously with High Street carrying the load from the Edgware Road problems)

I was under the impression the whole section wa suspended ... and I got that from other station's PA. Perhaps those PA msgs were wrong and Edgware Road was right then, either way one of those two pieces of information was wrong.

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Nick

And aren't you just glad that during this blocking back/stick-to-stick'ness/congestion... as you are explaining to the punters "sorry about the delay there is congestion ahead, we advise you take the Picc/c2c/ local buses" ... you get the reassuring words of the radio X MAN with his words of wisdom "There is no service between HSK and ERD on the District... GOOD SERVICE ON THE REST OF THE LINE" ... (he is called X Man because whenever any driver hears him come on the radio he/she presses X straight away).... so I inform my punters "Sorry it has taken us 10 minutes to move 2 stations, this is due to congestion ahead because of operation problems on the railway... but fear not its a good service everyone!!".... :S

*GnT time*

Obviously not a crewing issue then. Maybe (and considering 2 of the controllers on duty) a chance was taken to get the train back on path for that trip rather than waiting until later, by any means necessary. Moorgate may have been too far. Kings Cross may have caused additional delay, as would Baker Street.



That's a little harsh. The room is quite friendly. We welcome people to the room - you won't automatically be thrown on the desk. Well not unless one of us has had enough ;D



That would be the (supposed to be) 30-minute updates from the LIS. There is not one LIS at Baker Street on the Met at least who wants to do the updates, but politics rules. They got rid of a perfectly good recorded message system and put this in. When all is quiet, you get told about it. When it goes up the wall, they have to spend so much time telling everyone about it that we don't get chance to do our calls as the same channel is used. Then there's the stations who don't wait the 10-15 seconds after the end of the message, and end up broadcasting a repeat of the message over all the channels ;D

And as for the Good Service politics, it's too lengthy to explain here, but there are criteria for what should be shown. Unfortunately, because it's politics, and has got out of hand of late, the information is only of use to our management (to assess who is doing a good job) and of little use to the people waiting 20 minutes for a train.

Let me simply say that, on the whole, it is not normally late-running trains which trigger the delays message, it is actual cancellations that trigger it - and even then it has to be more than one. Ultimately it is down to the Service Manager to decide what is put out - of anything.

Anyway, back to the core thread, I get my chance to play with the timetable today - my first time late this afternoon! I'm hopeful the service remains more or less as it has been this week so far so that I can ease myself in gently ;D

But good service now as I write, following one final check before I leave. Let's face it, with the old timetable, had there been a big shutdown as there was this morning, there would still be the odd delay here and there.

Even with the best will in the world, the old service (I'm talking Met, H&C and Circle) took around 2-4 hours to get back after a suspension in the wrong place. To have it back to good service by now, means either the timetable is doing its job, or we're showing the political good service as there aren't many cancelled. Either way, it means I'll doze easy on my way in ;D

Perhaps we should have put out the message yesterday " Sorry for the delay to your EB service, this is due to the T/Op over running a signal at Plaistow resulting in the Barking service being suspended as we have been shut down for 15 minutes and are blocking back to Tower Hill". ;D

At the time, I wasn't in full possession of the facts with the previous posting you refer to, and i don't like to speculate as it could have been a Cat B.
I also agree that with the info to T/Ops, it could be in "trainmans speak". That would be more understandable and relative to the people it's going out to.

I think the new C&H timetable is being hammered this morning, as they have delays out due to lack of rolling stock. The timetable runs better with a couple of trains missing as it gives increased flexibility with reforming the service, but I think there may be more than a couple out this morning as the District is advertising delays for the same reason on the WMB -ERD service.

Agreeing with Colin, I've gone back and done a mass delete (as stated would happen at the top). The alternative was to shut the thread completely. There are two other threads to discuss the general LU stuf: this thread's quite specific.

So today I had a shutdown. Security alert at Notting Hill Gate. Occured around 1845. Suspended in both directions Edgware Road-High Street Kensington. All clear around 1925. Right time service around 2000hrs.

That has never been achieved before now. Normally it would have taken an hour or maybe 2 to bring all the Circles back from whence they were sent. Oh and during the actual suspension, rather than both Met controllers working feverishly to suspend both directions, and trying to find places to send the trains we couldn't run, we actually sat back and found we had thinking time ;D

Now this won't be the case on every shutdown (as has already been proven by morning disruption earlier this week) but it was certainly a bit surreal from where I was sitting. You qualify in this job by being able to think on your feet, and can handle a fair amount of pressure and decision making. But I don't think my adrenalin began to even simmer, let alone be actually needed.

Apart from the suspension itself, the only delay felt was a rather nasty (but not uncommon after such an event) 20 minute Inner-Rail Circle gap. Let us not forget that before this timetable, such an event would have created this kind of gap probably twice whilst the service was restored.

So far then, I'm quite impressed (if a little un-convinced that we're not being lulled into a false sense of security.)

We're not being given a full picture of what it's like outside in terms of customer confusion etc. I think that will come in the new year. Performance (politics and mathematical genius-based) on the Circle is turning out the best figures it has done in a very long time.

The manager who brought all this about was sat behind us for much of the shutdown. If this is a sign of the new order, then for lowering my and my colleagues blood pressure alone, he should receive some decent recognition from the company ;D ;D

Disclaimer: I've gone a little over the normal boundaries of praise there, and I blame a little of that on the nice glass (or 2) of wine I have endulged in since arriving home (it's very cold outside). If tomorrow I am proved very wrong, then rest assured I will correct my observations ;D

The WDM was the first for the majority of District staff involved. Hopefully (after our guidance) next time will be swifter.

From what I heard, the measures taken to try and fill the gap were not carried out in the way planned by certain members of their Service Control "team."