Circle on Sundays

A nice idea, but to get from Liverpool Street to the westbound District line would mean doubling back on yourself at Aldgate East off peak.
Edited to explain particular situation: I need to keep stairs to an absolute minimum!

I used to do it all the time, it was quicker than waiting for the Circle Line. I often walked from Aldgate East to Aldgate, and got the Met from there.

I'd be more than happy to walk it, but if Aldate/Aldgate East aren't classed as out of station interchanges like Hammersmith is, if I was on PAYG, I wouldn't particularly fancy being charged for 2 journeys.

Here we go again ;D ;D

First off, we're not a "request stop" railway. We don't drag a train out just when there are a few passengers to fill it. Just because at 1030 on Tuesday there were only 17 people travelling from Liverpool Street to Tower Hill, does not mean there won't be a school party on Wednesday or nobody on Thursday.

There are lots of services which have varying demand, but we don't look at making them peak-hour only or withdrawing them altogether.

Secondly, at last knockings on Saturday night there was an irate group of people who were disgusted to learn that there was no connecting bus service from the last Liverpool Street terminator, and the District Line. How annoyed they were when staff there suggested they take a short walk. They were, as far as reports suggest, fully able-bodied young people, but you would have thought we had asked them to donate a kidney.

Third, Jim's suggestion of an off-peak Aldgate-Hammersmith shuttle. Why should we have them ;D Why can't the green railway have them doing a Whitechapel-Olympia service or something. After all, we've got the Mets to supplement our service whereas the District has nothing.

Lastly, it's going to get bad enough from December for uncomplicated through journies. Let's not remove another "handy link" for the customer.

So why bother with all the manned spares then? Football specials? All the SB service enhancements when Wembley tips out after a concert or fitba/rugger match?



In the grand scheme of things this is quite a recent phenomenon - there have been many more years and many more amendments to working timetables to try and match the stock provision much more closely to actual demand. On one hand I'm thinking of all the uncoupling (or 'divided working' as the Met. insisted on calling it) on the other I'm thinking of the myriad variations of stock allocations, the progressive tinkering of when exactly the services to Barking started/finished, the Saturday peak service, the Christmas Day services, Watford trains stopping additionally at Harrow-on-the-Hill and Uxbridge trains at Harrow-on-the-Hill and West Harrow in the peaks to give the best service to customers during times of staff shortage, extending the Charing Cross reversers to Barking, the introduction of Olympia services regardless of exhibitions, all-stations Mets after the Bakerloo went to Stanmore, enhanced services for the 1937 and 1953 Coronations (especially the *incredible* number of troops and school parties worked into the City by a mix of special and ordinary trains), the withdrawal and subsequent reinstatement of Picc. trains at Turnham Green, Thursday night shopper specials and school trains on the Central. All of these are within living memory.

I'm not sure when the emphasis of the TTO seemed to change from 'We'll find out what the passengers actually want' to 'The passengers will get the service we give them' - perhaps it isn't the case and I'm labouring under a misapprehension, but it seems to stem from where the LBUs came in. This isn't a criticism of the current set up with Line Business units, but it seems that the only serious amendments to WTTs [1] are due to the retiming of OvergrounD services where there is inter-running of services - that then has a knock-on effect with the phrase 'minor retimings due to the introduction of a new timetable on the Inner Circle between Merkland Street and Govan Cross' or whatever being printed at the front of each new timetable.

[1] with the notable exception of the Extended Circle service.

In my experience the Circle is always more manic at weekends. Possibly partly because of the regular shutdowns and partly because there are far more tourists and day-trippers around who do not have the nous that regular commuters would have regarding alternative routes. It is very much a tourist railway.

Doing Liverpool St reversers this weekend just gone I was getting no end of questions from confused passengers (most of them wanted to go to Tower Hill). We only had 5 and a half mins tunraround in the platform and if i'd have given every passenger the detailed answer they were looking for it would have taken me 20 mins to change ends. Which begs the question... where the hell were the station staff? I certainly didn't see any on the EB at Liverpool St when I was reversing there. I thought thats what the SRT were for?

In conclusion, for all the faults of the Circle - it does what it says on the tin and I think the impact of losing it, whether off-peak, at weekends or permanently as is planned for December will be greater than many people think. It's the glue that holds the rest of LU together!

Deep down I know the District love us too!

But that might give the impression that the tube isn't a world class metro all the time

I'm always confused why there don't seem to be sufficient staff to work on shutdown days.

Surely the virtue of sections being closed means less staff will be required? Sure, there might need to be a supervisor or someone in charge at each closed station, and perhaps someone standing on the front telling passengers where the replacement bus runs from, but surely not the level of customer service staff that you'd normally have?

Then if sections of line are suspended, surely this results in a load of train operators with nothing to do? I'm sure they'd be able to be deployed to help passengers, direct them to the replacement bus or alternative transport?

Weren't all/most drivers CSAs at one point anyway? Aside from anythign else, I'm not quite sure what's so bad in extra people answering questions (it seems that the drivers who are driving get asked owing to the lack of platform staff, anyway). The railway replacement bus staff seem to help direct passengers despite (I imagine) not having any formal railway qualifications.

I suppose there would be mutiny as drivers probably enjoy getting paid for putting their feet up for a shift, but it seems a bit silly for there to be a huge shortage of staff in one department, when another department isn't doing anything.

A familiarisation at a smaller station can take only a few minutes, and it would be possible for staff to work on the unpaid side of the gateline giving information to customers only - not getting involved with the operation of the station.

I'm not suggesting it's the right thing to do - Train Operators are employed as Train Operators and that is their job, however it not beyond the realms of feasibility.

As opposed to paying them t/op pay for doing ???? during a shutdown?

Maybe they could be trained during one of the shutdowns and be paid t/op pay for it.......

Simon
<hoping he's done the quotes correctly in amongst all the snipping.>

I have a question. Do the people who run the shops on various platforms around the system have to undergo all that training as well? If not then it should be possible to arrange for drivers be diverted to customer care.

I don't think the suggestion is that spare train crew take over from the normal station staff, but that they are present in addition to give information and advice to passengers during the work. This doesn't even have to be on the platforms, but can be at the station entrances etc., especially if a station is closed anyway.

There are going to be a lot of closures in the next few years, so how many short days with 'team talks, etc.' will there be on the SSLs?

In any case (and T/Ops correct me if I'm wrong) engineering works and their timetables are planned weeks in advance, and so are the duty schedules with regard to train crew.

The image that because there's a shutdown there will be hoards of train operators sitting around doing nothing simply as there aren't as many trains is not true. Although there may be more "spare" turns booked on than usual, on the whole less train operators are booked to work.

This was proven a few weeks ago, when we ran a near normal timetable in place of the "planned" engineering timetable - which was cancelled at short notice. There simply were not enough T/Ops to cover all of the trains.

One point that has been touched on is why CSAs from stations within the suspended area be drafted on to other stations to assist. Where this can be achieved (i.e. the station they are moving to is within their "group") then it is quite often worked that way.

The extra staff for events at Wembley are quite often partly funded by the event organisers themselves.

I presume that if management want to cancel a driver's annual leave after they've granted it, they have to make it very much worth his/her while?