1992 stock introduction

I was told that manual driving was done on the coded manual setting before ATP was introduced.

And strangely enough, I don't recall umpteen weekend closures in order to upgrade the signalling when they did so ...

First ATO section was Gants Hill to Wanstead. I remember it was at the end of 1999.

Here are the dates for passenger service introduction of ATO:

06.12.99 Wanstead to Gants Hill
12.02.00 Liverpool Street to Mile End
22.03.00 Bond Street to Liverpool Street
05.04.00 Shepherds Bush to Bond Street
18.07.00 Mile End to Wanstead
07.03.01 Shepherds Bush to West Ruislip & Ealing Broadway
(except westbound into Ealing Broadway platforms 5 & 6)
01.05.01 Leytonstone to Epping & Gants Hill
(except eastbound into Woodford platform 1)
16.11.01 Eastbound into Woodford platform 1
01.03.02 Westbound into Ealing Broadway platforms 5 & 6

Was this the occasion when all the trainstops ended up in a skip?

Perhaps, but that does not mean that they went to landfill!

I think the worst of them were probably binned but I recall piles of them on pallets awaiting inspection and refurbishment at Acton Signal Overhaul Shop. Some would have been recycled as emergency spares and held in the various emergency stores and I believe that some were refurbished and modified for use on the JLE.

Well my recollection is that the Northfields 'signal graveyard', or what remained of it, went up in flames in the early 1980s one Sunday morning. What I refer to was a number of Portakabins and sheds in various states of repair stretching west from not far inside the Northfields entrance to the depot, towards the sheds. This was a hangover from the resignalling of the Picc in the 1970s which was more or less done and dusted by the time I joined LT although there was still some tidying up in progress at Northfields and Boston manor as I recall in late 1977, jobs that I was aware of but not involved in right at the end of the programme, the nearest I got was the District Line resignalling changeover at Earls Court, West Brompton and Fulham Broadway one Saturday night around that time. Back then these places seemed a very long way from my Whitechapel signal (new works) depot base although at the time we were still working on tidying up the tail end of the Central line resignalling at Woodford, Leyton and Holborn, Chancery Lane and St. Pauls as I recall.
I knew and had worked for the signal (new works) Inspector that set fire to the Northfields Portakabins, he was a Baker Street/Finchley Road man at the time and had invited the Fire Brigade along to supervise the controlled fire which it started on his behalf, I was not there myself. Despite doing everything apparently 'by the book' following subsequent complaints from the neighbouring residents he had to face a disciplinary board for his actions!
I transferred to the Telephone installation section at Earls Court depot in 1979 and discovered that telephone cable was kept at Northfields parked neatly on drums behind the substation, at that time in the days when the depot road was ungated we used to drive in and help ourselves as required for various projects, the Portakabins were extant then and that is when I first discovered them, indeed they also contained some telephone equipment which I rescued in 1982 when I took up a training post at the South Woodford signal (new works) training school as the comms installation instructor. Funnily enough the post run gang was also stationed at the end of the South Woodford station car park at the time and it was circa 1984/5 that the Inspector of whom I speak took charge of it from the previous supervisor, that is how I came to know of the destruction of the Northfields 'temporary signal depot'.
I didn't really see Northfields again until I joined Picc Line Signal maintenance at Bollo House, Acton, in 1996, although I had previously been working out of Signal House in Acton Works as a Comms TO with SE & C. It was then that I discovered that PLE still had a small piece of the old Northfields 'temporary signal depot plot', a small cage on the sleeper base (train loading area) at the east end of the depot not far from the substation where we kept signal cable and various items of metalwork, heston hose and other bits and pieces. AFAIK we stopped using that at or around 2000 when we had new sea containers delivered to our Bollo House depot and shifted an old one to Ash house, Arnos Grove.
I still worked at Northfields occasionally until 2004 doing frame maintenance and relay changing in the IMR although by then I was based in Earls Court Control Room most nights of the week and whatever was left at the east end of the depot had more or less made way for the new security post inside the depot entrance and the parking area just beyond.

Oh. I stand corrected, then. I just don't remember anything like the sort of disruption we're regualrly subjected to at weekends nowadays. Maybe I just didn't tend to use the Central Line much at that time? When was the zone 1 bit of it closed for this upgrade?