Building just outside Hammersmith H&C

They must have started building the new control centre.

Why not put it to another use during that time, or not build it until later.

It's as good as confirmed that the Piccadilly line will be the first in the new building.

Now come on Colin, you really don't believe the legend at Bollo House do you (Piccadilly Line West End Operating Centre)?

It never was, nor was it ever going to be because it is too small for one thing as it houses Tube Lines signalling staff and management, P-Way managers, train crew and operating management fully occupying the building. You may know that the building was built on the site of the original Bollo Lane LT CSE offices and opened in 1996. Subsequently additional P-way accommodation was built at the east end and then various containers were added for additional signals stores.

Of course Ash House at Arnos Grove is the East End Operating Centre and of course the facility does exist to control the signalling from just west of Manor House to Cockfosters from there when the Earls Court computer throws a wobbly or the signal databus link fails.

Back in 2005 all the talk was of moving the District Controller out of Earls Court and doing up its control room as the Picc only control room. To that end I did a lot of enabling works clearing redundant equipment and cabling from both controllers desks and tidying up to make room for additional facilities that were planned to be installed and I had discussions as an interested party with the designers and contractors who were to be involved in the revamp. The last I saw before I retired was the new diagram panels and my last job was refitting all the clocks behind them.

I always thought the idea of upgrading Earls Ct as the Picc Control Room was daft for reasons that I won't discuss here but the job of shifting the control room elsewhere was priced around £200M and subsequently £300M because it has always been assumed that it has to coincide with total resignalling of the majority of the Picc. I did actually suggest intercepting all the existing control, indication, data and comms lines at the Warwick Road equipment room complex and 'piping' them to another location via a secure fibre optic SCADA transmission network. IMO this was the cheapest and best way to relocate a control room and it would be much easier to interface upgraded signalling to such a place in future. My only concern at the time was that Tunnel Telephones might be an issue but I was assured by the contract PM that software applications already existed that would handle that too.

The very last job I can recall being done at Earls Ct was to create a new false ceiling but that was the last of stage 1 of the control room revamp. Just before I retired I again heard the rumour that the control room would actually be resited as part of the signalling upgrade, however, the location was still in the balance.

When you have a few more years service in you will no doubt notice (if you haven't already) what I noticed in my 28+ years on the system. LT/LU centralises and decentralises in cycles, rotates organisations endlessly through properties, amalgamates and separates staff and resources from year to year, assembles and disassembles and the key to all of that is financial!

The original plan was for the Piccadilly line control room to be in Acton Works, just next to the running line.
The PPP and inter-running with the District is a factor with the move. Plus they probably think they can axe a few staff whilst they're at it!

Well it was meant to be the Sub-Surface Railways control room, which is the Metropolitan, Circle, Hammersmith and City and that other one... the green one. Oh yeh the District ;D

Now it appears (although I've only heard rumours at this stage) that the little blue railway also wants to share our room.

As I'm sure you've guessed by now, I was in fact referring to Acton Works, not Bollo House

Reality check back atch'ya....

Since you left LU the "Met controllers" are actually employed by the "Circle & Hammersmith" business unit, and their Service Control Manager is also employed by that same business unit. In fact I believe the Baker Street SCC is also part of the C&H business unit. The Metropolitan service control set up, in terms of management and employees (aka the Metropolitan business unit), covers the signal cabins.

In terms of being a factual post though, MetControl is spot on when he lists the SSR as being formed of 4 lines, cos those 4 lines will be controlled from one place by one single team - what we have now is irrelevant quite frankly.

As has been covered by Colin, that is no longer the case.

In fact from whichever angle you come from, the lines will still be individually controlled, and will still have separate controllers and separate Service Managers. What may change is a reduction in Service Control Managers - there would be no real need to have more than 2 (SSR north, SSR south for example.)

I attended some of the early meetings and a mock-up experiment for the room some years ago, and whilst things may have moved on somewhat since, the basic principals will have to remain otherwise the room would not exist.

The only hint at the Piccadilly line back then was the rumour of the SSR taking over Uxbridge/ Rayners Lane-Acton, leaving the Picc to concentrate on running to Heathrow. In fact during the mock-up exercise some scenarios included this branch.

The current set-up of the control rooms is more a by-product of when things were very different. How old is Earl's Court control room for instance? That set-up harks back as far as then. The SCC at Baker Street does still control the old part of the Jubilee, but even this was as a result of how things were set up years ago. Back then from both a signalling and staffing point of view, benefits were gained from having adjacent lines controlled from one point - even if later years meant that they were all governed by different business units.

The parallel running of Met / Jub and Picc / District is no longer such an interwoven matter anymore. Both pairs of lines are pretty much worked as separate entities now - certainly very much so where the Met and Jub is concerned. It's a case of although they share access to/from Neasden depot, for the rest of the time never the twain shall meet.

The point you made about trains that are on other lines. These days a Picc at Uxbridge is under our (the Met's) care. But more so than in the past, it remains very much a Picc asset visiting our world. If something delays it, the politics machine will be focused on the Met business unit delaying a Picc business unit asset. For the same delay, the politics machine would never look at the H&C business unit - even thought the controller who is responsible for everything (H&C, Met and looking after the Picc) is employed by the H&C.

Confused yet?

Tacking the Picc onto the SSR control room puzzles me. It would not surprise me if someone had heard that maybe they will rent part of the building for their railway, rather than becoming a part of SSR.

Never Anyway it's our stock in the first place ;D