Today's Chaos . . .

Well the Jubbly's been getting all the attention recently and we felt neglected......

Thry do seem to take much longer dealing with problems than was the case a few years ago. On the Central yesterday, the train at Leyton which had the fire alert caused a suspension of service between Liverpool Street and Leytonstone. Fair enough, the issue needed to be investigated by the LFB. But the service message was misleading, stating that the service was only suspended between Liverpool Street and Leytonstone. This implies that passengers could get at least as far as Leytonstone, but trains were just held in platforms on the approach to Leytonstone for over 40 minutes, at least on the outer rail of the Hainault loop.

It is now common practice to hold trains in platforms and then move them up a station at a time when there is a problem ahead. I agree with this, since it is far better than letting trains sit in tunnels. But, it seems, they don't always act quickly enough to reverse teains, and get them out of the way.

So what do they all do in their state of the art control centre at Wood Lane? They have all these facilities to reverse trains at the tough of a button, provide direct announcements to passengers on platforms, yet they don't seem to bother.

The train I was on at Newbury Park sat there for 40 minutes.The driver was very apologetic, saying that he doesn't know why the trains aren't moving. Eventually, he was told to change ends and take the train out of service to Hainault depot. 10 minutes later, he was back down the other end again!

Hoping for the best when you see a train running 205 late and they're trying their hardest to implement a shuttle service between North Acton and the west branches. Ha!

In February 2009 Tim O’Toole, CBE, handed in his resignation as managing director of LUL, saying that he wanted to spend more time with his family in the USA then in November 2010 he was appointed Chief Executive of First Group.

First Group runs trains in the UK and buses in the UK and six other countries.

Leon Daniels is TfL’s new managing director for surface transport, having previously been First Group’s UK Bus Customer Service and Communications Director. He replaces Dave Brown who is now Go-Ahead’s Group Chief Executive.

TfL’s surface transport covers buses, the PCO, the congestion charge, Victoria Coach Station, Boris Bikes, major roads and river services. Nothing to do with the Tube.

Expect nothing to change in the next few years, those in charge are only interested in gimmicks that they think will distract the masses from the real problems.

In October 2009 Tfl announced that it was cancelling lifts at Amersham, Greenford, Ladbroke Grove, Newbury Park, Osterley and West Kensington because of lack of funds after £25m had already been spent on the installation work.

Now Boris is going to splash out £40m of taxpayers’ money on a cable car across the Thames which he previously promised would only be built with private funding.

Joe Public voted him in, if he wants someone to blame I'd try looking in the mirror.

Boris is chairman of TfL so ultimately it is his responsibility. It was under his watch that Tim O’Toole left and Mike Brown returned, if things are ever going to change then we need to start at the top but currently we have the same people running things, all from the same boys' club, all thinking exactly the same.

It’s Boris’s administration that has been pushing through cuts and cancelling projects everywhere except on his little pet projects, bikes, routemaster replacement, cable cars. Everything else that has come in during his tenure, new LO trains, S stock, 09 stock, were all commissioned before 2008.

The Mayor of London is the only one who can instigate change at LUL and it would appear that the current incumbent isn’t interested in anything that won’t provide him with a photo op.

TfL is divided into three directorates, London Undreground, London Rail (LO, DLR, Trams) and Surface Transport.

Mike Brown is Director of London Underground and London Rail
Leon Daniels is Director of Surface Transport.

You say cynicism, I say knowledge.

I assume the 09ts has been built with the new signalling in mind, rather than having it 'retro-fitted' like the '96ts on the Jub, so from that point of view, I'd have thought it would be more reliable?

Indeed, but the project is running on schedule, and to budget from what I gather. Let's compare to the Jub upgrade...

Besides the 09 Stock will have been designed to operate under two different signally systems as will the 96 Stock as there were multiple different signalling systems on the Jub (pre and post JLE) and now TBTC.

Ah yes 'progress' isn't necessarily so! Many times in the past I have suggested that station staff are not as professional as they used to be. I have refrained from using the word 'incompetent' because in all honesty one cannot expect an untrained person to be competent and my view of the operating division has long been that staff are promoted too quickly without having learnt all the ins and outs of dealing with the core business of operating a service as their predecessors would have done years ago, learning the business from a very young age and gaining both experience and practical knowledge. The classroom, no matter how well run, is a poor substitute for hands on knowledge and experience.

Licensing, I'm afraid to say, is a double edged sword and does little to improve the competence of a competent person but can actually make an incompetent person appear to be competent in the short term. Practical ability cannot be properly taught in a classroom or wholly demonstrated in a 'friendly' environment which can allow borderline and lower abilities to gain a competence pass during assessment. It helps no-one to allow those who are not fully competent to gain a license, it doesn't help the licensee, it doesn't help the travelling public and it can make a laughing stock of the company.

Clipping and scotching points to secure a route is not a difficult task but people make it into supervisory grades without ever having done it during an incident. In my time as a signal lineman I came across several station supervisors who should not have been in charge of stations when incidents occured.
I recall supervisor who successfully clipped and scotched points in a tunnel between stations but seemed under severe stress when I arrived and enquired about the situation before dealing with the point failure. Though I asked only for details of the incident from his viewpoint he could only repeat while visibly shaking "Don't ask me to go in there again, I won't go, I'll book off, I'm not risking my life again". After liasing with all the parties and applying appropriate measures I was accompanied into an adjacent tunnel with trains running over the parallel secured route, the DMT had never been in a tunnel before so he walked six paces behind me just in case I got run over!
On another occasion I dealt with a signal failure at a depot outlet, the station supervisor had failed to remove clips and scotches from turnouts even though he had an instruction in the station log to do so. He pleaded ignorance, the clips and scothes having been applied by a colleague on a previous shift.

I think we would all respect the fact that a station supervisor job is not a 'cushy number' and is a multi faceted task. However, the idea of being licensed to any given location seems to supercede the idea that a properly learnt general principle can be universally applied with common sense, knowledge and experience.

At the end of the day the legal eagles rule the roost now so it is always better to be safe than sorry because willingness, ability and competence mean absolutely nothing without a 'license', thus a license or lack thereof is also a convenient way to avoid performing a task !

In the good old days of LT much of what passes for 'railway operations' today would be viewed with scorn. Of course the argument is that the railway is much safer today than 40 years or more ago but I don't necessarily agree with that viewpoint because there are far fewer railwaymen now, the organisation bloated with managers who simply have never been and never will be 'railwaymen'!

I do wonder if the Supervisor I referred to had been moved against his will in the recent "800 jobs cut" changes, not properly familiarised, and was now getting his/her own back.

It was also interesting that this fact was either glossed over or omitted altogether in the relevant report/review posted on the LU intranet!

More likely they sent an unfamiliarised Super to cover, maybe gave them a quick run round the station and then left them to get on with it. If they hadn't been familiarised with the points and they'd gone down there to secure them then if subsequently something had gone wrong they'd be out the door with a P45 in a flash. In these days of cost cutting you get kicked out for the smallest excuse, that is the reality of LUL 2011.

Lack of training was one of the one of the reasons I decided to leave stations and get onto trains, I knew more than most of the Supers I was working for and the level of knowledge of the SAs coming out of Ashfield was virtually nil.

Now that the DMT grade has been split up only the DRMs are supposed to go deal with anything, TOSMs and DTSMs do not have to be familiarised with the track in the area, the only thing they have to be familiarised with is their desk.

Yes that's the problem though it isn't a railway and hasn't been for a long time! Since the introduction of the TFL agency suddenly it's being run like a business! Now only figures and politics matter to these people and even at job interviews with LUL you are told this is a business. . Until this rubbish gets deconstructed and LU, buses, dlr etc are allowed to become london transport again I fear that things won't change. Because so long as you have a TFL businessman running a railway it will never fully work!

A good example being that weekends are a better time to do engineering works because it's quieter?! Errr no actually if anything I find the weekends busier and far more unpredictable than a standard 9 to 5 working week!

Suddenly now as well the Waterloo and city line is closed on saturday, yet what the business fails to realise is that it's probably a lot more useful for people trying to travel around London. What happens if the Jubilee is suspended between waterloo and london bridge, well a tourist would read the map and think aha i'll take the W and C, upon arriving at Waterloo he finds it closed?!