Whole Jubilee line suspended

O/T but...'Conked out' - a great expression. I think it's a northern one. I know my father uses a lot (I was born just outside Liverpool), but I've not heard anyone say it since I"ve been in London. This could be a thread just by itself

I grew up in London and this expression was quite familiar....but was most often applied to cars or motorbikes.

I am London born and bred too, and agree with slugabed. The expression once was extremely common (60 years ago) and perhaps it has fallen OOU down South, but still used more regularly in other places further north.

When the Jubilee line had the old signling why was it so unreliable though? The Northern line signaling is much older than the jubilee line and yet it is more reliable why is this?

The JLE was designed to have moving block signalling from Westinghouse. However, due to cost overruns, delays and issues with the system, they quickly had to get traditional signalling, according to CULG.

But due to the unions apparently running the country (or LU), they aren't able to, unless they introduce the passenger service agent, which would cause massive strikes & protests like the OPO argument. Except that OPO is much safer than the whole PSA thing.

Yup, it's the law.

'Conked out' is very much a London expression from my youth but it got replaced years ago by that universally used expletive beginning with 'F' !

It's a shame the system is now getting unreliable once again. I thought it had bedded in and the reliablity problems were now sorted out. I dread to think what it will be like when it gets installed on the Northern line with complicated junctions like Camden town. The Jubillee line is point to point where the Northern has several branches. I can't understand why the signaling system is so unrelaible. Really I think the Northern line should of got the TBTC first then the Jubilee line. The Jubilee line signaling was fairly new the Northern lines must be around 50 year old or more?

You have to remember the arrangement for the jubilee from 1999 onwards was only ever supposed to be temporary because it all went a bit wrong. The original ATO system couldn't be made ready for the Millenium Dome opening in 2000. In the event, they just decided to have conventional signalling until the upgrade could continue. So much so that the JLE was more sparsely signalled than the original section.
The northern line has a more robust signalling system that has improved a great deal in reliability from a passengers point of view in recent years and could easily last longer.

Bearing in mind the jubilee line has always had ATO in mind, technically its only about 32 years late!

My comment was made in regard to signalling & communications which began to be outsourced in the late 1980s but which became the 'preferred option' for resignalling commencing with the Central line as far as I can see purely as a political measure.

LT Engineering was deliberately taken apart piece by piece and what was once a nicely integrated, though not necessarily perfect, engineering organisation was replaced by external contractors under the 'make or buy' programme of the 1980s which most have probably long since forgotten about now. Even when the internal bids for design, install and maintain contract bids were competitive they were denied in favour of external bids for what I have always belived to be political reasons. The management at all levels from the Board downward accepted this with barely a whimper and with the 'writing on the wall' many managers choose to 'make hay while the sun shone' by taking severance and returning to the same desks as contractors on higher salaries, by leaving to join fledgling contract companies or indeed by starting their own contract companies and all doing very well out of it. Staff were encouraged to follow them and thus with a dimishing workforce bidding for internal contracts became an impossible task, thus the ever decreasing spiral began whereby no work forced staff to be let go and lack of staff prevented successful bidding for work.

This very deliberate process cost the taxpayer £millions and set Underground engineering back ten years as the new contract companies settled down to 'learning on the job' and being rewarded for their errors, omissions and mistakes while what remained of the internal workforce cleared up after them at no charge.

Because the internal contractor (S&E) was failing to win even 'bread and butter' work it had no choice but to lay off staff or seek work outside LU, a ridiculous situation. One such bid, if successful would've seen LUL S&E staff running cable in the channel tunnel but the bid was not allowed to proceed as in an emergency there would be little or no internal staff available. LT always had an excellent record of following up a major catastrophe or critical wrong side signal failure in double quick time inspecting all similar assets network wide within hours and this would've been impossible with the internal staff labouring on a contract in Kent!

The one place that many LU staff did work was DLR but of course still working from LU depots.

As one of my managers at the time remarked all we were doing most days was 'rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic'. As a supervisor at the time I found myself in charge of more and more staff covering ever larger parts of the network until for at least one week I was responsible for all the staff in my department and the remnants of another on the shift covering the entire system as all my colleagues had left and their offices had closed as they were not being replaced. We actually began to find ourselves doing work for the external contractors, showing them the ropes as it were and explaining where things were etc etc, even tracing faulty circuits and passing over the information so they they could repair them. Of course we could have made the repairs ourselves but we were not allowed to as the external contractors were being paid to do that!

All of this of course occured before devolution to lines, shadow running and transfer of engineering to Tube Lines and Metronet! Those of us that had not 'jumped ship' during the unfairly weighted 'make or buy' period and 'kept the ship afloat' with ever decreasing resources were 'sold down the river' anyway, it was TUPE to a 'preferred bidder' or dismissal.

I still see myself as an LT/LU 'company man' but I will always feel agrieved at what was done by politicians and allowed to transpire unhindered by the board and senior management who no doubt were all 'looked after'. There is no doubt that some reform of LU engineering was required at the time but the baby was most definitely thrown out with the bathwater. The PPP like most of the PFCs is a testament to incompetence and gross mismanagement of public finances.

@ Railtechnician

Your article is brilliant. You ought to consider writing a book, A copy should be sent to every politician in London,

Your article is initially a response to mine and it is primarilay about signalling, My article was written in more general terms because my late beloved Uncle "blew the gaff" to me about his knowledge of the corruption and mismanagement withinin Government (where he was) and public bodies, such as the transport industry. You only need to read some of my other recent threads, or look up "Ernest Marples" on Wikipidia, to see what was going on - - then realise that this was endemic throught government and you will see the size of the problem.

Your article is brilliant, but it only scratches the surface.

What's this got to do with the Jubilee Line? Frustration pointed towards the national grid would be more appropriate here.