The Central this week

ONA's - loads of em this week. Eight alone one morning, and then there's the afternoons which are just as bad leading inevitable cancellations. What's an ONA? Operator Not Available, shortage of drivers in other words...........

It also seems that the signals and points don't like the deep cold we've been experiencing this week. All that snow and frost really messed up the track side kit at Queensway and the driver who was there, but not really there because he hadn't turned up had to do a lot of ice scraping. Along with retrieving the silly little blown off hat of Olly Murs which got jammed into the points at White City................

+ 1

Give Alfie the job!!!

Was it actually Olly Murs' hat?!

Thanks for the replies. Let's hooe there are enough drivers next week! If not, it would perhaps be good for LUL to put up a minor delays message to warn us leafy Ealing folk.

At least it will be warmer!

Oh, excellent forums by the way! Information and humour without any sniping. Possibly unique on the internet.

He keeps his snowplough at home!

No, we’ve been short of TOps on the Red One for months, cancelling 4,5, 6 trains a day for ONA.

We haven’t had any replacements because the Bean Counters that run things say we’ve got too many already but some are on long-term sick while others are off seconded to management. Add to that the half a dozen or so we’re sending to the pep rally at Stratford every day .

They are training new TOps but how many of those will come to us remains to be seen. Anyone who wants to be a TOp should apply for the 300 CSA jobs LUL are currently advertising; you’ll have to do 6 months on the ticket barriers and platforms before they’ll let you apply for TOp.


Sadly nothing to do with local managers, this is all decided by those in the lofty ivory towers at 55 Broadway, safely insulated from the thoughts and concerns of us ordinary folk.

Pr'haps there was a backlog of trains comig westbound so detraining at Marble Arch would cause a disruption?

The westbound was running OK at the time from what I saw.

I was “short tripped” at Marble Arch at least once last year for exactly that reason but sometimes it causes more problems. Example:-

You are the Line Controller.

A train is stuck at Holland Park EB and a big gap opening up east of there. On the WB you have train 01 at Bond Street, 02 at at TCR and 03 at Chancery Lane.

The data tells you that 01 is 75% full, 02 is 60% full and 03 is 90% full. You would go for the train 02 as that will cause the least crowding on Marble Arch platform.

The problem is that TOp A on train 02 is due to get off for their meal break at White City, if you send 02 EB they won’t be relieved until Leytonstone so they won’t have enough time to get back to White City and have their meal break before picking up their next train, train 04.

Now the logical thing is to tell them to take their meal break at Leytonstone and a spare will bring 04 from White City but because of the current staff shortage there's a good chance there won't be a spare available.

The only thing might be to leave 04 in the middle road and run the service around it. This means that any trains terminating at White City have to be tipped out on the WB platform, closed up and reverse up the siding. While all that is going on trains are stacking up in the pipe behind it.

In addition you have to remember to tell TOp B, who was meant to take train 02 WB at White City, to travel to Leytonstone to either relieve the spare who relieved TOp A or pick up their train in the middle platform otherwise they are just going to be sitting around White City.

And that is why I will stay an TOp and never ever move to the Control Room or become a DTSM.

But ultimately it boils dwn to the staff shortages.

A few years back I worked in IT support. Our manager had a policy where we had to be busy 100% of the time. That meant any new problems and we were stuffed. In effect we were understaffed.

As an aside, I have just had the pleasue of the Paris Metro. Sure the trains are not so frequent, but it is so good not having announcements every 30 seconds. Just announcements when a train arrives at a platform.

Some of their lines have rubber tyres and no rails. How weird is that?

Sorry totally off topic, I would think that the Centrals issues do boil down to lack of staff. Presumably staff are trained for specific routes and trains and not the overall network.

I have to say that given the choice which as a passenger, er customer, I do not have, I would much sooner human drivers on trains - things go wrong and we need people (you guys) to react quickly and decisively. Us passengers are a bit sheep like and clueless and if things go wrong, we need someone who can override signals (with permission of course) or take a view when something happens such as a passenger illness.

I have seen on many occasions a Central Driver shove a door to keep a train in service, can a computer really do that? Additionally, the personality of a driver when announcing a signal failure makes it more acceptable.