C69/77 Stock - Withdrawals

C stock 5515+5517+5732 went to Northwood today to be taken away for Scrapping

5515 at Northwood
www.flickr.com/photos/juliang2006/8339419278

Northwood? I thought they would be taken away at Acton.

I just cannot get emotional about these trains to me always a like a poor mans' A stock

IMO The S stock is an improvement on the C Stock but that is not a difficult task!

XF

Nice one Chris - however I afraid it will be joy to me when all the boxes are filled!
My emotions will be in back in place for the D Stock withdrawals though

XF

Whether it's cheaper or not, it would be illegal, and I suspect they'd be identified as the culprits and be fined lots of money...

But how would anyone know who it was?

As metman says above, an underground train is fairly distinctive and LUL would have a job claiming anybody else had dumped it.

I am not an expert - but from my various conversations when we tried to buy firstly a 67 stock carriage, then an A stock carriage, the information we received was that the scrap merchants pay LUL for each carriage. The amount banded around was quite low. In fact one source quoted below £1000.

I would suspect that the scrap merchants also pay to take the carriage off site. But given the quantity of carriages involved, I expect they would have negotiated a good price with Alleys.

To give an idea we were quoted a “Ball Park” figure of £1000 to transport from Acton to South Mimms. A distance of about 20 miles. That obviously included loading and unloading. But that was for a one off.

One of the reasons we were eventually given for rejection was that in the business case for the train upgrades, LUL had proposed a clear policy on end of life scrapage. That entailed only selling the stock to authorised recyclers.

The point that was laboured was the recycling plan. I was told that it was essential to LUL that each carriage was properly dismantled and recycled. I my experience of bus scappage that does not necessarily mean someone carefully dismantles the vehicle, but that the remains are properly handled afterwards. So I suspect that the recycler still has a fair amount of labour cost or mechanical cost to sort the low value items from the more expensive components.

Also as whistlekiller has hinted at there might be an issue of exactly what use you put the carriage to in its afterlife. As the carriage is in full LUL livery, other than legal proceedings there’s nothing LUL could do to prevent the new owner passing it off as an LUL asset and using it in a manner which might cause embarrassment. I know that might sound far-fetched, but let’s assume a film company buy one to demonstrate the crash worthiness of a fully loaded tube train. LUL would suffer the potentially bad publicly which might result. This probably explains why there is a photographic embargo on former LUL assets in scrap yards.

I also understand that Booths (amongst others) don’t want enthusiasts to photograph the trains while they are in the process of being dismantled. Now I am not saying theres anything wrong with LUL rolling stock, but once it’s in that process it will look quite distressed. Pictures which might create the wrong impression to the initiated.

Given LULs concerns, it’s probably cheaper and safer from a reputational point of view to control where each asset ends up.

I love the way we let the media rule the world nowadays. It should be quite obvious to anyone with an ounce of intelligence that the vehicle is in a scrapyard, having reached the end of its service life.

It's probably thanks to the media, whether press controlled, social or otherwise that the remaining ounces of intelligence are so thinly dispersed nowadays.

It was the same with the A stock. Cost/Image is the balance which image appears to be second!

5034 had some technical problems too in its last few outings. In July me and a friend were on it leaving Amersham and noticed something strange, 5034 was accelerating slower than usual with no motor noise or PCM noise from that car! Driver stopped just outside, appeared to apply the brake (needle went up in the air gauge under the seat in the guards end of the DM), applied power a few times, this time with PCM noise, brakes released and off it went back to normal.

Happened again a week or so later departing Chorleywood northbound according to a friend, no motor noise very weak acceleration but 5034 was on the rear at the time and was being driven from 5188 so was like this till presumably the next time the driver motored.

I dont know exactly when it was, perhaps June actually but both times it was definitely with 5188.

Surely if it was just the motors dropping out, the PCM would still make noise?

The driver possibly did that then whilst stopped, do the PCM's make a noise when you reset them on A stock?