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Post by snoggle on Aug 13, 2017 22:18:39 GMT
I've just gone onto the TfL website to see if there's any indication of this weekend having a repeat of the same trouble as the last and found "Minor delays between Acton Town and Heathrow Airport due to operational difficulties". Is this the new way of saying they've promoted too many Night tube drivers in one go or something unrelated - the vaguest update message I can recall seeing  yes operational difficulties are due to lack of night tube operators on the book the master plan is to have certain trains cancelled to make 4 trains an hour instead of 6 and if a gap of over 45 minutes occur they will suspend the service A small but related issue for LU with this issue is that Surface Transport are making substantial cuts to some Night Bus routes at weekends in the near future. The N29 is being hugely reduced in frequency between T Sq and Wood Green and the N91 is being halved in frequency. If the Night Picc Line does get suspended then once the students are back next month those reduced night bus routes may struggle to take up the diverted demand from the tube. West London night bus routes haven't been reduced - yet. I've never used the Night Tube so have no feel for the adequacy of a Picc Line x15 frequency but it *feels* a bit inadequate given how busy the Picc usually is in the evenings. Anyone able to give a view from their experience of using the Night Tube? |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2017 23:01:05 GMT
Anyone able to give a view from their experience of using the Night Tube? I wouldn't ask that question on here as everyone will tell you that Night Tube is a complete waste of time and such a pain to run that it isn't worth it even though passengers are clearly using it and the passenger numbers are way above what was expected. |
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North End
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Post by North End on Aug 14, 2017 0:14:50 GMT
Anyone able to give a view from their experience of using the Night Tube? I wouldn't ask that question on here as everyone will tell you that Night Tube is a complete waste of time and such a pain to run that it isn't worth it even though passengers are clearly using it and the passenger numbers are way above what was expected. Speaking from using the Northern, I've made a few journeys up to Barnet, Golders Green and Edgware for work purposes, and on each occasion I've had either the carriage to myself for the entire journey, or at most one other in there. I've had a car to myself from Morden to Edgware on one occasion. Trackernrt consistently shows loading a as low, despite the trains being weighed down by copious amounts of vomit and urine. Operationally it's a menace, it has caused a lot of issues particularly with maintenance, especially when an asset develops a fault which would otherwise receive an overnight maintenance intervention. For two weekends recently we have had Morden running with platforms out of commission due to points failure and no opportunity to get access to rectify, not helped by the fact points fitters are unavailable on these nights as LU doesn't want to pay people sitting around unable to carry out their specialist role on a regular basis. Add in the odd one under and the odd stabbing, people falling onto or going onto the track, each incident requiring some degree of investigation plus support to the staff involved, and all in all it's a pain in the proverbial backside. The state of the trains in the morning is also a sight to behold, and there's a developing issue with 95 stock driver's cabs smelling of urine, which mysteriously only started becoming an issue about the same time as Night Tube started. If I had my way I would scrap the pointless service tomorrow. Given the shortage of train operators across the board at present, one suspects LU could easily offer them full-time roles. |
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Post by PiccNT on Aug 14, 2017 9:51:43 GMT
As a former Night Tube T/Op on the Picc, I can offer my view on it. I have also accompanied my Night Tube colleagues on other lines to get a feel on what it's like compared with the Picc. As most of you are aware, the Picc is the only NT line manually driven. The levels of concentration needed are substantially higher than the ATO lines. In terms of customer traffic, as it became more established, probably from March onwards, it has got busier and busier. Not the whole line but certainly the more central area. I regularly had a full train going through town at 3 or 4 in the morning and that was with a 10 minute headway.
The current difficulties are because of sick absence, staff unavailable due to operational incidents and also because some of us, me included, were moved onto full time. There are plenty of new NT T/Ops in training and they will gradually fill the vacancies. Because the busiest section does not include the extremes, I think maybe every other train should be an Arnos Grove to Northfields service and we should terminate at Heathrow 2&3 to stop the never ending aggravation of trying to get the drunks off the train at T5 as we have to reverse in the sidings.
Back to my point about concentration levels. Working for just 2 nights is very hard. From personal experience, I used to sleep normally on a Thursday night and try to rest on Friday late afternoon but could never sleep then so I was up all day Friday and worked the entire night. Towards the end of the shift I was extremely tired and that is where you are likely to make mistakes. My comment above regarding staff being absent for operational incidents, quite a bit of this could well be attributed to fatigue whereas on an ATO line, you are far less likely to make an error.
So, the service is well used but needs tweaking. Whether it will ever pay for itself is another question! Oh and North End's point about the state of the trains is very valid. We have witnessed things worse that vomit on our trains as if that wasn't bad enough. We have vomit squads along the line to try and keep the trains in service but when we walk through the trains when we stable them in the depots, they are normally in a terrible state. Night Tube for me was a great experience but I'm glad to have moved on!
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Post by Chris M on Aug 14, 2017 14:49:33 GMT
From a passenger perspective, I've used the Northern line once and the Jubilee line a handful of times. In all cases these were in around the hour to an hour and a half after the day service finished. On no occasion have I had a carriage to myself, and on one occasion the carriage I was in had no free seats from Waterloo to Canada Water, but was still half full to Canary Wharf. My subjective feeling based on limited experience is that passenger loadings along the train are less evenly distributed than in the day as almost all users know where there exit is and I theorise that the longer headways between trains and a general desire to get home means that walking at your origin station rather than your destination station has a higher perceived reward. Less crowded platforms will make this walking easier of course.
I've not seen any figures, but the relative business of stations seems quite different to during the day. Westminster is always busy during the day but much quieter at night, but Canada Water seems to be doing a good night time trade.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2017 18:04:37 GMT
Last Friday I did check Trackernet and found a service going Westbound at Houslow West and the next one behind was at South Kensington
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Post by rheostar on Aug 14, 2017 19:55:07 GMT
Last Friday I did check Trackernet and found a service going Westbound at Houslow West and the next one behind was at South Kensington Just needed a bit of regulation. 😉 |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2017 19:56:15 GMT
That has gotto be about 30mins or so between them
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North End
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Post by North End on Aug 14, 2017 20:18:35 GMT
As a former Night Tube T/Op on the Picc, I can offer my view on it. I have also accompanied my Night Tube colleagues on other lines to get a feel on what it's like compared with the Picc. As most of you are aware, the Picc is the only NT line manually driven. The levels of concentration needed are substantially higher than the ATO lines. In terms of customer traffic, as it became more established, probably from March onwards, it has got busier and busier. Not the whole line but certainly the more central area. I regularly had a full train going through town at 3 or 4 in the morning and that was with a 10 minute headway. The current difficulties are because of sick absence, staff unavailable due to operational incidents and also because some of us, me included, were moved onto full time. There are plenty of new NT T/Ops in training and they will gradually fill the vacancies. Because the busiest section does not include the extremes, I think maybe every other train should be an Arnos Grove to Northfields service and we should terminate at Heathrow 2&3 to stop the never ending aggravation of trying to get the drunks off the train at T5 as we have to reverse in the sidings. Back to my point about concentration levels. Working for just 2 nights is very hard. From personal experience, I used to sleep normally on a Thursday night and try to rest on Friday late afternoon but could never sleep then so I was up all day Friday and worked the entire night. Towards the end of the shift I was extremely tired and that is where you are likely to make mistakes. My comment above regarding staff being absent for operational incidents, quite a bit of this could well be attributed to fatigue whereas on an ATO line, you are far less likely to make an error. Night Tube does I suppose have one advantage that there is less urgency and thus pressure to keep the job moving, which I imagine must help a little. So, the service is well used but needs tweaking. Whether it will ever pay for itself is another question! Oh and North End's point about the state of the trains is very valid. We have witnessed things worse that vomit on our trains as if that wasn't bad enough. We have vomit squads along the line to try and keep the trains in service but when we walk through the trains when we stable them in the depots, they are normally in a terrible state. Night Tube for me was a great experience but I'm glad to have moved on! This is an interesting post, so thanks for taking the time to write it. I do find it a little concerning to hear fatigue issues are common, although it's probably inevitable to some extent. The advantage of the traditional seven-night train operator nights is that they are able to adapt to nights by the second or third night, plus there was/is the ability to get a bit of rest between close of traffic and start of traffic, which many certainly did/do. I do take issue a little with the idea that ATO lines require less concentration, however. There's less chance of a SPAD, and virtually no chance of a catestrophic overspeed, but the driver does still need to be alert. ATO can be more tiring if anything, the monotony does not help. The driver may need to carry out safety-critical activities at a moment's notice (e.g. Laying an SCD), or a safety-critical procedure even as basic as CSDE override. A small mistake at the wrong time and place can have serious consequences, and a chain of events can often start with something trivial. |
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Post by PiccNT on Aug 15, 2017 9:26:52 GMT
Point taken North End. The predominant operational incidents on the line are SPaDs. Just couldn't force myself to type that acronym out yesterday! We have seen a mixture of station starters and running signals and they normally occur towards the latter part of the shift when concentration levels are dipping. Strangely enough, and it's probably a coincidence, those of us that came through early without any disruption in our training have kept out of trouble. It seems to be mainly the T/Ops that had fragmented training and sometimes went weeks without an Inst/Op that have come a cropper. I think that there are aspects of the training that could be improved to eliminate some of the errors such as focusing more on signals and their behaviour. It's one thing looking ahead and seeing red, green or yellow but you really need to fully understand how they work in conjunction with each other and in differing circumstances. Maybe I should head off to Skills Development!
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Post by Deleted on Aug 15, 2017 9:52:18 GMT
It is really frustrating, as someone who passed the Night Tube T/Ops assessments back in June and is now waiting for an unknown start date (as no training course availability until at least the New Year), to hear of the lack of operators when I am so desperate for a job. Hopefully this is this an unusual 'blip' in the planning & organisational capabilities within this area?
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Post by PiccNT on Aug 15, 2017 10:40:58 GMT
It is really frustrating, as someone who passed the Night Tube T/Ops assessments back in June and is now waiting for an unknown start date (as no training course availability until at least the New Year), to hear of the lack of operators when I am so desperate for a job. Hopefully this is this an unusual 'blip' in the planning & organisational capabilities within this area? I understand your frustration. I think the planning could have been better and it doesn't seem that complicated to work out how many T/Ops are required across all of the lines and resource accordingly. There are only so many places available at the training school and they are working flat out with both promotional upgrades (station staff and others moving to T/Ops) as well as externals joining for Night Tube. The bulk of the movement is on the Piccadilly Line as there are a lot of full time T/Ops that have transfers in for other lines so we need a constant flow of new recruits to fill both full time and part time roles. Hopefully you will get a start date soon. |
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Post by aslefshrugged on Aug 15, 2017 10:55:23 GMT
It is really frustrating, as someone who passed the Night Tube T/Ops assessments back in June and is now waiting for an unknown start date (as no training course availability until at least the New Year), to hear of the lack of operators when I am so desperate for a job. Hopefully this is this an unusual 'blip' in the planning & organisational capabilities within this area? After nearly 20 years of working for London Underground I regret to inform you that this is a depressingly typical example of the planning and organisational capabilities you can't expect in any future career you have down here. Sadly you get used to it....... |
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North End
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Post by North End on Aug 15, 2017 10:56:54 GMT
It is really frustrating, as someone who passed the Night Tube T/Ops assessments back in June and is now waiting for an unknown start date (as no training course availability until at least the New Year), to hear of the lack of operators when I am so desperate for a job. Hopefully this is this an unusual 'blip' in the planning & organisational capabilities within this area? You will have to get used to chaos with LU, I'm afraid. Even at the best of times internal organisation is generally a little chaotic - and now is certainly not the best of times, in fact many staff at present are finding now is the worst period they can remember during their careers at LU/LT. The ship has got lost in the sea with the captain not knowing how to operate the engines, and it feels like a slow torturous drowning but the captain is on a different planet and is telling everyone how everything is not just fine but wonderful, as a few experienced staff frantically fight to keep the ship going in spite of the captain's ineptitude. Trains management in particular is suffering badly at the moment, and this has filtered through to performance. There was a disastrous change programme 7 years ago, which the powers that be finally decided to largely reverse this year, but in the process managed to achieve a setup which is now generally being found to work even *worse*, which is some achievement, even for LU! Sadly, quality of leadership leaves a lot to be desired at the moment. The company desperately needs someone decent like Howard Collins back. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 15, 2017 19:47:26 GMT
It is really frustrating, as someone who passed the Night Tube T/Ops assessments back in June and is now waiting for an unknown start date (as no training course availability until at least the New Year), to hear of the lack of operators when I am so desperate for a job. Hopefully this is this an unusual 'blip' in the planning & organisational capabilities within this area? You will have to get used to chaos with LU, I'm afraid. Even at the best of times internal organisation is generally a little chaotic - and now is certainly not the best of times, in fact many staff at present are finding now is the worst period they can remember during their careers at LU/LT. The ship has got lost in the sea with the captain not knowing how to operate the engines, and it feels like a slow torturous drowning but the captain is on a different planet and is telling everyone how everything is not just fine but wonderful, as a few experienced staff frantically fight to keep the ship going in spite of the captain's ineptitude. Trains management in particular is suffering badly at the moment, and this has filtered through to performance. There was a disastrous change programme 7 years ago, which the powers that be finally decided to largely reverse this year, but in the process managed to achieve a setup which is now generally being found to work even *worse*, which is some achievement, even for LU! Sadly, quality of leadership leaves a lot to be desired at the moment. The company desperately needs someone decent like Howard Collins back. Perfectly put - sadly. Come back Howard - all is forgiven!! |
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North End
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Post by North End on Aug 15, 2017 20:23:08 GMT
You will have to get used to chaos with LU, I'm afraid. Even at the best of times internal organisation is generally a little chaotic - and now is certainly not the best of times, in fact many staff at present are finding now is the worst period they can remember during their careers at LU/LT. The ship has got lost in the sea with the captain not knowing how to operate the engines, and it feels like a slow torturous drowning but the captain is on a different planet and is telling everyone how everything is not just fine but wonderful, as a few experienced staff frantically fight to keep the ship going in spite of the captain's ineptitude. Trains management in particular is suffering badly at the moment, and this has filtered through to performance. There was a disastrous change programme 7 years ago, which the powers that be finally decided to largely reverse this year, but in the process managed to achieve a setup which is now generally being found to work even *worse*, which is some achievement, even for LU! Sadly, quality of leadership leaves a lot to be desired at the moment. The company desperately needs someone decent like Howard Collins back. Perfectly put - sadly. Come back Howard - all is forgiven!! The sad thing is that having an experienced railwayman with a proven track record of competence at the helm would put the current lot to shame, so it's unlikely to happen. I really would love to be proved wrong on that prediction though. The likes of Greathead, Yerkes and Pick who designed and built this great system would be turning in their graves at the way things are being run at the moment. It's so sad. |
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Post by ducatisti on Aug 16, 2017 8:34:00 GMT
I'm not sure Yerkes would be turning in his grave. Except perhaps for the failure to use some of his more unorthodox methods used in the US... Wiki on Charles YerkesI'm not saying anything about the current lot, but let's not forget our historical forebears have their problems too |
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Post by A60stock on Aug 18, 2017 8:52:44 GMT
Is there a reason that the entire section of night tube picc line get a picc service and as suggested before, every other train doesn't run as a northfields to arnos grove service? Given that the picc line does have rolling stock issues, wouldnt this help improve reliability? Will the service pattern change?
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Post by PiccNT on Aug 18, 2017 9:16:25 GMT
Is there a reason that the entire section of night tube picc line get a picc service and as suggested before, every other train doesn't run as a northfields to arnos grove service? Given that the picc line does have rolling stock issues, wouldnt this help improve reliability? Will the service pattern change? It's more staffing issues at the moment. I believe the service pattern needs to be looked at especially because of low usage at the extremes and the issues around tipping out at T5 but as mentioned earlier, a lot of T/Ops on the Picc are top of the waiting lists to move to other lines so the other lines need the Picc to release them, Night Tube staff then get moved to FT to replace the departed FT staff and as we have seen, that has led to a shortage on the Night Tube. It should be back to full strength by Xmas but loads more NT staff will be needed to go FT to cover vacancies and to release others to other lines. Basically can't recruit/train fast enough. The company thought that they could resource the Night Tube with reduced numbers and they probably could if existing staff were all working but there is a fair amount of sick leave, annual leave, refresher training (undertaken Mon-Fri so is missing from duty the weekend before and the weekend after) and re-training after incidents. So, all in all, far too few staff to run a half decent service. |
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Post by aslefshrugged on Aug 18, 2017 9:47:57 GMT
Question. If Night Tube drivers require corrective action plans under the instruction of an Instructor Operator are the IOps released from their "normal" duties to work Friday and Saturday nights or do the NT drivers have to swap to "normal" duties?
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Post by PiccNT on Aug 18, 2017 12:14:05 GMT
Question. If Night Tube drivers require corrective action plans under the instruction of an Instructor Operator are the IOps released from their "normal" duties to work Friday and Saturday nights or do the NT drivers have to swap to "normal" duties? Night Tube staff are not allowed to book on before 20:30 on Friday/Saturday so what happens is the I/Ops works up to their own duty time and that's it so the CAP is perhaps 2 x 2 or 3 hours. We have one I/Op that pretty much disregards this and is willing to work overnight but this strictly speaking breaches the (ridiculous) oil & water agreement. I think sometimes a bit of common sense should prevail mainly for the sake of the inexperienced drivers. |
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Post by aslefshrugged on Aug 18, 2017 12:52:08 GMT
Question. If Night Tube drivers require corrective action plans under the instruction of an Instructor Operator are the IOps released from their "normal" duties to work Friday and Saturday nights or do the NT drivers have to swap to "normal" duties? Night Tube staff are not allowed to book on before 20:30 on Friday/Saturday so what happens is the I/Ops works up to their own duty time and that's it so the CAP is perhaps 2 x 2 or 3 hours. We have one I/Op that pretty much disregards this and is willing to work overnight but this strictly speaking breaches the (ridiculous) oil & water agreement. I think sometimes a bit of common sense should prevail mainly for the sake of the inexperienced drivers. Firstly there's no such thing as common sense, if there was we'd all agree on everything but secondly if the agreement to keep Night Tube separate from the rest isn't working then its up to management to renegotiate it, not for us to work outside the agreements. How does the IOp manage to work overnight if there are no Friday and Saturday night duties on the "normal" roster? |
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Post by A60stock on Aug 18, 2017 12:58:27 GMT
I wonder if the service pattern of the other night tubes may also have to be looked at as well, especially the outer ends of the central, jubilee and northern
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Post by aslefshrugged on Aug 18, 2017 13:02:36 GMT
I've just had confirmation from my local ASLEF rep, the insistence that Night Tube and "normal" duties be kept separate was from the management side, so it is their mess to sort out not ours.
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Post by piccboy on Aug 18, 2017 13:05:45 GMT
Night Tube staff are not allowed to book on before 20:30 on Friday/Saturday so what happens is the I/Ops works up to their own duty time and that's it so the CAP is perhaps 2 x 2 or 3 hours. We have one I/Op that pretty much disregards this and is willing to work overnight but this strictly speaking breaches the (ridiculous) oil & water agreement. I think sometimes a bit of common sense should prevail mainly for the sake of the inexperienced drivers. Firstly there's no such thing as common sense, if there was we'd all agree on everything but secondly if the agreement to keep Night Tube separate from the rest isn't working then its up to management to renegotiate it, not for us to work outside the agreements. How does the IOp manage to work overnight if there are no Friday and Saturday night duties on the "normal" roster? Piccadilly line still has full time night turns for first and last trains just like most other lines. When I did my TO training, IO and myself did one night to get a couple of Northfields depot moves done. IO = Instructor Operator TO = Train Operator |
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Post by aslefshrugged on Aug 18, 2017 13:29:27 GMT
Firstly there's no such thing as common sense, if there was we'd all agree on everything but secondly if the agreement to keep Night Tube separate from the rest isn't working then its up to management to renegotiate it, not for us to work outside the agreements. How does the IOp manage to work overnight if there are no Friday and Saturday night duties on the "normal" roster? Piccadilly line still has full time night turns for first and last trains just like most other lines. When I did my TO training, IO and myself did one night to get a couple of Northfields depot moves done. IO = Instructor Operator TO = Train Operator Well, that explains it. We used to have Sunday to Saturday night turns on Central Line (Hainault and Leytonstone depots only) but after Night Tube started its Sunday to Thursday only so there are no "normal" night duties during Night Tube hours. I wonder what the situation is on the other Night Tube lines?
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Post by MoreToJack on Aug 18, 2017 14:14:32 GMT
IO = Instructor Operator TO = Train Operator Important to clarify that general convention is for Train Operator to be abbreviated to T/Op. TO is generally used for Technical Officers. |
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towerman
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Post by towerman on Aug 18, 2017 15:29:22 GMT
It is really frustrating, as someone who passed the Night Tube T/Ops assessments back in June and is now waiting for an unknown start date (as no training course availability until at least the New Year), to hear of the lack of operators when I am so desperate for a job. Hopefully this is this an unusual 'blip' in the planning & organisational capabilities within this area? You will have to get used to chaos with LU, I'm afraid. Even at the best of times internal organisation is generally a little chaotic - and now is certainly not the best of times, in fact many staff at present are finding now is the worst period they can remember during their careers at LU/LT. The ship has got lost in the sea with the captain not knowing how to operate the engines, and it feels like a slow torturous drowning but the captain is on a different planet and is telling everyone how everything is not just fine but wonderful, as a few experienced staff frantically fight to keep the ship going in spite of the captain's ineptitude. Trains management in particular is suffering badly at the moment, and this has filtered through to performance. There was a disastrous change programme 7 years ago, which the powers that be finally decided to largely reverse this year, but in the process managed to achieve a setup which is now generally being found to work even *worse*, which is some achievement, even for LU! Sadly, quality of leadership leaves a lot to be desired at the moment. The company desperately needs someone decent like Howard Collins back. Better still resurrect the Cope brothers,proper railwaymen,not these ex uni types they have now. |
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Post by nig on Aug 18, 2017 22:30:31 GMT
Piccadilly line still has full time night turns for first and last trains just like most other lines. When I did my TO training, IO and myself did one night to get a couple of Northfields depot moves done. IO = Instructor Operator TO = Train Operator Well, that explains it. We used to have Sunday to Saturday night turns on Central Line (Hainault and Leytonstone depots only) but after Night Tube started its Sunday to Thursday only so there are no "normal" night duties during Night Tube hours. I wonder what the situation is on the other Night Tube lines?
Night duties only run sun to Thursday on picadilly line Cap plans can be done on Friday and Saturday 8.30 to 1.30 if an I/op is doing all night they shouldn't be |
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Post by snoggle on Aug 19, 2017 9:46:30 GMT
You will have to get used to chaos with LU, I'm afraid. Even at the best of times internal organisation is generally a little chaotic - and now is certainly not the best of times, in fact many staff at present are finding now is the worst period they can remember during their careers at LU/LT. The ship has got lost in the sea with the captain not knowing how to operate the engines, and it feels like a slow torturous drowning but the captain is on a different planet and is telling everyone how everything is not just fine but wonderful, as a few experienced staff frantically fight to keep the ship going in spite of the captain's ineptitude. Trains management in particular is suffering badly at the moment, and this has filtered through to performance. There was a disastrous change programme 7 years ago, which the powers that be finally decided to largely reverse this year, but in the process managed to achieve a setup which is now generally being found to work even *worse*, which is some achievement, even for LU! Sadly, quality of leadership leaves a lot to be desired at the moment. The company desperately needs someone decent like Howard Collins back. I was never an operational person in LU but obviously worked with a lot of ops people across the years. While I take your first point about there always being some level of "chaos" to cope with / be frustrated by I find the rest of your post worrying and depressing. I left 5 years ago having realised my prospects were not good due to senior management changes and an organisational unwillingness to sort out the bit of the business I was in in one fell swoop to stop the agony of annual reorganisations. I was also pretty demotivated which I couldn't inflict on the team of people I was responsible for. They deserved better than I could give them. Looks like I made the right decision to go though I know that's not an option for most people. I had wondered just what "new LUL" was like given so many familiar faces have gone. Your post tells me. LU was never perfect but people like Howard Collins, who I always got on with even when he was demanding I got stuff sorted out, were exemplary railway men. No matter how you put it you do need people who understand how the railway works in leadership roles to get the best out of the people and the assets. All rather sad really. |
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