Snow

After walking for an hour to school in my steel-toe capped, weighted boots I was more snow than man! Pretty bad up here in North London. It's not the snow that's on the ground that's the problem, it's the fact that it's still snowing (and the wind isn't helping much either) which is replacing all the snow that's been cleared. Lessons are still on for the time being for me but my brother's school called to say he has the day off. Git.

Everything was fine until the train reached Letchworth, where it turned out that the points at Hitchin had frozen. It took twenty minutes for them to be melted (using a large hair dryer?), and there was a further delay caused by an additional stop at Stevenage. Having reached KX half an hour late the Thameslink was naturally in pieces. After fifteen minutes the train set off under the rule, and I finally reached CTK an hour and a bit late.

Was pleasantly surprised to find my current commute this morning was only about half an hour longer than normal (it's 2.5 hours ish anyway). It was quite quiet for me on the East end of the Central line, guess a number of people didn't bother as roads were quite bad. Got off at Bank to change for London Bridge, to find packed Northern platform with no trains on the DMI, so just carried on through to Monument and get to London Bridge on the surface.
Thameslink was screwed up... Southern and Southeastern were running a delayed service south, but regular enough. Took about 20 minutes to get a Brighton main line service...

Not Sure a more majestic sight can be found?

Is it just me but todays 'problems' on the tube were caused by faulty trains and not because of the weather, a bit of spin in LU customer services?

"No sir, we coped well with the snow, it's just the trains broke down "

Or even better - load the photo's to your photo website and post that link - we don't want any conspiracy theorists here now do we

Nice and snowy here in the Docklands... mind you Gavelex, I wasn't far away when you took those photos, you should have jumped off and come over for tea & biscuits this morning!

Politics -

Not as easy as that I believe.

Are you sitting comfortably, then I'll begin:

Once upon a time, LU ordered rock salt, stored it and LU staff spreaded the stuff on the platforms.

Then came along PPP

Some lines still ordered their own rocksalt and LU staff spread the stuff, other lines the infraco ordered the rocksalt and LU staff spreaded the stuff and on other lines the infraco did it all, order and spread the stuff.

An interesting debate started that who is reasonably for clearing the platforms, as LU's working reference manual states LU station supervisor is, but under the terms of PPP, the platform is an infraco asset so is their reponsibility.

Now, the infraco's use highly skilled specialised contractors to remove the snow and ice - well that's a lie, they use the cleaning contractors.

Now since last winter, the cleaning companies have decided to lose many staff. So they can't cope.

Hence, reading between the lines, some LU staff have decided to highlight this problem by not doing the job themselves.

OR the affected stations were unstaffed last night.

I used to work at one of the closed station and I know for a fact the rostered SS there used to order about 500 bags of grit - I still have a couple in my back garden

There is no way he would let the rock salt go to empty.

BTW we use Ice Melt R Us now, same stuff but doesn't harm the tarmac platform surface - but ruins your uniform.

Talking about bureaucracy:

It's not that bad - just used to rot your gloves, trousers etc. However the plus side was you could order more uniform as a result. Plus we got one of those white suits you see track workers wear - great when you do the decorating.


The picture - that's a Gary Larson isn't it?

Bit of a mess this morning. TFL said "Minor Delays" on the Circle and H&C but they had signal failures at Edgeware Road and royal Oak so I decided it wasn't so minor afterall. TFL also reported the Northern, Central and Met as "Severe" so my only alternative was to take a Victoria line down to Vicky and then a 30 minute ride on the District?

Did my usual 5 mile cycle today. ;D

Walked the kids to school and went home via the bakery. Thankfully annual leave allows this. Although at Ashfield House tomorrow for my control room test