Mansion House

Oh yeh thanks
Some good photos there
Uzair

Mansion House was originally the terminus for the MDR extension.

I vaugely remember in late-70s there was a room built on the trackbed of the northern (disused) bay. I seem to recall it had a sort of "in case of emergency..inform Bus Controller" notice whom I believe were based at Mansion House station then.

Is it safe to say that regular Mansion House and Charing Cross (now Embankment) reversing stopped in early 1967, when the "new" Tower Hill station opened?

There is very few trains scheduled to reverse at Mansion House these days, in fact only a few in the early morning I believe ...

It is used quite frequently though, mainly for Tower Hill services running 10 or more minutes late

It's not that Tower Hill can't handle the required number of trains, it's just that turning a train at Mansion House instead means it runs less late on the westbound trip.

If the proposals go ahead to replace the Piccadilly's Uxbridge branch with the District, would those trains turn around at Mansion House, or is the platform not long enough?

What proposals are these? I don't think this is going to happen now!
(Though TubeLies now want to build the new Piccadilly control room at Acton rather than South Harrow)

T044 reverses at Mansion House to Richmond not Wimbledon.

That's what I said Dave (Quite scary that I remember that)
(Next number )

Thanks Dave, as I had not long been awake I should have opened my eyes a bit more when typing. Yes I should have said Richmond on Mon - Fri. Head bowed and cap in hand.......

The worst days work ever done was privatising the system. PPP was a 'clever' way of wasting £taxpayer's on a greater than ever before scale. For LU the run up to the selling off of engineering, property, advertising, data networks, workshops etc and the subsequent devolvement processes resulted in the duplication of operating management several times over. There is nothing efficient nor economically sound about it and in 25 years time the network will probably be no less old and tired than it was before the great rip off began.

Lines have had separate control rooms in the past, in fact LT/LU was a past master at centralisation and decentralisation. Whether the control rooms are common or divided amongst parallel or any lines is really neither here nor there as technology exists which could switch control at the touch of a button. We proved this years ago with the inception of emergency control rooms, switching over radio communications and telephones quite simply. Personally I worked on the Bakerloo, Central, District and Piccadilly setups. Not much is required for a control room and the same could be true for the regulating room as it is perfectly possible to 'pipe' signal controls over a secure databus much as is already done on the Picc when required. Of course the current system is yesterday's technology and the same can be said of most LU regulating rooms.

Basically LU is a large train set and it should be easier as technology steps up another gear or two to operate it. Alas politics both governmental and internal prevent the efficient operation of an integrated network.

Tube Lines doesn't suddenly want to build a control room at Acton Town, the plan has been around for many years now. Bollo House has been signed 'West End Operating Centre' since it was built in 1996 while Ash House at Arnos Grove was destined to be the 'East End Operating Centre'. The idea was to be able to operate the railway from both ends or either end with or without Earls Court but the movement of signal operators became a union issue! In fact in times of crisis the east end has certainly been operated from Arnos Grove on the terminals and those terminals can be located anywhere between Cockfosters and Earl's Court on the X25 network. Unless things have been updated in the last three years there is currently no way to do this west of Earl's Court but then many plans and ideas have been mooted since Tube Lines took over in the great sell off of engineering expertise and experience. The last plan was to refurbish Earls Court because shifting it was estimated to cost £300million but that was 5 years ago and did allow for the splitting of Picc and District signalling.

In my view LU should be a 'combine' again and a lot of management 'fat' should be trimmed from the tops, middles and bottoms of the individual line managements but I doubt it will happen in my lifetime.

In principle I'd agree with you - but undoubtedly someone would would forget the appropriate coupler adaptor (or bring the wrong size, height etc.) and they'd then have to try to find the right one.....

And trying to do a Wrong Direction Move would be a nightmare as they'd forget the form - not secure the route etc.

Recipe for disaster

You may wish you hadn't asked this one:

THE RAILWAYS (INTEROPERABILITY) (AMENDMENT) REGULATIONS 2007

As the DfT kindly provides a beginners guide to this and the following is an example of Sir Humphrey Appleby's explanation:

Interoperability is a European initiative aimed at improving the competitive position of the rail sector so that it can compete effectively with other transport modes, and in particular with road transport.

The Government expects interoperability to benefit the UK by

Delivering economies of scale in the cost of components and equipment through the single market;
Providing a consistent and simple pan-European approvals system for putting railway assets into service; and
Reducing, to the extent that it will be possible for the UK, the barriers to the through operation of trains throughout Europe.

More of this absolutely riveting info is found at www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/rail/interoperabilityandstandards/interoperabilitybeginners

So hopefully the extension of the Richmond branch to Paris will allow through running over not only the Paris Metro but also the Lille Metro.