Friday night fiasco

signal failure at earls court around 09:00 knackering the eastbound the train radio around 15:00 and then the hectic problems aqround lillie bridge / west ken from 00:00

Accepting all you say, prjb, about the necessity for works we are still stuck with the problem of AVOIDABLE delays. Much of the above wasn't, but overloaded engineers' trains certainly WAS. It (presumably ) is someone's job to ensure axle weights etc. do not exceed track capacity, so if the calcs had been done properly (and I know it was Friday...) that train should never have started its journey. Not a sacking offence, but neglect and an avoidable delay.

I agree that the rant of frustration expressed at the top was unfair. Calling for people to be sacked just like that is unfair.

And you cynically ask “whether the customer ever comes first with the underground?” – how about the 90%+ number of times when the tube does run normally?

It’s the common expression of bitterness that we are all guilty of though – letting a disasterous experience distort our views of the bigger perspective.

I do know that on Friday night, there was an engineers trains fleet running to this weekends possession around Baker Street and on the north side of the Circle line. So there were a bunch leaving Ruislip, coming north on the Met line down to Baker Street; another bunch from Ruislip running via the Picc, District and south of Circle to Tower Hill, round the IR towards Baker Street; and some more trains from Ruislip which were going to Lillie Bridge depot to wait until COT, then run to the possession as required – either the IR or OR.

Coz there was a fleet of trains running, and they were all running amongst passenger trains, if one of the first engineer trains became stuck, it would easily grind certain sections of the line to a halt, as all the other engineers trains behind it become stranded along with all the District Line trains – and the engineers trains have nowhere else to go except the possession itself.

I’d like to ask the others, what aspect did the excessive weight affect the engineers trains last night? Was it simply the case of the trains being so loaded that it couldn’t generate enough power to climb up a bank towards Lillie Bridge Depot?

In the Traffic Circulars, there’s always a section of maximum weights allowed for engineer trains when traversing various bridges across the network – so the people who run the engineers trains must be referring to that at least.

If that is indeed the case, I withdraw completely my statement about it being avoidable. Nobody could have known how slippery the railhead was, and if it was poor then even an underweight PW train could have slipped to a stand.
Apologies PW team! It helps when all those extra facts become known - Ta aetECT!

Apologies if the post was inflammatory, but it betrays exactly how I and many other passengers felt on the night. Having to get the Picaddilly to Holborn only to miss the last Central lIne was no joke. People were fuming. Why can't engineering trains run after the last passenger train ? There would have been only minutes in it and would only have affected engineering staff and not the travelling public ?

I'd say its more like hours rather just a few minutes.

But I too would like to see engineers trains run outside traffic hours as much as possible.

The issue is that the infracos want to squeeze out as much hours of engineering work as possible from the possession they take, as the workloads are volatile.

Take for example, this weekends engineering work around Baker Street for example. The last circle line trains run through Baker Street 01.00 on the IR and 00.40 on the OR. The engineers trains were meant to have taken up postion straight after these times. For that to happen, they would have had to leave Ruislip depot a good hour earlier, say 23.40 to just travel there - and by then, there are still passenger trains running.

If all the engineer trains ran after the last passenger trains then they could probably only leave 00.45 - and perhaps even later if they were travelling via Ealing Common where there are a series of tight District Line stablers. So I'd say there's easily an hours worth of work gained - most likely two.

And you may say that two hours is not that big a deal compared to the disruption they could potentially create, but as the infracos are notorious for engineering overruns on Monday mornings, disrupting the rush hour...then the benefit of having that extra time is realised

And I can't help but think that if there was an engineering overrun on a Monday morning, people would have complained just as critically, lamenting LU as a failure, never putting the customers first by allowing the infracos to run their trains into their possession a bit earlier so that the overrun could have been avoided.

And running a fleet of engineers trains in traffic hours has happened many times in the past with far less disruption - in fact I'd guess its happened every weekend there is an engineering work.

Thats not strictly true - because effectively you're saying that you can never run an engineers train after the last scheduled train - and that can't happen; when the engineers train runs to its worksite somewhere, its obviously got to be after the last LU train somewhere, otherwise that train would be stranded.

When an engineers train does run after the last LU train over the section, it is meant to be published in the E.W.S.A - which staff working on the track are meant to consult so that they know if there any extra trains they should be watching out for before they start work on the track.

What really happens is though that a load of engineer trains are booked at too short notice to be included in the E.W.S.A publication - and are then published in "The Notice", a daily document detaling last minute engineer trains or changes to other works. How well this works though, I have no idea and would be interested to hear others opinions. Ultimately though, I would have imagined that it was routine matter of safety that track workers would liase with the TAC to see when they could go onto the track or not.

It would be a good idea for the Protection Master (PM) to book in with the TAC before the last train because if everyone tried to call the TAC around the same time no one would be able to book in! In some of the busier areas PMs are calling a good 2 hours before published current switch off. After booking onto a section the PM observes the last published train and goes on track to test the current and witness switch off before anyone else goes on track. Also, I've been told that it's not the TAC's responsibilty to tell the PM if the last train has passed as the TAC is only concerned with booking work parties on and off his area. If the PM is not sure he/she should call the signalman. Yes there are more and more lady PMs these days.

The EWSA is a badly written document which is confusing to say the least, written by different people and thrown together. In my experience engineering notices are a little haphazard and sent out erratically.