1986ts announcements

[Alight]

A bit of a long shot as I'm sure only a small minority of members on here will have rode on the 1986 stock when they were briefly in service on the Jubilee line for a year in the late '80s.

The clip of the stock at Aldwych has a female DVA in use:

Meanwhile, the clip of the stock on the Central line has a male voice in use (Michael Meech?):


Does anyone remember if the DVA was a mixture of male and female along the route? Or perhaps female on the green and male on the red? (No evidence of what was on blue). A third reason could be the male voice was used on the mock up and then they went for female?

[Dstock7080]

Dec 10, 2023 23:06:12 GMT Alight said:

Does anyone remember if the DVA was a mixture of male and female along the route? Or perhaps female on the green and male on the red? (No evidence of what was on blue).

The first clip is inside the blue (BREL) train with female voice.

[Alight]

Right you are. Probably consistent for whole trainset.

Well even if Michael Meech was only used for the demonstrations on the Hainault loop, he was to return to the Jubilee some 10 years later!

It is said that Michael was with London Transport for years and was the voice of syndicated travel news back when this was supplied directly from LT itself. So it is possible he was asked to do mock-up announcements for the new prototype trains before they deployed the female voice.

[t697]

The dot matrix screens on 86TS were impressively long for the day. Better adapted for the non-scrolling display method that was encouraged at the time. I understood this was to make them easier to read for certain types of disability. It also enforced a good discipline on keeping the messages concise and to the point. Something rather lost in later years. 95TS I'm thinking of you in particular...

[gantshill]

I did travel on the 1996 stock, but alas don't recall the voice.
I saw the stock when it visited Woodford, then one time I was on Charing Cross station I think just trying to get to Bond Street, when a 1996 stock came out of the overrun tunnels. I decided to travel at least as far as West Hampstead, so I could see the stock in the open. I think that I moved along a couple of cars so that I had a ride on two different versions, but I cannot now remember the colour of the train or the sound of the voice.

[spsmiler]

I know that I saw and filmed these trains - both whilst in passenger service and when on exhibition at Woodford - but am unsure if I actually got to ride them.