A bad week for the jubilee line?

[Deleted]

I have used the jubilee quite alot over the past 6/7 days and I have noticed the current conventional signalling seems to be getting even worse
On monday I was held at west hampstead (south) for quite a long time and the driver said the train was being held because of signalling woes (I wasnt really paying to much attention that time) but soon enough we pulled out and all was well.
wednesday or thursday saw the line suspended between London Bridge and stratford due to a signal failiure at Canada Water.
On saturday I turned up at Finchley Road after the broken down ballast train had been moved and a CSA said a through service would be run all the way to stanmore but subject to delays.
train arrived and the driver said the train would infact be terminating at west hampstead. instucted people at to get off and use local buses
Crawled into WH at a snails pace then he said he had permission to take it to Wembley Park but there was multiple signal failiure around willesden green.
So the CSA and the DMI say it's running to stanmore and the train is actually terminating at WP very confusing!
Then today at around 4 o clock there were ERU vans outside Swiss C because?
yup you guesed it, signal failiure! And according to tfl there are still delays five hours later.
I know the Jubilee's signals have always been naff but it seems to have been particularly bad this week.
Is it always this bad? or is it like this all the time?
If it is I certainly feel sorry for the staff and the punters who have to deal with this line all the time.

[Deleted]

I presume you weren't travelling last Friday then, when there was a complete breakdown on the eastern end of the Jubilee (yet another "signal failure") in the morning rush hour. Things then got out of control at Bank as people heading for Canary Wharf diverted to the DLR, meaning that Bank was then closed as well (showing that statements that the DLR offers an alternative at these times to be a nonsense), and thus the Waterloo & City had to be closed as well. With both the Underground routes from Waterloo east to the financial districts closed, you can imagine the chaos there.

The Jubilee was meant to be changed over to the new signals by now, so my guess is that all the spares for the old signal system, and quite possibly the staff skilled in it, have started to disappear. I call it the "old" system, but of course it only dates from 1999 so is one of the newest on the system, it has only lasted for 10 years. I think TfL would rather everyone in Canary Wharf just took 6 months holiday and came back in 2011, while they get on with their snails-pace resignalling project. Goodness me, passengers are such a nuisance, aren't they.

By the way, remember that the new signalling contractors were selected precisely because they claimed to have experience in straightforward changeovers without difficulties. What a grand load of fibs that was.

Yes, Auntie Diana was delayed on Friday, and on Saturday morning as described above ("we're only going to Waterloo - oh, no we're not - oh, hang on a minute ......)

[Colin]

Fuses can blow at any time, as can light bulbs.

As far as I'm aware, fuses and light bulbs that never ever blow have yet to be invented

[mrfs42]

It's pretty difficult to get a fuse that has been replaced with a trimmed 6" nail to blow......

I've seen some shocking <hee hee> agricultural electrics.

[messiah]

Jul 19, 2010 22:55:55 GMT Colin said:

Fuses can blow at any time, as can light bulbs.

As far as I'm aware, fuses and light bulbs that never ever blow have yet to be invented

Colin, it is reasonable enough that the London Underground employees defend the service - however having put up with a 5 day a week service for much of the last 2 years is it unreasonable to expect that the line could possibly work most days? And where there are issues that they are minor ones (such as fuses/bulbs) that can be fixed within 1 hour or so rather than the massive closures / disruptions that have recently been experienced?

[Deleted]

I'm not in the position for the exact reason for the delays. It COULD just be a run of bad luck. We had something similar on the Met Line a few months back.

It COULD be because of an unresolved underlying problem that has not been correctly identified, instead the parts simply replaced.

It COULD be because Tubelines never expected the signaling to still be in place. It should have been replaced by TBTC by now. Thus maintenance on the older signaling would have been reduced to all but safety critical stuff. Spares would have been run down. Perhaps no spares existed locally, perhaps not at all and the part was harvested from another asset.

Remember Tubelines was a private company so wouldn't spend a lot of money of kit that was being replaced by now. Would you spend loads on getting your car serviced when you planned to replace it in 6 months, or would you do the basics to get it through the MOT?

It's massively annoying to find your railway closed at weekends and severely disrupted during the week, many thousands of people need an ontime railway.

From a selfish point of view, I also dislike service disruptions, because guess who gets the abuse, anger, frustration.

It's important however to express your anger through the correct channels. Complain to TfL, even if the complaint simply becomes another statistic. Complain to the mayor. Make sure that investment is maintained and that disruption is reduced.

[Deleted]

Jul 19, 2010 21:28:38 GMT @delboy200 said:

.....the broken down ballast train .......

One of the things that one notices over time is the sheer number of "broken down ballast/engineers trains" given as an excuse for disruption. There can't be many of them, and they obviously do very little mileage in comparison to the passenger service. Is there something exceptionally unreliable about these? Or is it just a handy excuse for the Operations team to blame things on the Engineering team?

[railtechnician]

Jul 20, 2010 7:52:41 GMT @centralsimon said:

I'm not in the position for the exact reason for the delays. It COULD just be a run of bad luck. We had something similar on the Met Line a few months back.

It COULD be because of an unresolved underlying problem that has not been correctly identified, instead the parts simply replaced.

It COULD be because Tubelines never expected the signaling to still be in place. It should have been replaced by TBTC by now. Thus maintenance on the older signaling would have been reduced to all but safety critical stuff. Spares would have been run down. Perhaps no spares existed locally, perhaps not at all and the part was harvested from another asset.

Remember Tubelines was a private company so wouldn't spend a lot of money of kit that was being replaced by now. Would you spend loads on getting your car serviced when you planned to replace it in 6 months, or would you do the basics to get it through the MOT?

It's massively annoying to find your railway closed at weekends and severely disrupted during the week, many thousands of people need an ontime railway.

From a selfish point of view, I also dislike service disruptions, because guess who gets the abuse, anger, frustration.

It's important however to express your anger through the correct channels. Complain to TfL, even if the complaint simply becomes another statistic. Complain to the mayor. Make sure that investment is maintained and that disruption is reduced.

As a former Picc lineman I have to disagree with your thoughts regarding maintenance and spares. I can't speak for the JLE section of the Jubilee but until 2005 Picc linemen also maintained Charing Cross to Stanmore signalling apart from the step plate area at Green Park. The signalling on this section of course is much more than 10 years old and dates from the late 1970s when that section (Baker Street-Stanmore) of the then Bakerloo was resignalled to become the main portion of Stage 1 Jubilee line, indeed it was amongst the first jobs that I was involved with when I began my LT career.
Prior to and under PPP the original Jubilee was maintained first by Bakerloo line signals and then by Met line signals until Picc Line Engineering (which became part of Tube LInes) took over in the run up to PPP under shadow running IIRC.
We inherited a very run down and poorly maintained Jubilee line signalling system and we spent months getting it up to scratch, sorting out issues with points and trainstops replacing valves and hoses, putting tracks to standard etc etc.
There is no doubt that signal issues tend to be like buses, you don't see one for ages and then several come along together, we experienced it on the Picc and on those parts of the District that we also maintained and yes it happened on the Jubilee too. In my time on the Jubilee many of the issues were around point problems at Neasden and Wembley Park and they did take a while to sort but they got sorted.
As for spares, they are available in the emergency stores but they are limited and while it is easy to blame the signal maintainer the stores is actually operated by Metronet and one can be unlucky. For instance on one Sunday night we had to replace several trainstops between Boston Manor and Northfields after one defective train took the heads off the lot causing multiple failures, we cleared available emergency stock in an instant to repair the damage.
There were issues with such things as fuses and the type was changed twice to improve reliability on the Picc but I don't recall if authorisation was given to do the same on the Jubilee.
It is not in a signal maintainer's interest to run anything down but sometimes circumstances may force such an outcome even though it be undesirable, counter productive and costly. Remember that signal failures are attributed to a cause and the party deemed responsible for delays to passenger services is hit with hefty financial penalties for any cumulative delay to traffic exceeding 15 minutes.

Jubilee Signals (as a staff organisation) was newly created circa 2005 and initially the supervisors and staff were drawn from Picc signal staff (who also manned Wembley Park and Finchley Road depots), I have no doubt that they would have continued to maintain the old Jube just as they had when they were Picc signals.

Now lets wipe out the guff about Tube Lines being a private company, it is but that is rather irrelevant as the staff on the track are predominantly former LUL employees who were shunted under TUPE, many of us were long service men (at the time I had 25 years in with LT/LU) and didn't want to be outsourced but we were given no choice. We carried on doing exactly the same jobs in the same way with the same supervisors and managers, only the name on the vans and the paperwork changed and senior management had a new tier that we saw from time to time.


Many of the problems on the railway today are a direct result of 'improvements' in working practices to comply with modern H&S requirements and the divisions created by breaking up the combine.
Money has very little to do with it as long as there is a revenue stream, what will suffer are capital projects and in all honesty lots of dosh has in my opinion been wasted under PPP that would have been better used if the combine had not been split asunder.

[Deleted]

Well not that long ago Tube Lines didn't have any money for lamps for the signal diagrams and buttons on their blue line. There now aren't any spare buttons, so when one breaks, one from a button that isn't used (such as a floodgate acknowledgement) has to be used! This was reported to a senior signals person some time ago too!

The there's the random Train Descriptions that flash up on the new KGMs installed as part of the Train Following System, which isn't yet working, some two months late. Will it ever?

[Tubeboy]

Problem yesterday was a 16" water main burst, waterlogged signals etc, you get the picture.

[Deleted]

Jul 20, 2010 14:58:54 GMT Tubeboy said:

Problem yesterday was a 16" water main burst, waterlogged signals etc, you get the picture.

ah fair enough for that one, even on that section of the met they seems to have those problems aswell, must be thames waters problems.
Colin - I know that bulbs obviously need to be replaced from time to time but the problems experienced on the jubilee seem to be more serious than that and seem to suffer the worst on the network, frequently paralyzing large sections of the line for quite long periods.
And despite being older, the signalling on the Northern seems to be getting better year by year while the Jubilee's deteriorates.
Railtechnician - thanks for the explanation, I highly suspect thats why the Jubilee has such big signalling nightmares at the moment.

[Tom]

Jul 20, 2010 13:23:06 GMT @monkfish said:

Well not that long ago Tube Lines didn't have any money for lamps for the signal diagrams and buttons on their blue line. There now aren't any spare buttons, so when one breaks, one from a button that isn't used (such as a floodgate acknowledgement) has to be used!

Are these the route buttons, which were only replaced some 12 or so years ago?

[Deleted]

Just to add insult to injury, bbc London have just announced the Jubilee upgrade won't be ready by october

[Deleted]

I'm very rarely inclined to post as you can see but this one got my blood up a little.

Without going through every point raised in detail:

A bad week means literally nothing in terms of a line's overall performance. Sure, some lessons can be learnt but you can't judge the state of a line by a snapshot week.

Now a month might tell you a little but I can think of a few which weren't representative of lines. You are looking at 3 months to a year before you can tell anything.

At the moment, Jubilee is 4th in the Excess Journey Time table which is publicly available. It's not so high on the Scheduled Service one (but still at 95.5% for the last financial year, above target) but the short answer to the question "is everything going to pot" is no. Just look at the Jubilee signals graph - it's one of the best!

www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/corporate/Item04-RUP-7-7-2010-MD-report-LU.pdf (0.31Mb)

Delays are in no one's interest - not passengers, LU or Tube Lines.

[Deleted]

I see from the directors' report, linked above, that the Jubilee is stated to be operating at around 95% of scheduled kilometres operated.

This at a time when it was closed most weekends, Saturdays and Sundays, and, as it says in the report, there were also extended closures over the bank holiday weekends during this time.

Um, excuse me, please, but if I look at the timetable displayed on any Jubilee Line platform I see a full service for both Saturday and Sunday, and therefore if this was generally not provided, along with those bank holidays, I can't see how the figure can ever have got much above 75%, and that is before all the breakdowns of service on weekdays, which presumably is what knocks about another 5% off the figures.

So the true figure of what was operated compared to the schedule in the timetable is nearer 70% than 95%, bearing in mind that the upgrade works were meant to be all finished in 2009. Now if TfL would be honest with these figures, as presented to the Mayor and displayed to their customers on platforms, the true state of affairs would be apparent rather than this fiction shown here.

Presumably when the East London Line was closed for a couple of years they could report 100% compliance on these graphs.

[mrfs42]

Jul 20, 2010 23:35:46 GMT @diana said:

I see from the directors' report, linked above, that the Jubilee is stated to be operating at around 95% of scheduled kilometres operated.

Excellent. A job well done, I feel. [1] Some might see it as a rather vapid statistic.

[1] given the varying schedules.

[railtechnician]

Jul 20, 2010 13:23:06 GMT @monkfish said:

Well not that long ago Tube Lines didn't have any money for lamps for the signal diagrams and buttons on their blue line. There now aren't any spare buttons, so when one breaks, one from a button that isn't used (such as a floodgate acknowledgement) has to be used! This was reported to a senior signals person some time ago too!

The there's the random Train Descriptions that flash up on the new KGMs installed as part of the Train Following System, which isn't yet working, some two months late. Will it ever?

Mmm! It's five years now since I retired but my final year or so was spent almost fully as night Control Room TO at Earls Court. I was there and involved when all the signal diagram fascias were replaced and it was me that tidied up much of the control room wiring particularly removing all the obsolete kit and cabling from the Line Controllers desks and the other end in Warwick Road relay rooms. Indeed there was talk of replacing defective buttons on signallers desk panels at the time as it was a headache even then and it may well have happened had I not taken early retirement although the wiring in the desks is something of a nightmare being old and brittle. The old KGMs were well past their sell by date too as many of the diagram lampholders were.
The trouble with Earl's Court is that it is 50 years old and went through a period of years when, in my humble opinion, it was allowed to fall into a poor state, new equipment and wiring overlaid over the old, old equipment left in situ in the main cluttering up the desks and the rear of the diagram. I was dumbfounded when planning for T5 included squeezing it onto the Earls Court diagram, there were better ways I believe. Back then talk of a new Picc line control room filled the air as it had done year in year out for many years and the figure being bandied about was £200-£300 million, a ridiculous amount of money. During the control room sprucing up works I met those who were going to be installing new systems such as the train following system and discussed the general plans for the future, I was then, and still remain, amazed that the control room is still being used. At the time the cost of shifting it was prohibitive and that cost is always going to get higher and higher.
I floated the idea of scrapping the control room and 'piping' all the controls and indications for signal, communication and other systems to another more suitable location and was told that it was feasible, indeed there was even software available off the shelf to handle such remote control. AIUI the massive predicted cost of shifting the control room is because it would involve lots of new equipment at remote locations whereas my thought was simply to leave everything in the Warwick Road complex as is but redirect it over fibre optic transmission systems to anywhere more suitable. Then over time the predicted new systems would be installed direct to the new location gradually cutting away the old scanning and other systems from the transmission 'pipe'. To an extent this was already done with the old desk 5 (metal mickey) moving it downstairs into its own room albeit using copper and I presume that there is some form of tie up between where the District Controllers moved to and Earls Court although I would not be surprised to learn that Picc Controllers are looking after District T/Ts, miscellaneous alarms etc as they used to anyway when the control desk was a shared enterprise.

As for the train following system, I know nothing about it, I suspect it relies upon existing cabling and other systems and will present what it is told so if the old lit is faulty the new kit will have the same problem!

The decision to leave Earls Court as is and to keep piling new systems into it is in my opinion a flawed one but unfortunately internal politics is, it seems, a key driver within LUL just as it has been without it, a complete lack of unified vision with various empire builders pulling in different directions and wasting £s in the process. The whole thing complicated by line devolution, the PPP etc etc.

It really is time that somebody took the reins, produced a future goal and laid in a long term strategy to achieve it, perhaps the last time such existed was under Charles T. Yerkes and in the new economic climate money will have to be spent much more wisely than it has been in recent years.

[Deleted]

Jul 20, 2010 18:03:38 GMT @jackofall said:

Delays are in no one's interest - not passengers, LU or Tube Lines.

We are talking more than a few 'delays' here, we are talking about lengthy closures that shut large portions of the line at once.
And actually if you ask the majority of the travelling public who have to use the jubilee line, it is in their interests. That getting into work can be a complete nightmare because of these frequent failiures.
Now jubilee punters and staff have been given another kick in the teeth because the new signalling system won't be ready after the october dead line (isn't this now the third date line given?) the service may deteriorate even more.
And Given that the old 1970's signalling crossed with the alcatel stuff on the JLE from the 1990's was a temporary arangement for the early 2000's.
Try having to use the jubilee line frequently and then try and say that it is in the slightest bit reliable!
I'm not slagging LU off in anyway at all infact given the circumstances I think they are doing a brilliant job trying to keep all the old equipment working especially considering bits from the transport museum are keeping it going! and the frontline LUL staff that have to deal with the grief when all goes wrong.
However people want reassurance whether the upgrade will be finished in the near future.