Drawback to TBTC?

[cso]

I notice the Jub is suspended between Nesden and Stratford due to a power failure... is this a drawback to TBTC or would this have happened before the change to TBTC?

[Deleted]

Power failures cause suspensions on all lines!

I do suspect that it'd be a power failure at NSCC that's caused it, if that's the problem, though!

[Deleted]

Also now got a trespasser on the track at Finchley Road, which has also suspended the Met! Not a good night!

[Deleted]

One speculating may link the two together...

[Deleted]

21:25, Service suspended between West Hampstead and Stratford.
Looks like they dont want anything going into the pipe at the moment.
EDIT: I doubt this is due to TBTC, I think Charlie J, that the NSCC going is more likely, I seem to remember that happening a few years ago on the jubilee.
There is also I believe, some wrestling gig on at the O2 today, good luck to all of those punters trying to get home!

[Tubeboy]

No service for the rest of the night now between West Hampstead-Stratford....thats confirmed by service control.

[Deleted]

According to the Auntie Beeb, the failure's on the east end of the line.

[bicbasher]

Apr 19, 2011 20:27:31 GMT @delboy200 said:

There is also I believe, some wrestling gig on at the O2 today, good luck to all of those punters trying to get home!

This also affected the première of Arthur at the O2 which led to journalists and guests using the Clipper service and local Greenwich bus routes to get home!

[messiah]

Plenty of space at Canada Water this morning.

May be due to the lack of a service between London Bridge and Finchley Road...

[Deleted]

Apr 20, 2011 7:56:25 GMT messiah said:

Plenty of space at Canada Water this morning.

May be due to the lack of a service between London Bridge and Finchley Road...

Yea - the rest of us were on the boat from Waterloo!

[railtechnician]

Well the Evening Standard has the usual mix of speculation etc.

I cannot understand why LUL cannot simply be honest all the time, the passengers won't like the truth but what is worse than the truth is something other than the truth left open to speculation and exageration and sensationalism. It is true that the truth hurts but honesty is always the best policy. If the company doesn't know or isn't sure it should say that but no-one is interested in half truths, no information or worst of all something in between.

I am intrigued by the initial cause which has been reported by the Evening Standard as "a signal box cover" taking out the traction by falling onto the track and also as "a train's signal box cover" neither of which make any real sense to me. Either a signalling equipment cover took out the traction or a train's equipment cover did it, are the two possibilities from reading between the lines.

Considering the initial and subsequent fallout from this single event one has to wonder why the issue was not resolved in short order e.g. were the traction feeder cables damaged, why did it take so long before detraining passengers etc. These are questions that will no doubt be asked and answered in another place and those of us that work/worked for the company know that there is more to dealing with such events than might be imagined by the layman. However, someone at TfL/LUL should be on top of meaningful communications with the travelling public and the media as soon as any event looks like becoming a serious threat to services.

I don't believe it's wise for the Mayor or Peter Hendy to pass comment or apologise unless they are in full possession of the facts because they simply face ridicule from the media and scorn from the passengers. As usual uncle Ken has chimed in to criticise Boris but he really ought to know better as things on his watch were no so good either!

[d7666]

AIUI from the canteen it was a traction earth problem at Canning Town that knocked out the entire traction section thus zilch to do with TBTC power or NSCC power. It does fit in with the ES report of some kind of cover falling out of place. Going into speculation mode, something hanging from a train could have caused damage in several locations, or multiple earthc, in turn a need for complete inspection ? Of tracks and trains too.

--
Nick

[DWS]

Last night’s incident was caused by a traction package cover falling from a train on to the rails causing a negative earth in the Canning Town/West Ham area. This resulted in trains across the line shutting themselves down to protect their vital equipment. A number of trains were stalled between stations and these were all dealt with safely within two hours. The London Ambulance Service was at all sites but no passengers required medical assistance

[Deleted]

The BBC's report :
"Colin Howard, London Underground's Chief Operations Officer, said"
Dont they mean Howard Collins? ;D

And of course Boris thinks its totally unacceptable again
De ja Vu?

[railtechnician]

Apr 20, 2011 16:32:43 GMT DWS said:

Last night’s incident was caused by a traction package cover falling from a train on to the rails causing a negative earth in the Canning Town/West Ham area. This resulted in trains across the line shutting themselves down to protect their vital equipment. A number of trains were stalled between stations and these were all dealt with safely within two hours. The London Ambulance Service was at all sites but no passengers required medical assistance

After reading the online Standard report I had concluded that the problems were initiated by a train equipment cover. If a traction earth fault can cause a modern train to shut down then clearly something has been designed out or not designed in because old stock would run with a traction earth fault, I chased a few such faults as they moved around the system. If trains are now so fragile as to be immobilised by a traction earth fault then perhaps investment should be diverted to a better means of Traction earth detection, isolation and rectification especially when one considers the escalation of an otherwise basic problem to a major catastrophe. Clearly this is no way to run a railway! I think if the travelling public had a viable alternative it would vote with its feet because it must by now have had enough of such incidents, somewhere heads should be being knocked together over this if not rolling!

Two hours to detrain passengers is too long, there must be a better way!

[Deleted]

I'd imagine that 2 hours included a lot of waiting time!

[Deleted]

A bit falling off a train? Maybe it was bad maintenance.

[Deleted]

Possible DD forum information in todays Sub-Standard? About the reversing facility?

[North End]

Apr 20, 2011 14:08:16 GMT d7666 said:

AIUI from the canteen it was a traction earth problem at Canning Town that knocked out the entire traction section thus zilch to do with TBTC power or NSCC power. It does fit in with the ES report of some kind of cover falling out of place. Going into speculation mode, something hanging from a train could have caused damage in several locations, or multiple earthc, in turn a need for complete inspection ? Of tracks and trains too.

--
Nick

Yes but it's quite apparent that the TBTC system didn't exactly help the situation.

[superteacher]

Thry do seem to take much longer dealing with problems than was the case a few years ago. On the Central yesterday, the train at Leyton which had the fire alert caused a suspension of service between Liverpool Street and Leytonstone. Fair enough, the issue needed to be investigated by the LFB. But the service message was misleading, stating that the service was only suspended between Liverpool Street and Leytonstone. This implies that passengers could get at least as far as Leytonstone, but trains were just held in platforms on the approach to Leytonstone for over 40 minutes, at least on the outer rail of the Hainault loop.

It is now common practice to hold trains in platforms and then move them up a station at a time when there is a problem ahead. I agree with this, since it is far better than letting trains sit in tunnels. But, it seems, they don't always act quickly enough to reverse teains, and get them out of the way.

[Deleted]

Apr 21, 2011 10:37:39 GMT superteacher said:

Thry do seem to take much longer dealing with problems than was the case a few years ago.

This is a general observation about a number of transport operations, on the roads, on the Underground, and on the national train system.

I believe that on the national train system, where official figures on reliability are collected and put up at stations, that if there are major disruptions, they are officially "not counted", and not shown in these figures. I can't imagine how that was allowed to happen.

I am sorry, but none of this happened in any overseas countries I am familiar with.

[Deleted]

Service update 18:31 just come in:
Suspended between London Bridge and Stratford, with severe delays on the rest of the line due to a faulty train at Canary Wharf.
Ouch.

[Chris M]

It appeared to be causing problems for the DLR as well, waiting at the country end of Tower Gateway there was a queue of trains waiting to go to Bank with blocking back at least as far as Westferry. I'm glad I chose not to change at Westminster!

[version3point1]

Apr 20, 2011 19:40:35 GMT @bustergut said:

A bit falling off a train? Maybe it was bad maintenance.

Probably.

Last time I was down Stratford Market Depot we were getting a train out of one of the shed roads and the I/Op basically said something along the lines of hoping for the best when he was starting the train up. That's all very well – the TMS will only ever make so many alarms about so many problems. If it is something like a cover about to fall off, the TMS probably wont say anything until the last possible moment!

One of the worst things about TBTC I think is the fact that trains are allowed to draw up so close, even when there are such serious problems. I thought the whole point of TBTC and splitting the line up into 5 areas was so that if one section is affected, a shuttle service could run in the remaining sections. At least that's what they sold to me in training. When you're supposed to book off at 2225 and you're still on the front of that train 4-5 hours later, I'd certainly be asking questions. Detrainments shouldn't be taking 2 hours either – if there is a problem, recognise it and deal with it. I don't understand why LU feels the need to pretend they're not there and reprimand those who decided to take action for the sake of the passengers.

As for Boris; part of the problem with him is that he believes what his people/advisors tell him, regardless of whether or not those things are true. A few colleagues and myself happened to have a word with him when he was passing through the station and he seemed genuinely concerned about the issues we were raising and fired an email to the line manager asking him to sort it out. Next thing I know, the duty managers are down on us, telling us that we should be keeping schtum about our issues! It makes me angry how we're not allowed to be transparent, let alone honest, about real issues in this company without being reprimanded..

[railtechnician]

Apr 21, 2011 20:11:44 GMT version3point1 said:

Apr 20, 2011 19:40:35 GMT @bustergut said:

A bit falling off a train? Maybe it was bad maintenance.

Probably.

......snip...

As for Boris; part of the problem with him is that he believes what his people/advisors tell him, regardless of whether or not those things are true. A few colleagues and myself happened to have a word with him when he was passing through the station and he seemed genuinely concerned about the issues we were raising and fired an email to the line manager asking him to sort it out. Next thing I know, the duty managers are down on us, telling us that we should be keeping schtum about our issues! It makes me angry how we're not allowed to be transparent, let alone honest, about real issues in this company without being reprimanded..

Like all politicians Boris is between a rock and a hard place, also like all politicians some of the criticism levelled at him is fair while the rest is not. He has little choice, as a layman, than to believe what his experts tell him. As a politician he is expendable, it is perhaps unfortunate that those at the head of LUL seem less vulnerable. IMO honesty is and always will be the best policy but LUL has played the "don't rock the boat" game for far too long. Keeping shtum to avoid anything hitting a fan seems to be a management trait fostered by the corporate strategy which apparently encourages lack of responsibility throughout the organisation to maintain an image which is in reality a fallacy. This is not to suggest that senior management is dishonest in any way but that it is a victim of its own middle management structure.
It is seen as weakness to admit fault in management posts so issues are often conveniently packaged to become non-issues in ways which are not really very clever but which are difficult to expose when those who would do so are gagged by threats of one kind or another.
Those honest folk in senior management would learn a great deal by going incognito, getting back onto stations as CSAs for three months and into other lower grades in various areas just to observe what goes on! KPIs are just numbers and we all know the truth about statisitics, the old saying being right on the money.

[Chris M]

While senior managers spending time on the front line is a very good thing, doing it incognito is much harder than one might expect.

In about 1999 I was temping, and one of the jobs I did was four days in corporate hospitality at Royal Ascot (I was behind the scenes basically just opening bottles of champaign and finding ice to keep it cold). There was one person there who was a "trainee manager", and aside from the camera crew following him round (for "Back to the Floor" I think) it was obvious that he wasn't (he knew too much about some things and not enough about others).
I didn't know any of my colleagues and didn't know anything about the job - the same can hardly be said for LU station staff, so it will be even harder for him, especially as at least some staff will recognise him.

Even spending a shift with a CSA without pretending to be who he isn't would open his eyes though. I spent about 10 minutes early afternoon yesterday chatting to the staff member on the gateline at Highbury and Islington. Even in that short a time you start to see what the job entails, and from other occasions I've spent chatting to other staff I know that I didn't see anything of significance.

Personally, I think that every senior manager should as a matter of routine, spend an absolute minimum of one shift per month on the front line and be treated as if they were any other member of that grade (including pay). Don't roster them as additional staff (if possible) so that they don't get a false impression. Obviously you can't make someone a t/op in that limited amount of time, but they should shadow a t/op from the start of a shift to the end of it - if the jobs goes up the wall and the t/op doesn't make it back to the depot until two hours after they were due to finish then the same goes for the senior manager (and they don't get any more opportunities to phone their partner to tell them they'll be late than does the t/op). Not just senior managers, every manager should do the same.

Additionally, for every board and senior management meeting one member of frontline staff from each discipline (e.g. 1 from stations, one from trains, one from a depot, etx) should be randomly selected to give a presentation on how it is on the front line so there is no filtering (see below, with apologies for the language) through the ranks.

In the beginning was the Plan.
And then came the Assumptions.
And the Assumptions were without form.
And the Plan was without substance.
And darkness was upon the faces of the Hewers Of Wood and Drawers Of Water.
And they spoke among themselves, saying, “It is a crock of brown stuff, and it stinketh.”
And the Hewers Of Wood and Drawers Of Water went unto the Supervisors and said, “It is a pail of rubbish and none may abide the odour thereof.”
And the Supervisors went unto the Managers, saying, “It is a container of excrement, and it is very strong, such that none may abide by it.”
And the Managers went unto their Directors, saying, “It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide its strength.”
And the Directors spoke among themselves, saying unto one another, “It contains that which aids plant growth and it is very strong.”
And the Directors then went unto the Director-that-Manages saying unto him, “It promotes growth, and it is very powerful.”
And the Director-that-Manages went up unto the Chairman-Sat-On-High, saying unto Him, “This new Plan will actively promote the growth and vigour of the company with powerful effects.
And the Chairman-Sat-On-High looked upon the Plan, and saw that it was good.
And the Plan became Policy.
And verily that is how brown stuff happens.

[railtechnician]

Apr 22, 2011 11:27:56 GMT Chris M said:

While senior managers spending time on the front line is a very good thing, doing it incognito is much harder than one might expect.

.....snip...

Additionally, for every board and senior management meeting one member of frontline staff from each discipline (e.g. 1 from stations, one from trains, one from a depot, etx) should be randomly selected to give a presentation on how it is on the front line so there is no filtering (see below, with apologies for the language) through the ranks.

Funnily enough something of this sort used to happen on signal engineering in the 1980s. The quarterly bonus meetings held by the Officer in charge of the installation section included section managers, union officials and staff. I was as a chargehand, for a while, the member of staff from Comms installation section and used to tell it how it was despite derision from my peers, whose managers would keep them 'under manners'. The 'politics' was very evident, I recall one complaint at the time by a signal colleague regarding managers being promoted into positions with limited or no knowledge of those they were managing and no experience of the work that they did. The query related to performance, lack of responsibilty, issue of safety check certificates for safety critical signalling tasks etc because the manager would be in no position to deal with any of it. The response from the Officer was that he didn't like it but that he had no control over it, he had voiced his concerns in a higher place and been told to 'live with it'.
IMO what is seen in middle management these days began all those years ago, basically a manager needs management qualifications but no skills. Being flippant I have long suggested that LU managers are so called because they 'just manage'. I know this is not fair to many who have worked hard to gain managerial positions but they are often let down by colleagues who have simply 'fallen on their feet' or 'been in the right place at the right time'!
Those in the job will recognise my thoughts and possibly concur but will be afraid to agree. Everyone will know at least one square peg!
The truth is that the view from the bottom of the heap is very different to that from tthe top as your quote suggested.

[Deleted]

Apr 21, 2011 19:06:00 GMT Chris M said:

It appeared to be causing problems for the DLR as well, waiting at the country end of Tower Gateway there was a queue of trains waiting to go to Bank with blocking back at least as far as Westferry. I'm glad I chose not to change at Westminster!

You were probably looking at me standing on the platform at Shadwell DLR station at about 6.30 last Thursday evening. I had got on at Canary Wharf to go to Holborn, through Bank, but the DLR train stopped every minute until it got to Shadwell, when after a further long wait a thoroughly incoherent announcement said we should all get out. Even after we had done this, and our train had gone on with no passengers to somewhere, the train that was sat right behind waited several minutes before coming in to the platform. In the end I went to Tower station and the Circle Line.

A couple of things about the DLR (probably written in the wrong place). Firstly, when the Jubilee line breaks down (daily occurrence last week), then within 30 minutes the DLR, supposedly an alternative to Canary Wharf, is quite overwhelmed and comes to a stop. Not just crowded, but stops working (like this example). Secondly the announcements made at such times are so useless and unhelpful, even more so than on the proper underground. I wonder why this is.

Oh, by the way, when I got to Holborn I finally met, being late of course, with friends visiting from Russia, in one of those hotels in Southampton Row. It was the end of their week's visit. They were absolutely amazed at the disorganisations they had encountered on the London Underground, compared to their many years of experience of the Metro in Russia.

[Chris M]

the signalling at Shadwell westbound does seem to hold trains outside the station for a long time after the platform is clear - I thought the point of moving block was that didn't happen?

I'm surprised they didn't divert one of the bank trains to Tower Gateway as better than sitting in the tunnel. There should have been enough time to turn one round between Beckton services. Yes it would have put it out of order, but everything was clearly delayed anyway and they could have put it away in the bay at Mudchute to get it back right time coming back if they needed to.

[Deleted]

Apr 25, 2011 10:26:35 GMT @diana said:

Apr 21, 2011 19:06:00 GMT Chris M said:

You were probably looking at me standing on the platform at Shadwell DLR station at about 6.30 last Thursday evening. I had got on at Canary Wharf to go to Holborn, through Bank, but the DLR train stopped every minute until it got to Shadwell, when after a further long wait a thoroughly incoherent announcement said we should all get out. Even after we had done this, and our train had gone on with no passengers to somewhere, the train that was sat right behind waited several minutes before coming in to the platform. In the end I went to Tower station and the Circle Line.

A couple of things about the DLR (probably written in the wrong place). Firstly, when the Jubilee line breaks down (daily occurrence last week), then within 30 minutes the DLR, supposedly an alternative to Canary Wharf, is quite overwhelmed and comes to a stop. Not just crowded, but stops working (like this example). Secondly the announcements made at such times are so useless and unhelpful, even more so than on the proper underground. I wonder why this is.

Oh, by the way, when I got to Holborn I finally met, being late of course, with friends visiting from Russia, in one of those hotels in Southampton Row. It was the end of their week's visit. They were absolutely amazed at the disorganisations they had encountered on the London Underground, compared to their many years of experience of the Metro in Russia.

Diana, I believe this may not be the first time you've asserted that the DLR is an alternative to the Jub when the Jub is out of service. Please refer to almost any post you've made on the DLR thread and the various responses and you will see the argument that the DLR is not designed to take the entire capacity of the Jub as well as it's normal patrons. In fact, in this instance it sounds like the problem may have been at Bank to do with circulation of passengers and crush levels. Let me extrapolate for you... Should Bank get too crowded, people can't get off trains and begin to push, after a while this gets dangerous and increases the chances of someone falling on the track. I'm not suggesting you think that would be of greater advantage to you than getting off the train and heading to Tower Gateway, but I am not sure what you are suggesting other than repeating yourself a bit like a broken record.

PS I am aware that the Jub repeatedly breaking down is frustrating and that it in itself could be depicted as a broken record, (that was the point of the comment).

PPS If the Metro broke down in Moscow would you be sent to Siberia if you criticised the government/organisation that operate the Metro as vehemently as you do LUL? There are advantages of living in London such as freedom of press amongst others things.