Whole Jubilee line suspended

[plasmid]

diana - do you travel when the Jubilee line breaks down on purpose so you can write a bad review?

[londonstuff]

Nov 5, 2011 22:33:16 GMT @diana said:

One of us said expression Jubilee was "Conked Out" which I have not heard myself before, but seems very describing!

O/T but...'Conked out' - a great expression. I think it's a northern one. I know my father uses a lot (I was born just outside Liverpool), but I've not heard anyone say it since I"ve been in London. This could be a thread just by itself

[Chris M]

Continuing with the OT, I agree that "conked out" is Northern. I heard it quite a bit growing up in Yorkshire, but I can't recall hearing it in London at all.

[slugabed]

I grew up in London and this expression was quite familiar....but was most often applied to cars or motorbikes.

[Tubeboy]

London born and bred and have used the term all my life. As to Diana, you don't have much luck do you?!

[castlebar]

I am London born and bred too, and agree with slugabed. The expression once was extremely common (60 years ago) and perhaps it has fallen OOU down South, but still used more regularly in other places further north.

[Deleted]

Nov 5, 2011 23:09:39 GMT plasmid said:

diana - do you travel when the Jubilee line breaks down on purpose so you can write a bad review?

I think Diana's comments are quite apt. The travelling masses often seem to think of their (public) services like this; when a service works well, it's not considered good or of quality it just exists. But when the service in any way shape or form fails, it's awful and 'we're all familiar with' the failure even if the negative experience is the exception rather than the rule.

Even though the quality of the service has recently (last few months) been much improved the negative past experiences outweigh the positives in terms of memory.

[jardine01]

When the Jubilee line had the old signling why was it so unreliable though? The Northern line signaling is much older than the jubilee line and yet it is more reliable why is this?

[londonstuff]

Nov 6, 2011 11:51:26 GMT @jardine01 said:

When the Jubilee line had the old signling why was it so unreliable though? The Northern line signaling is much older than the jubilee line and yet it is more reliable why is this?

I believe it was something to do with the fact that the JLE had most of its components sourced from other parts of LU, given that it was only a matter of time before the signalling was replaced anyway.

Certainly in the early days there was just day after day of failure. In that respect, I suppose the introduction of TBTC has been relatively successful.

[chrisvandenkieboom]

The JLE was designed to have moving block signalling from Westinghouse. However, due to cost overruns, delays and issues with the system, they quickly had to get traditional signalling, according to CULG.

[Ben]

Indeed. The whole situation was fraught pretty much till the 11th hour so it seems, at which point a signal engineer came up with a suggestion for cobbling together a conventional system using various parts; some obtained from the Central line which was in the process of going ATO.

Some or all of this might be slightly inaccurate though

That it worked as well as it did is probably more a testament to that engineers inginuity than anything else. So, depite the negative comments regarding the old system, for something designed out of 'bits we've got anyway' it was a pretty impressive feat to get the whole thing up and running for the millenium!

Hmm the other rumour is that Metro drivers are paid around half what LUL drivers get

And theres the reason why LUL has this as an aspiration...

[chrisvandenkieboom]

Nov 6, 2011 16:12:59 GMT Ben said:

And theres the reason why LUL has this as an aspiration...

But due to the unions apparently running the country (or LU), they aren't able to, unless they introduce the passenger service agent, which would cause massive strikes & protests like the OPO argument. Except that OPO is much safer than the whole PSA thing.

[jardine01]

I agree If it aint broken don't fix it! OPO should just stay as it is. Remember the DLR was designed for Automatic operation since day one so was the victoria line but the DLR tunnels were designed for evauation the old tube tunnels don't. I think on the JLE there is escapes in the tunnels up to street level?

[chrisvandenkieboom]

Nov 6, 2011 17:52:44 GMT @jardine01 said:

I agree If it aint broken don't fix it! OPO should just stay as it is. Remember the DLR was designed for Automatic operation since day one so was the victoria line but the DLR tunnels were designed for evauation the old tube tunnels don't. I think on the JLE there is escapes in the tunnels up to street level?

Yup, it's the law.

[railtechnician]

Nov 6, 2011 14:19:39 GMT chrisvandenkieboom said:

The JLE was designed to have moving block signalling from Westinghouse. However, due to cost overruns, delays and issues with the system, they quickly had to get traditional signalling, according to CULG.

But it isn't traditional LT signalling, it's a bodge as there are no lever frames on JLE, these being replaced by PLCs and ladder logic to control the safety signalling kit. There is also no air main supply as the intention was to do away with EP equipment but the use of trainstops required a supply and thus local compressors had to be fitted. Many of the equipment rooms are located in strange places off premises despite the massive numbers of rooms built into the 'station boxes'.

JLE was a bodge in so many ways, perhaps the biggest bodge of all being to outsource the design and installation of the signalling system. There was also of course political pressure to get the project finished for the millennium which didn't help. Add to that the fact that the Jubilee was a line of two halves, stage 1 Charing Cross-Stanmore and JLE operated from two different signalling control rooms and using traditional 1970s LT signalling on the old with bodged signalling on the new. The JLE project was never properly finished as it was supposed to include the old and that work was only partially done, communications having been unmaintained and allowed to run down as new systems were supposed to replace them but equally the traditionalling signalling in some places was poorly maintained to, a result of the Met having responsibility for some of the maintenance and the Bakerloo the remainder until the Picc took over maintenance of the original Jube and began replacing and renewing worn out assets and equipment under 'Shadow running' IIRC in the run up to privatisiation of signalling maintenance as Tube Lines and Metronet.

Northern line signalling by the way is no older in real terms than Stage 1 Jubilee signalling although the latter was to a later standard using some of the signalling standards of the Victoria line such as Q relays and double cut circuitry. Both were 1970s vintage, I worked on the Northern line resignalling of the late 1970s as well as the resignalling of the old Bakerloo which became the greater part of Stage 1 Jubilee, these two systems being only a little older than the Picc resignalling which began in the late 1970s and was completed in the 1980s. Indeed in the late 1970s we were just clearing up the last remnants of the 1970s Central line resignalling, sites that come to mind being Woodford, Holborn-Chancery Lane-St Paul's and Queensway.

When engineering was 'in house' as far as design, install and maintain was concerned it was purpose designed and fit for purpose but you get what you pay for and it cost big bucks but was built to last! Short sighted politicians who couldn't organise a box of chocolates are primarily to blame for the mess that exists today which really began with the 1990s Central Line resignalling.

[railtechnician]

'Conked out' is very much a London expression from my youth but it got replaced years ago by that universally used expletive beginning with 'F' !

[castlebar]

Railtechnician said "Short sighted politicians who couldn't organise a box of chocolates are primarily to blame for the mess that exists today which really began with the 1990s Central Line resignalling", .......... but in fact, politicians interference with the rail industry has worked to the rail industry's disadvantage for far longer than that.

It started with/in the 1940s and 50s. I have mentioned some of this on other threads over the last few months, and l am particularly angered when the after effects have worked against everyone else, (PAX AND rail staff). Some of my previous postings will confirm that l had through my late Uncle's involvement in "a Ministry", l once had privileged acces to access reagrding post war "new works", and Marples & Beeching info that was not just a disgrace, but a national scandal. (the Beeching/Marples info is now on Wikipidia). Since then there was the closure of the Ongar branch (which Essex C.C. refused to allow to be altered at North Weald to create a Parkway with the M11) and now we have political pressure for HS2 purely for electoral purposes. One of the protagonists on Essex C.C., who were adamant that there should be no rail services beyond Epping on the grounds of saving ratepayers' money, was a certain "Lord", who was recently was given a jail term for fiddling his personal expenses.

No, it is not just shortsightedness that has been dogging the rail industry for the last 65 years, but political corruption and interference. Just think of the Bletchley flyover and the fact that it is now cheaper to move rail stock on the back of a lorry post privatisation. The political infestation of the rail industry has acted like a rot that visionary thinkers and rail staff have found it impossible to battle against.

[auxsetreq]

www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-24007786-control-room-blackout-on-jubilee-line.do

[v52gc]

Haha,
"cab telephones"
Sure they done mean wireless?

[jardine01]

It's a shame the system is now getting unreliable once again. I thought it had bedded in and the reliablity problems were now sorted out. I dread to think what it will be like when it gets installed on the Northern line with complicated junctions like Camden town. The Jubillee line is point to point where the Northern has several branches. I can't understand why the signaling system is so unrelaible. Really I think the Northern line should of got the TBTC first then the Jubilee line. The Jubilee line signaling was fairly new the Northern lines must be around 50 year old or more?

[chrisvandenkieboom]

The original part of the Jubilee line is fairly new, signalling related. The extension, confusingly, has parts of older signaling coming from the Central, which went ATO.

[Deleted]

Nov 9, 2011 20:13:06 GMT @jardine01 said:

It's a shame the system is now getting unreliable once again. I thought it had bedded in and the reliablity problems were now sorted out. I dread to think what it will be like when it gets installed on the Northern line with complicated junctions like Camden town. The Jubillee line is point to point where the Northern has several branches. I can't understand why the signaling system is so unrelaible. Really I think the Northern line should of got the TBTC first then the Jubilee line. The Jubilee line signaling was fairly new the Northern lines must be around 50 year old or more?

You have to remember the arrangement for the jubilee from 1999 onwards was only ever supposed to be temporary because it all went a bit wrong. The original ATO system couldn't be made ready for the Millenium Dome opening in 2000. In the event, they just decided to have conventional signalling until the upgrade could continue. So much so that the JLE was more sparsely signalled than the original section.
The northern line has a more robust signalling system that has improved a great deal in reliability from a passengers point of view in recent years and could easily last longer.

Bearing in mind the jubilee line has always had ATO in mind, technically its only about 32 years late!

[Deleted]

Nov 9, 2011 20:28:36 GMT chrisvandenkieboom said:

The original part of the Jubilee line is fairly new, signalling related. The extension, confusingly, has parts of older signaling coming from the Central, which went ATO.

Eh? Original parts were from the 70's or older, the extension was an updated version of the Central from the 90's, and is in fact newer technology than TBTC which is 80's !

One big failure in many weeks does not indicate a return to unreliable running. The Jubilee has been running really well outperforming most of the rest of the lines in recent weeks. The fault from what I understand was the 'timetable' part of the control centre - none of the trains lost communications with the signalling. I thought in this type of failure the trains would continue to run 'end to end' by some kind of default timetable in the VCC system? I guess if the control room can't see where the trains are on the system, all trains are stopped.

[railtechnician]

Nov 6, 2011 21:35:13 GMT castlebar said:

Railtechnician said "Short sighted politicians who couldn't organise a box of chocolates are primarily to blame for the mess that exists today which really began with the 1990s Central Line resignalling", .......... but in fact, politicians interference with the rail industry has worked to the rail industry's disadvantage for far longer than that.

It started with/in the 1940s and 50s.

My comment was made in regard to signalling & communications which began to be outsourced in the late 1980s but which became the 'preferred option' for resignalling commencing with the Central line as far as I can see purely as a political measure.

LT Engineering was deliberately taken apart piece by piece and what was once a nicely integrated, though not necessarily perfect, engineering organisation was replaced by external contractors under the 'make or buy' programme of the 1980s which most have probably long since forgotten about now. Even when the internal bids for design, install and maintain contract bids were competitive they were denied in favour of external bids for what I have always belived to be political reasons. The management at all levels from the Board downward accepted this with barely a whimper and with the 'writing on the wall' many managers choose to 'make hay while the sun shone' by taking severance and returning to the same desks as contractors on higher salaries, by leaving to join fledgling contract companies or indeed by starting their own contract companies and all doing very well out of it. Staff were encouraged to follow them and thus with a dimishing workforce bidding for internal contracts became an impossible task, thus the ever decreasing spiral began whereby no work forced staff to be let go and lack of staff prevented successful bidding for work.

This very deliberate process cost the taxpayer £millions and set Underground engineering back ten years as the new contract companies settled down to 'learning on the job' and being rewarded for their errors, omissions and mistakes while what remained of the internal workforce cleared up after them at no charge.

Because the internal contractor (S&E) was failing to win even 'bread and butter' work it had no choice but to lay off staff or seek work outside LU, a ridiculous situation. One such bid, if successful would've seen LUL S&E staff running cable in the channel tunnel but the bid was not allowed to proceed as in an emergency there would be little or no internal staff available. LT always had an excellent record of following up a major catastrophe or critical wrong side signal failure in double quick time inspecting all similar assets network wide within hours and this would've been impossible with the internal staff labouring on a contract in Kent!

The one place that many LU staff did work was DLR but of course still working from LU depots.

As one of my managers at the time remarked all we were doing most days was 'rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic'. As a supervisor at the time I found myself in charge of more and more staff covering ever larger parts of the network until for at least one week I was responsible for all the staff in my department and the remnants of another on the shift covering the entire system as all my colleagues had left and their offices had closed as they were not being replaced. We actually began to find ourselves doing work for the external contractors, showing them the ropes as it were and explaining where things were etc etc, even tracing faulty circuits and passing over the information so they they could repair them. Of course we could have made the repairs ourselves but we were not allowed to as the external contractors were being paid to do that!

All of this of course occured before devolution to lines, shadow running and transfer of engineering to Tube Lines and Metronet! Those of us that had not 'jumped ship' during the unfairly weighted 'make or buy' period and 'kept the ship afloat' with ever decreasing resources were 'sold down the river' anyway, it was TUPE to a 'preferred bidder' or dismissal.

I still see myself as an LT/LU 'company man' but I will always feel agrieved at what was done by politicians and allowed to transpire unhindered by the board and senior management who no doubt were all 'looked after'. There is no doubt that some reform of LU engineering was required at the time but the baby was most definitely thrown out with the bathwater. The PPP like most of the PFCs is a testament to incompetence and gross mismanagement of public finances.

[railtechnician]

Nov 9, 2011 20:28:36 GMT chrisvandenkieboom said:

The original part of the Jubilee line is fairly new, signalling related. The extension, confusingly, has parts of older signaling coming from the Central, which went ATO.

Please don't mislead the forum!

Most of the Central line signalling kit was sold off or donated to preserved railways, much was simply scrapped and the remainder was refurbished in the signal overhaul shop as is standard procedure for recovered equipment from all lines. Thus nothing 'old' was installed on JLE, the system was new throughout.

[castlebar]

@ Railtechnician

Your article is brilliant. You ought to consider writing a book, A copy should be sent to every politician in London,

Your article is initially a response to mine and it is primarilay about signalling, My article was written in more general terms because my late beloved Uncle "blew the gaff" to me about his knowledge of the corruption and mismanagement withinin Government (where he was) and public bodies, such as the transport industry. You only need to read some of my other recent threads, or look up "Ernest Marples" on Wikipidia, to see what was going on - - then realise that this was endemic throught government and you will see the size of the problem.

Your article is brilliant, but it only scratches the surface.

[Deleted]

And again. Whole line suspended. This time due to a power failure. What a shambles. Is this the future!

[plasmid]

Nov 26, 2011 17:45:44 GMT @monkfish said:

And again. Whole line suspended. This time due to a power failure. What a shambles. Is this the future!

What's this got to do with the Jubilee Line? Frustration pointed towards the national grid would be more appropriate here.

[railtechnician]

Nov 26, 2011 19:40:41 GMT plasmid said:

Nov 26, 2011 17:45:44 GMT @monkfish said:

And again. Whole line suspended. This time due to a power failure. What a shambles. Is this the future!

What's this got to do with the Jubilee Line? Frustration pointed towards the national grid would be more appropriate here.

Get used to it if indeed it was a grid issue, it was the politicians that decided not to invest in upgrading the Underground's own power station at Lots Road even though it has long been known that the grid can only just about meet the demand for supply nationwide. There is no reserve in the system and all it will take is a bad winter to see brownouts, this is due to many factors but chiefly to lack of investment, poor decision making by politicians, new H&S legislation which has basically caused the closure of many power stations as the cost of compliance is exhorbitant and the money isn't available, also the move to greener energy which in so many ways is a fallacy. Windfarms and other alternative methods of generation cannot produce enough energy and all the power stations are now forced to use biofuels or to incur fines. It's just a small portion of the jigsaw that is the mess that the politicians have created over the last 50 years !

[Deleted]

Nov 26, 2011 19:40:41 GMT plasmid said:

Nov 26, 2011 17:45:44 GMT @monkfish said:

And again. Whole line suspended. This time due to a power failure. What a shambles. Is this the future!

What's this got to do with the Jubilee Line? Frustration pointed towards the national grid would be more appropriate here.

I would doubt that a National Grid failure would affect just one line and all of it without LU being able to manage, what with numerous feeds from the outside world to LU.

Sources tell me (I haven't had a chance to view on Heartbeat - line report) that this entire line suspension was due to an earth - a can.
Not much resilience in the railway if that all it takes!