Appalling Day.

[robots]

What started as a simple signal failure became a day of

complete chaos.

Signal VK1 which is the route indicator

approaching Finsbury Park on the East failed at lunchtime.

Despite being a Picc signal it is actually controlled from

Coburg St as it can route stock and engineering moves onto

the Victoria line.

It took the best part of 45 minutes to

authorise trains through the area , a completely excessive

delay as `Remote Securing' is available in the Finsbury Park

area.

This had a hugely detrimental effect on the service

as you can imagine. Things went from bad to worse however

when Earls Court lost control ( do they ever have control ?)

of the signalling in the Arnos Grove area. Normally what

happens in these circumstances is that the managers at

Ash House take `local control ' of the signalling by means of

their work stations. Today the Arnos Grove `management team'

were at a `team building/pi$$ up' event and were replaced

by DMT 'S from Acton Town. Guess what ? The Acton DMT 'S

aren 't trained to use the work stations so the train service

ground to a complete halt for another 45 minutes. I sat with

a packed train between Manor House and Turnpike Lane

for most of this period.

Fortunately the weather isn 't too hot

at the moment but if this were to occur in July or August

the punters would be dropping like flies.

Lessons must be learned from this. At

least one manager on duty at Ash House must be qualified

to operate the work stations if control is lost and much

grater urgency should be shown by the LSM 'S in getting

trains stalled in section into platforms. This didn 't seem a

priority this afternoon at all.

[Deleted]

Completely agree with you, Robots. These so-called 'team building' excercises the DMTs keep going on need to be completely reviewed. I'd also like to know what (if anything) useful for the job comes of these such excercises...

As to the service, the District had a few problems as well, but when the Picc goes up the wall, inevitably so does the west-end of the District because of the Acton Town layout!

I always leave 90 mins to get to Earl's Court to book on (from Sudbury Town, it's only about 20 mins on the Picc, but I need to go via Acton to get my equipment bag) and it's just as well I did leave that time today! There was about a twenty minute gap on the Rayners branch to start with (which isn't really that unusual - as soon as there's a sniff of a problem on the Picc, they divert everything towards Heathrow and forget about us) then after getting my bag and a cuppa at Acton, I went down to the eastbound to catch a Picc to ECT and two consecutive trains tipped out to go into the sidings!

There was a gap on the District as well, so I eventually caught a very busy Picc train to ECT, hunched in my 1 square foot of personal space... Next time, I'll walk down the front and hitch a lift with the driver! ;D

I did notice at Acton, the staff were putting up posters from the Picc general manager apologising for the terrible service yesterday!

[Deleted]

Yeah it was a bad journey home last night - living in Arnos Grove, it was tough to get home.

One thing I would like to ask is about stalled trains. It appeared to have taken over half an hour to rescue this trapped train at Finsbury Park, with its stranded passengers. As quite rightly mentioned, it could have been more serious if this occurred in rush hour or in hot weather. And I've heard of plenty of instances where trains become trapped for over an hour.

Is there anything that can be done regarding rescue-ing trapped passengers on stalled trains more quickly? One of the things I find is that wrong directional moves seem to take a long time to authorise. And in times of emergency, are the drivers allowed to undertake wrong directional moves on their own, or must this move always be done with a second member of staff? - which adds to the time of rescue as the member of staff needs to walk to the train with the arrangements of traction current switched off.

[c5]

A wrong directional move must always be Authorised by/ carried out by an Operating Official or Station Supervisor, so that protection and handsignal persons are in position, to stop two trains possibly crashing. Also Train Operators must never pass a Semi-Auto signal at danger without authrority from a Signal/Service Operator.

If the Train Operator feels that the train needs to be evacuated they can do this themselves after a certain amount of time, if not able to contact anyone (and carrying out all relavent procedures).




The train mentioned in the first post, wasn't evacuated in the end, as it moved off under clear signals when the track picked up.

[Deleted]

Sadly some Station Supervisors don't know what they're doing when asked to assist with wrong direction move, securing of points etc.

Also there seems to be a reluctance to start doing wrong direction moves or detrainments if there is even a slight chance of getting the service back any time soon, as the resumption of service would then have to wait until the detrainment/move had finished. Too much emphasis on being able to rescue the service later rather than dealing with the immediate situation IMHO.

[Deleted]

adw said:

Sadly some Station Supervisors don't know what they're doing when asked to assist with wrong direction move, securing of points etc.

To add a foot note to this statement.

You're 100% correct that many station supervisors are unfamiliar with operational procedures but the reasons behind this are varied and aren't always the fault of the supervisor.

Firstly the supervisor will only have ever done the procedure in theory. Practical training is not given, although as I understand it ATOR this year begins to address this issue. So for many Supervisors the first time they conduct these procedures is on a live railway.

Secondly, as I'm sure you're aware, supervisors fall into 4 different grades. The staff at the many open sections would probably be multi-functional, so they are expected to sell tickets and service the machines. The major focus of their job centres around this and as a result it's easy to lose track of your 'real' task.

Thirdly, since the SWW stations aren't exactly over-run with staff. I can remember standing @ my station starter during a signal failure assisting the drivers, on a station on my own. The public want to buy a ticket, a bloke had a fiver stuck in the machine and guess who was getting the brunt of the punters anger? And don't even get me started on what the public expect during a service suspension (yes I will personally carry you on my back). I remember reading from SQE of a story of when a station supervisor couldn't secure the route as he was being abused by the punters.

Lastly, LU's recruitment procedures are so flawed that very few 'quality' station supervisors are being recruited. Many are thee simply for the money - I'm sure you'll be seeing the same on the driving side as well - so the chances are the person running the station is there for the money.

Personally I've never refused to conduct a procedure, WDM, securing the points etc, but from personal experience these simple procedures being undertaken on a live railway, when you only have theoretical knowledge, during a peak hour, in the rain ain't fun

[Deleted]

why does this ALWAYS happen when i am rest day :-(

[Deleted]

I believe there was further disruption to the Picc line yesterday (Friday).

It would seem that arranging wrong directional moves for trapped trains when incidents happen, take more time than it should, for a variety of reasons. And it perpetuates a negative impression that we provide a poor service.

I don't think that LU provides sufficient members of staff to deal with incidents - whether its on stations or trains.

I guess one possible answer would be the reintroduction of guards on passenger trains who have the necessary qualifications - so you automatically have someone who can assist in a wrong directional move.

[Colin]

soultrain said:

I guess one possible answer would be the reintroduction of guards on passenger trains who have the necessary qualifications - so you automatically have someone who can assist in a wrong directional move.

The whole point of a station supervisor or above assisting is that this person is acting in the capacity of "person in charge of wrong direction move", and part of their duty is to act as your pilotman - they define the extent of the move, and by the nature of their title within the procedure, they are in charge of the whole process (including scotching and clipping points if necessary). Therefore a guard isn't much use in this procedure

[Deleted]

IF LU are serious about operational safety then the most obvious answer would be to give all operational staff practical training during the 5 day block. Then perhaps getting station staff out on the front of a train and train staff on a station for a day - then perhaps we can break down the barriers that exist between the grades.

IMHO bring guards back is not the answer - given that it would have a huge impact on the roles of both station supervisors as well as drivers.

[Colin]

Train operators do get "hand's on" experience during the 5 day block (annual test of rules & stock refresher) training. Trust me, everything we do is scenario/procedure based.

I can understand your thinking, as when I was on the stations I often thought the train side were out to make things awkward. Now i'm "on the other side", I can appreciate that drivers have different priorities to station staff (and most of what we do is "get it right or loose yer job" stuff) - but I don't see the point of swapping roles in the context of dealing with procedures - to be honest it would cause most staff to confuse the issue of knowing what their role is within a procedure.

Like you say, most station staff only find out what to do when they have to do it - and that does need addressing - but not by sitting in a cab as that won't show you anything apart from how to drive a train.

[Chris M]

colin said:

soultrain said:

I guess one possible answer would be the reintroduction of guards on passenger trains who have the necessary qualifications - so you automatically have someone who can assist in a wrong directional move.

The whole point of a station supervisor or above assisting is that this person is acting in the capacity of "person in charge of wrong direction move", and part of their duty is to act as your pilotman - they define the extent of the move, and by the nature of their title within the procedure, they are in charge of the whole process (including scotching and clipping points if necessary). Therefore a guard isn't much use in this procedure

Unless you do something different - you employ people as a combined driver/guard. They would then spend half their time doing each roll. This would mean that in situations like this you have two people who are qualified to do all things. Also in the case of ermgencies you have someone else who can take control of the train. It woudl also benefit in cases where the driver was out of hours, the other person could take over driving until the normal bookoff point, reducing (but not eliminating) some of the disruption.

I don't imagine that many of the existing drivers would be too happy about this though. And the need to employ more people probably wouldn't go down well with those holding the purse strings.

[Tomcakes]

Or rather than a traditional "guard", sit at the back and push the buttons, walk thru the train, do ticket checks where nescesarry, answer passenger questions etc. Might go down well with those looking at "customer service".