Planned works - Camden Town to East Finchley

[Deleted]

Can anyone tell me more about what kind of works are going? I imagine they're just general and not emergency or urgently needed, as this part of the line is usually well behaved.

UD

Note: Not a moan about the works, just want to find out more about me local line ;D

[Tubeboy]

Basically Track replacement work.The Charing Cross branch has been done, and now its this section, will be Finchley Central-High Barnet later in the year.

[Deleted]

I assume that the trains are reversing S-N in Highgate Depot during the current closures?

[frankoids]

Trains are terminating Platform 3, shunted in and out of the siding at East Finchley onto Platform 2 and then running Northbound.

[Deleted]

frankoids said:

Trains are terminating Platform 3, shunted in and out of the siding at East Finchley onto Platform 2 and then running Northbound.

Are trains being double ended for this manouvre?

[Tubeboy]

Not afaik but not 100%, Frankoids should know, btw mate [Frankoids] are you a N/l train op?

[frankoids]

Are trains being double ended for this manouvre?[/quote]


No, the turn around time allows for single manning

In answer to Tubeboy, yes I am

[Deleted]

IS it just me, or is the special timetable that is operating during these weekends simply pants

Regular 10 min gaps, with 15-20 min gaps thrown in for good measure.

At least I'm off next weekend....

[Tubeboy]

According to the timetable there is a 6tph service between East Finchley- High Barnet [Every 10 minutes].

On the Edgware branch there is a 24tph [could be 20?, I cant remember 100%] Half of which are Morden via Bank, the other half Being Kennington reversers [Via Charing Cross].

[Deleted]

I still think it would be faster (and thus more staff and train efficient) to turn trains in Highgate depot with one reversing manouvre, than to turn trains via three reversing manouvres in the siding North of East Finchley.

[Deleted]

IMHO the Edgware tph is simply unworkable. Too many trains stuck in North London = no trains in South London + late running.

A more workable solution?

8tph Morden - Edgware via bank
4tph Morden - Colindale via Bank
4tph Tooting Broadway - Colindale via CX
8tph Kennington - Golders Green via CX.

On Saturday gaps of 10-20 mins on the south end of the Northern is bad news. Sunday was little better.

[Deleted]

centralsimon said:

IS it just me, or is the special timetable that is operating during these weekends simply pants

Regular 10 min gaps, with 15-20 min gaps thrown in for good measure.

At least I'm off next weekend....

The timetable for these closures were:

12 TPH Kennington - Camden via CX
12 TPH Morden - Camden via Bank

Giving a 24 TPH between Camden - Golders Green, with trains reversing every 10 minutes, leaving an 18 TPH service to/from Edgware.

The Saturday just gone, there was a points failure at Edgware which took some time to fix. At one point, only one platform at Edgware was available to reverse in for a few hours, which is highly disruptive for 18 TPH. This caused hellish delays for the rest of the day with congestion in the Golders Green area - which is easy to cause when you have a 24 TPH service running there, as well as extended breaks cause Golders Green is a crew relief point.

On Sunday (yesterday), I noticed things were much better. The timetable has been operating for several weekends now, and I've observed mixed results.

When the brief was given that a timetable would be needed for East Finchley - Camden Town closure, it was apparent that Golders Green - Camden would be a bottleneck, even if you were only going to run a 5 minute service on the CX and Bank branches, which is not very good. You're weary about timetabling this, as this means a 24 TPH between Camden and Golders, and the Northern Line is one of the most disrupted lines, which would suffer from such a high level if service. And indeed thats what happened on Saturday, and indeed on a few other days of the closures.

Reversing trains every 10 minutes at Golders Green, to leave 18 TPH to run to/from Edgware; I actually think thats very workable with a three platform terminus, with some robustness as well. More frequent services are reversed on the network on weekends at other parts of the network.

The reason why all the CX trains terminate at Kennington (rather than going on to Morden or Tooting Broadway as you suggest), was to reduce the amount of train hours that were needed, because concerns were expressed to us about the high number of train operators hours needed to transfer East Finchley drivers to/from Golders Green for some train work.

You also mention how about introducing Colindale reversers to give Edgware some space. Colindale reversers would require detrainment staff, which is in short supply. But many of the line controllers and the line management insist on having end to end running as much as possible, freeing up these sidings to be used to reverse late running trains. I know thats may sound contradictory considering we are reversing trains at Golders Green, but its all subjective - and you want to have at least one free reversing point on the branch. Likewise with Tooting Broadway and Morden.

The key thing is that the Northern Line struggles to run 24 TPH on any section of the line (it only runs 20 TPH during the peak!) - so if we just ran 20 TPH between Golders and Camden, that would equate to six minute services on the CX and Bank branches which is even worse. So that was the overwhelming factor in why the timetable is the way it is.

[Deleted]

stephenk said:

I still think it would be faster (and thus more staff and train efficient) to turn trains in Highgate depot with one reversing manouvre, than to turn trains via three reversing manouvres in the siding North of East Finchley.

From what I remember, it takes 5 minutes to run between Highgate Depot and East Finchley. So as soon as the southbound train enters EF, 4 minute detrainment, 5 in x 2 run time to/from HD, and 8 min layover in HD - gives a total of 22 minutes between SB train arriving at EF to its departing for its NB journey. I think the three reversing manoeuvres as timetabled is a bit less than that.

What would have been more efficient was use of the crossover north of East Finchley (no 20 points if I recall correctly); that allows you travel from platform 3 northbound, crossing over to the northbound line. But that signal was a shunt move only, not a coloured signal move. If passenger trains were allowed to do that move, we could have reversed south to north without the need to detrain and triple shunt or reverse via depot, and I think we could have saved a train for the High Barnet - East Finchley service.

[Deleted]

Just proves that there's more to timetable planning that simply working on the stations

I do honestly feel that 12tph Kennington - Morden is too little, that equates to a 6min service, which given the odd minute or two delay very easily strecthes to a 10min service.

The Edgware GSM I'm sure could provide staff to allow assistance for trains at Colindale. However in retrospect my concerns would be could the infrastructure handle regular reversers there? (Or Tooting Bdy come to that).

On reflection, could the Finchley works have been co-ordinated with the shutdown of Charing X? This would've resulted in a simple Morden - Edgware via Bank service! Or are there problems with that?

From an operational station prespective, these weekend timetable are pants. Luckily I only have 2 left to work, on which 1 is a night turn, which I'm really dreading.....

[Deleted]

centralsimon said:

On reflection, could the Finchley works have been co-ordinated with the shutdown of Charing X? This would've resulted in a simple Morden - Edgware via Bank service! Or are there problems with that?
.....

Thats quite a substantial shutdown of the Northern Line. I think some of the Northern line controllers I've met would have preferred these two blockades to be combined so it would have left a more simpler service to manage, without having two branches to run a service on.

Timetabling such a service would be easier as well.

The Marketing and Planning people and Northern Line managers would never allow this to happen though, and with decent reason I guess - two shutdowns on any one line is more disruptive for the passengers. And would send out the wrong message to London.

Also, having two shutdowns combined means further strain on the alterative transport strategy, some of which is subject to other engineering works which happen not so consistently. You could argue its more work for the station staff having to offer more protracted and confusing travel advice if there was a shutdown East Finchley - Camden, and Camden - Kennington via CX.

Ironically enough, thats almost what happened recently. The Friday when the Archway derailment happened, which suspended the service East Finchley - Camden Town for the rest of the day; it was unknown whether through running would be restored for the weekend - the same weekend there was a CX branch blockade - which wasn't going to get cancelled. So a simple special Edgware - Morden via Bank service almost happened. In the end though, trains were able to run through Archway Saturday morning.

There will be ten more CX branch weekend blockades from January 2007. The engineering timetable is being rewritten to a 20 TPH Morden - Camden via Bank, with 10 TPH split to Edgware and Barnet, and a Mill Hill - Finchley Central shuttle

[Deleted]

centralsimon said:

I do honestly feel that 12tph Kennington - Morden is too little, that equates to a 6min service, which given the odd minute or two delay very easily strecthes to a 10min service.
.....

Yeah, I can imagine the Morden stretch being busy enough being one of the very few tube lines south of the river. When patterns of service were being researched for this, 15 TPH, 16 TPH and even 20 TPH to Morden was considered - all achieved by extending various CX branch trains as appropriate. All of them proved to be high train hours which caused concerns that it could be resourced, considering that sufficient train hours were needed to simply travel T/OPs between Finchley and Golders depots, as Finchley crews are effectively stranded from where the majority of the work is at.

Its very difficult to meet all the demands and add robustness for disruption, when compiling a timetable for the Northern Line!

[mandgc]

What an intellegent discussion on the problems of arranging an alternative service during Engneering Works - and by people who seemed to know what they were talking about. Thank You, all !

[Tubeboy]

Soultrain, 20TPH in January 2007 for the Charing X closure, why not 24? [12 from Barnet, 12 from Edgware, 4 terminating at Kennington, giving a 20TPH service to/from Morden] as was the case recently?

[Deleted]

mandgc said:

What an intellegent discussion on the problems of arranging an alternative service during Engneering Works - and by people who seemed to know what they were talking about. Thank You, all !

From a personal prospective, I always have a professional respect for any employee and in particular a LU (or TFL) employee. Especially if someone chooses to spend a part of their free time to explain to us what's happening and share their knowledge.

As a station supervisor, I do honestly dread this special timetable, the frequency of trains south of the water is simply not enough, but soultrain has raised some very valid points that whilst helping personally to explain the 'lack' of service, it wouldn't help the traveling public

The Marketing and Planning people and Northern Line managers would never allow this to happen though, and with decent reason I guess - two shutdowns on any one line is more disruptive for the passengers. And would send out the wrong message to London.

Also, having two shutdowns combined means further strain on the alternative transport strategy, some of which is subject to other engineering works which happen not so consistently. You could argue its more work for the station staff having to offer more protracted and confusing travel advice if there was a shutdown East Finchley - Camden, and Camden - Kennington via CX.

I know where you're coming from, but I'm not 100% convinced the ability to reduce the number of closures wouldn't be a benefit to the public. 52 weeks of moderate inconvenience against say 30 weeks of more moderate inconvenience. It's a tough call.

Anyway soultrain next time PLEASE a 20tph South of Kennington or no tea & biscuits if you come down to my 'gaff.

[Deleted]

tubeboy said:

Soultrain, 20TPH in January 2007 for the Charing X closure, why not 24? [12 from Barnet, 12 from Edgware, 4 terminating at Kennington, giving a 20TPH service to/from Morden] as was the case recently?

This reply is mainly based about the CX blockade, not the Camden - East Finchley closures which was the original topic:

The reason the CX blockade timetable is being recompiled in time for the next batch of CX branch closures from January onwards, is because a 24 TPH Bank branch service was a struggle to achieve, causing accumulated late running, and the Northern Line management have requested a new timetable offering a less frequent service which they believe would be more manageable and recoverable from disruption.

I've travelled out on the Northern Line when this timetable has been in operation, and I did notice some slow running in the run up to Kennington - and there were never enough detrainment staff at Kennington, which didn't help.

I went to the Northern Line Control Room a few months back to observe the timetable in action. I spoke to the line controller and the DOM on duty (obviously not while they were actually working!) - and they both told me that they destested the Kennington reversers, as it caused large blocking back - a view expressed by other operational staff. Without the 4TPH Kennington reversers which were sometimes withdrawn, the Bank branch dropped to 20 TPH (so you just had all trains running to/from Morden via Bank) and they felt the timetable operated very well - that was a benchmark that could be used for a future rewrite of the timetable.

But things have changed again since I last said that. It now transpires the line management, have changed their minds and instead of wanting what I described: (20 TPH Morden to Camden via Bank - 10 TPH up the Edgware branch, 10 TPH up the Barnet branch) - they still want to use that base, but do not want to run all 20 TPH of the Bank branch down to/from Morden - instead they want to keep Kennington reversers in! Reversing 4 TPH via Kennington siding, to give a 16 TPH service to/from Morden. The very Kennington siding reversers, those at the Northern Line control room hated!

The reason offered was that Morden can't cope with 20 TPH off peak - which I find astonishing! Thats what we are meant to run in a normal weekend timetable anyway. And I believe in a future new working timetable, they want to slightly reduce the off peak Morden service permanently, because they think that 20 TPH to/from Morden causes more disprution than its worth. Don't know what to say to that really - I feel like we can be reducing levels of service so much on the Northern Line to search for better reliability, we could be going to the other extreme of less trains.

Going back to the original topic about the Camden - East Finchley closures, and indeed the Northern Line closures in general, theres a general view emerging that the Northern Line can't handle 24 TPH anywhere now. But in some cases, its unavoidable with the nature of the engineering closures. Such as the East Finchley - Camden closures IMO.

But when levels of service are decided, they aren't executive decisions unless there are simply no options at all. The line management are regularly involved, and I would like to think that they get feedback and advice from the drivers and station staff like those on this forum - as well as knowing what is practical from your point of view. Indeed some of the line management were former guards, drivers or station staff themselves. The incident I explained above for the CX closures where the Northern Line control people I spoke to wanted to take out the Kennington siding reversers, but the management want to keep them in - shows how there is no such thing as a consensus on the Northern Line!

Incidentally, when I've been at the Northern Line control room, or have spoken to Northern Line drivers in the past - discussions quickly turn around to talking about the current working timetable WTT 49 and how bad it is - I get so much intense stick for that, despite not having been involved with its production! It really isn't very popular on the ground level - which is recognised - and many people yearn for a return to WTT 47.

Thanks for the comments Mandgc and Central Simon - and CS, I'm sorry about the 20 TPH to/from Morden - I am not a senior grade, but I do bear the comments about Morden service (as well as the other comments on this whole thread by everyone here) when I speak to the people more closely involved in future planning - and if thats no tea or biscuits, what about one of the two?

[Deleted]

I must agree with those Kennington reversers. I can remember watching on tracker for our next S/B train, only to find a Kennington service on both Bank and CX.

And as a result I've had some serious stick when the public get to see me

Good to hear the 'management' of the Northern Line like to take on views of the operational staff who actually run the railway. Alas somethings never change So Morden with it's 3 platforms can't cope with a 20tph service. Funny how the performance manager (stations) used to be the Morden GSM, you'd think she'd know her stuff.

Soultrain, you're more than welcome to come down South for a visit and a general discussion over Northern Line timetables, just PM me and I'll give you my TFL email address. And your 'forgiven' for the 12tph (a 20tph would be nice) during the current engineering weekends.... Always a cup if tea/ coffee for all visiting forum members
(the nice ones anyway )

[Tubeboy]

As a fellow member of [Northern] staff, do I get a biscuit as well? ;D

Yes I know the performance manager you are talking of!

Thanks for all the info [as ever] Soultrain. Very interesting points/comments you have made.

[Deleted]

tubeboy said:

As a fellow member of [Northern] staff, do I get a biscuit as well? ;D.

As a fellow Northern-tonian, consider a chocolate hob nob on stand-by (rather than the normal value custard creams reserved for 'other' lines)

[Tubeboy]

Too much luxury! Let them eat rich tea, or arrowroot! ;D

[Deleted]

tubeboy said:

Too much luxury! Let them eat rich tea, or arrowroot! ;D

I'm going 'up north' in Met country on Thursday (taking the kids for a day out) so I'll see how Met line hospitality is, before I re-consider the ;facilities' for our visitors.

[Tubeboy]

Anyone know what work is being done on the MHE branch while these closures take place. Is it train arrestor work, trackwork or staffing problems. Therefore only running East Finchley-High Barnet being an easier option?

[Deleted]

Another great working day, working during these special timetables.

This evening I has the pleasure of a 45 min gap. Got a call at about half ten telling me that the next train would be 45 mins away.

Great fun, with many people enjoying the bank holiday Sunday to go out on the sabbath.

Thankfully my last night Monday, then on holiday from the week after, return to earlies so I won't have any timetable woes for at least 6 weeks.

BTW The Mill Hill shuttle - or lack of it - is because of lack of tripcock testers. But I'm sure that Tubelines would use this time wisely and will be undertaking some vital work.

[Deleted]

When I was leaving the SW4 dance festival on Clapham Common on Saturday there was a 9 minute gap in the NB service! Thankfully I left the festival 10 mins early to try and beat the crowd. I wouldn't like to have been at the back of the queue of 20,000 people trying to get onto the Northern Line running a limited service!

[Deleted]

stephenk said:

When I was leaving the SW4 dance festival on Clapham Common on Saturday there was a 9 minute gap in the NB service! Thankfully I left the festival 10 mins early to try and beat the crowd. I wouldn't like to have been at the back of the queue of 20,000 people trying to get onto the Northern Line running a limited service!

Another great example of the Northern Line management providing a world class service

Although as I as told, a quick thinking DSM (I know a rarity these days ) actually took charge of the situation and held a train on the platform, so the gap at Clapham was much less than the 45 mins we had.

[Deleted]

stephenk said:

When I was leaving the SW4 dance festival on Clapham Common on Saturday there was a 9 minute gap in the NB service! Thankfully I left the festival 10 mins early to try and beat the crowd. I wouldn't like to have been at the back of the queue of 20,000 people trying to get onto the Northern Line running a limited service!

Had a good time at the SW4 festival? I heard John Digweed and Carl Cox was there.

I do think sometimes closures can be approved that don't adequately meet the demands of concerts - events at Clapham Common being one. That must have been very disasterous day - I heard there were delays through a number of incidents on the Northern Line throughout the day.