Half day suspension on Saturday 29th Sep

[Deleted]

NORTHERN LINE: Suspended between Euston and East Finchley on Saturday 29 September until 1400 due to planned engineering works. Replacement buses operate.

Does anyone know if this has anything to do with the testing of ATO, after the last few months of various works around the Highgate area?

David (UD)

[towerman]

All it says on the timetable change document is engineering work at Camden Town.

[superteacher]

I can see absolutely no logic for doing this on Saturday - if it's only up until 14:00, surely they could do it on Sunday with no danger of an overrun affecting Monday morning?

[Chris M]

Perhaps equipment and/or staff are required elsewhere on Sunday

[Tubeboy]

The work is to do with No 20 points at Camden Town.

As for the work being done on a saturday, its busy at Camden at the weekend, but sunday is much busier, so therefore less hassle.

BTW 20 points are the set on the N/B [Bank branch] where Barnet trains diverge from the Edgware branch.

Thankfully I am on late turn and will miss the fun, unless it over-runs!

Shuttle runs from Euston-Morden every 10 minutes. [City branch] so N/B trains will traverse part of the Euston loop. Track bashers will be in attendance!

[Deleted]

Well I see the obvious ended up happening...

NORTHERN LINE: Suspended between Euston and East Finchley due to late finish of engineering work. Severe delays are occurring on the Bank branch.

[Deleted]

Had a look at the live departure boards on Tfl website a minute ago.......Colliers Wood SB had train times of 6,16 and 27 mins!!! Great stuff....................

[jamesb]

Yes... I just returned to Camden from Belsize Park and it was pretty chaotic - there were frustrated looking maintenance staff emerging from behind the gate, and people were queuing on the stairs to get onto the Southbound platform when I was getting off! Oh well. It did seem overly hopeful to open again at 2pm though.

[Deleted]

I saw one of the Sullivan Buses Olympians on the replacement service still operating in the Highgate Village chaos just a few minutes ago.

[Tubeboy]

I got to East Finchley, a bit before 1400. Was told then work had over-ran. I wasn't too happy about sitting with the great unwashed down to Euston on some dilipdated doubledecker. Got the 102 instead to Golden Green, first train was removed from service, due to a large patch of vomit. Got to work 2 minutes late.

At 1725, its still suspended.

Earliest reopening is 1900 hours.

[Chris M]

tubeboy said:

Earliest reopening is 1900 hours.

20:14 and it is still shut. 6¼ hours is a serious overrun

[superteacher]

Well the service was in chaos for most of the day, not helped by a trespasser on the track at Burnt Oak during the late morning.

The city branch service to Euston was running fairly OK until they knew it was going to overrun, I assume because that was the way it was timetabled. After 14:00, I assume that they had to play around with the timetable more, because the schedualed Euston reversers were supposed to have been finished by then. At around 4pm, there was only a 20 - 30 minute shuttle running between Kennington and Euston, and the trains were absolutely rammed. It was taking a good 10 minutes to clear the crowds up the escalators at Euston.
After about 15:00, they did start to run some soouthbound trains from Edgware via Bank, so at least the southbound city branch had a reasonable service. What didn't help matters, however, was that many of the terminating trains at Euston were described as Edgware, so people triied to stay on, rather than fighting their way through the crowds to the northbound charing cross branch. Also, at Euston, I saw this on the dot matrix.

1. Morden 4 mins
2. Morden 3 mins
3. Morden 5 mins

Hmmmmmmm!

All in all, a chaotic day for the northern, reminded me of the good old misery line days!

One thing I did see was a Mornington Crescent reverser heading south, and my first glimpse of q 2009 stock on the Victoria line platform at Euston.

[Tubeboy]

Service resumed at approx 2100, the replacement buses were taken off at around 16/1700hrs. When I finished work at 2230, the next N/B at London Bridge was 25 minutes away.

A chat with my control room brethren, revealed a Westbound Jubbly was 2 minutes away [took it to Waterloo], and a Barnet was reversing via Kennington loop. Caught it with seconds to spare.

On friday, there was a broken stretcher bar on the offending points, which was removed by the station supervisor.

[superteacher]

I suppose the replacement buses had been extended for aa long as possible, before the drivers has to finish their shifts. They were advising Barnet branch passengers to take the 390 bus from Kings Cross to Archway, then the 263 onwards to East Finchley. Once the train service resumed, it was running Barnet - Kennington loops, and Edgware - Morden via Bank.

[apj64]

I took the family (wife and 3 kids 1 in a pushchair)to Camden Market yesterday afternoon. a big mistake.
We decided go in the afternoon via monument/bank after the engineering work should have finished.
On arrival at Monument there was no announcements or posters/whiteboards stateing that the Northern line was still disrupted.
We waited on the northbound platform for 15 minutes for a train again with no announcements until the train arrived on the platform.
My point is, Had there been some sort of information at Monument or even better still on board the District line we would have gone through to Embankment and used the Charring X branch, And no doubt many others would have as well alleviating some of the pressure on the Bank service and at Euston.
There was also alack of professionalism at Euston when changing platforms. The line panels for the High Barnet branch just covered with bits of paer with handwritten (in biro) instructions to use the replacement bus service. Surely proper printed cover ups can be produced in a relatively short time.
OK to balance the negatives abit, The train ops on the Northern line gave sterling service on the PA at every station doing their best to get everyone on board and announcing the difficulties.
Andy

[Colin]

apj64 said:

or even better still on board the District line we would have gone through to Embankment and used the Charring X branch,

Only trouble with that is the drivers rely on the line controller to pass that information on - unfortunately the poor passenger has no chance if their driver isn't being told anything

[Chris M]

could the station staff not write it on the service information board at Monument (and ideally Tower Hill as well)?

[Colin]

And there goes the proverbial hammer on the head of the nail - that's exactly what these boards are there for; however, despite the wording on these boards being changed (now stating "not to be used for safety critical messages"), station staff continue to use these boards only to advise that signal xxxxx has no green/red aspect etc.

With regard to something being put up at Monument, in fairness, there was already stuff up relating to the Victoria line closure on the westbound (rather ironically advising that customers should make use of the Northern line, northbound!!) - but a bit of thought and co-ordination could have seen something placed at Tower Hill westbound.

Ultimately though, if there is an event occurring which is unplanned, the line controller should be telling his train ops - and all too often that simply doesn't happen

[apj64]

colin said:

apj64 said:

or even better still on board the District line we would have gone through to Embankment and used the Charring X branch,

Only trouble with that is the drivers rely on the line controller to pass that information on - unfortunately the poor passenger has no chance if their driver isn't being told anything

Totally agree Colin and I should have thought abit more before I made that comment being an ex driver from the 90's.
You can only give out the information that you receive, So some things have not changed in nearly 10 years although the quality of On-train announcements is far higher now than it was then.
I personally never had a problem using the PA system as a driver and used it appropriatly " when i had the information available" ;D

Andy