Stratford depot

[kenp76]

Aslef and RMT had a meeting with management regarding stratford and north greenwich depots. Many questions were asked but management could not answer and requested another meeting so they could get more info . Apparently the grapevine is saying that north greenwich may now close and alot of the drivers are fuming.
Anybody know what is going to happen.Will it all end in

[Deleted]

I always thought that North Greenwich was a strange place to put a traincrew depot. Surely it is almost always better on a point-to-point line to put the drivers where the trains are?

[Colin]

Yes & no - you only need as many drivers as there are trains in the depot; during the middle of the day, when the the trains are out on the line, it doesn't matter where they're based.

A good example is Earls Court depot on the District line. It's the line's largest with 160+ drivers, but the depot only has 8 trains at Parsons Green & 5 at Triangle sidings (3 only am - 2 are H&C's).

Actually, Barking (District) is probably an even better example - 50(ish) drivers but only 1 train is stabled overnight there.

The knock on effect is really the nature of the duties worked - Earls Court & Barking crews have mainly 'middle' turns (could also be referred to as 'platform pick-ups'); whereas the line's two other depot's (Acton Town & Upminster) have mainly 'extreme' turns (very early & very late) - because each depot stables around 30 trains.

What really matters is getting the most use out of a driver - put their depot(s) in the right place and you'll get maximum driving time out of them

Incidentally, my understanding is that North Greenwich will remain - though obviously as a much smaller depot. Also Earls Court is rumoured to be losing a small number of drivers - so that some can be placed at a re-opened Parsons Green depot (much like the recent H&C moving some of their Edgware Road drivers back to a re-opened Hammersmith depot).

In essence every line and every depot is different - and what works on one, may not work elsewhere.

[Tubeboy]

NOG traincrew depot is closing?

Well Stratford is getting a new traincrew building, and the line's main depot is there, so makes sense.

I have heard several times that East London line drivers are getting priority for NOG when it closes shortly.

I thought LU wanted to split up the bigger depots [eg Barnet and Edgware reopening, and taking pressure off Golders Green] and have smaller ones.

So it might be the case that Wembley and Stratford will be the only depots?

[tubeprune]

The best place for a depot (for crews and trains) is at the end of the line. Why? Because:
1. Crew changes can take place in the turnround time. If you have intermediate places to change crews like Arnos Grove, Earls Court and Edgware Rd, you can delay the service further after a disruption. Look what happens to the Picc every time there's a problem. You waste time tipping out a train, getting someone to take it to the sidings or depot etc. If you have a place like Hammersmith Met. you can get rid of trains or, most times, leave it in the platform until a T/O is available.

2. If you have the train depots at the line ends, trains start up from the outer suburbs in the am and finish up there in the evening. That's the way the traffic flows so that's where you want them. Also, land is cheaper there and depots take a lot of land.

LU is stuck with depots where they are for historical reasons but their cost-saving policy of closing the smaller depots was misguided, as they are now finding out. If you have a big depot like GG, lots of trains have a relief there. This makes things difficult if any delays occur. Spreading out the depots to places like Barnet and Edgware is sensible and it saves travelling time. I think they will have to re-open Oakwood and Northfields.

[Colin]

I actually have to disagree with you tubeprune!!

Whilst it obviously makes sense to have drivers based at stabling points & depots, it is wrong to state that the end of a line is always the best place for crew changes. Now that I am based at an end of line depot, I can appreciate it's not always the best option operationally.

Some examples using Upminster (bear in mind, It's roughly a 3 hour rounder on the District):

• A spare driver is almost useless with less than 3 hours to go till the end of their duty - ok they can stable/bring one out of the depot, or perhaps run one up to Barking; but a spare at Upminster is nowhere near as useful as a spare at Earls Court.
  
  
• Again related to spares - driver books on late & misses his/her pick-up.........the train has now gone west (using a spare driver).........it'll be 3 hours until that train comes back. There's a slim chance of catching up the missed train using c2c (other lines don't even have that option), but you've now lost the spare for 3 hours and have a driver doing nothing for the same time period (Union agreements forbid stepping up duties).
  
  
• A late running train cannot be turned at Dagenham East if the crew relief is at Upminster - so the train continues to run late, possibly even out of sequence.........and that's no good when we rely on program machines that work best if trains turn up at wherever in the right order.
  
  
• Two rounders + a meal relief is 7 hours. That doesn't fit well with our contracted hours, and given the need to cover all parts of the line within the roster (Olympia - Hight Street Kensington shuttles, Tower Hill bay, etc, for example), we need to have flexibility in where we take meal reliefs and pick up the correct trains for each service in the timetable. If that means Earls Court is the point to pick up an Olympia train, then that's where the meal relief will be - and hence where a relieving driver needs to be.
  
  
• The only reason crew reliefs on the running line (Earls Court, Barking, Acton Town) don't always work is simply that some drivers don't bother to be in place in time. It can also be down to a late meal relief; the DMT may not not have a spare available to cover the pick up, or may have simply forgotten to cover it. If this were Upminster, and you have a late meal relief driver, you then have the same issues with a driver's second train now running late or a spare driver lost for 3 hours.

There are many good points to having a depot at the end of a line (defective trains can be changed over, put away, etc) - but it's certainly not the best option every time!

tubeboy said:

I have heard several times that East London line drivers are getting priority for NOG when it closes shortly.

That's not quite correct.

East London drivers have nominated, and will move to a depot of their choice when the the line closes. The nomination date will be place them somewhere on each depot's waiting list as if they had nominated in the normal way - so they will still show on waiting lists.

Once at their depot of choice, they will be on a separate roster and will only move onto the main depot roster once they come to the top of the waiting list. So in essence, yes they'll be at a depot of their choice pretty quickly, but on paper, they won't get any priority treatment.

[kenp76]

Apparently many of the east london drivers have nominted loughton and hainault as the depots of their choice. LU said they would allow this but have now made a u-turn as up to 40 drivers have nomiated those depots from the ELL.
NOG was supposed to act as a satellite depot and middle turns and spares were to operate from there.39 drivers were to be rostered there but that is now all up in the sky!!!
Colin is correct a date of nomination is set,with NOG 23 november 2006 anybody nominating after that date joins the list behind the ELL drivers on the list to be rostered.Until that time the ELL drivers will ghost the roster or stay in the pool drivers roster list.
The atmosphere at NOG is not good at the moment as the drivrs who live in Kent do not want to move to stratford.Let's see what happens.
Another issue is parking at stratford for drivers.It appears there will not be any.So the extreme shifts may have to park in SMD.