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Post by Nortube on Jun 24, 2014 16:53:05 GMT
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Post by hellocontrol on Jun 24, 2014 17:25:37 GMT
Nortube thanks for posting as much as I tried I could not get it lower.
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Post by hellocontrol on Jun 24, 2014 17:26:40 GMT
If you read the page you will notice one of our members is named and also a photo when he was a bit younger.
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Post by GentlemanJim on Jun 24, 2014 22:39:01 GMT
If you read the page you will notice one of our members is named and also a photo when he was a bit younger. And slimmer
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Post by Nortube on Jun 25, 2014 13:46:33 GMT
Nortube thanks for posting as much as I tried I could not get it lower. I used smallpdf: [ Click here ]It reduces files online (so nothing to install) and can create PDFs. I don't know if it keeps a copy of the file or does anything with the data, so I wouldn't trust it with anything personal
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Post by hellocontrol on Jun 26, 2014 7:18:57 GMT
Nortube thanks for posting as much as I tried I could not get it lower. I used smallpdf: [ Click here ]It reduces files online (so nothing to install) and can create PDFs. I don't know if it keeps a copy of the file or does anything with the data, so I wouldn't trust it with anything personal Nortube thanks for that and like you say only for certain things nothing personal.
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Post by deansullivan on Jun 27, 2014 8:31:08 GMT
Nortube - thanks for posting the article.
When I was a DSM on the Northern, Bull & Bush was on my patch. For some reason it was deemed a Station asset and therefore our responsibility. So it was decided by line management we had to check it every week (post KX Fire) and record the details in a book kept at Golders Green.
As a result, on my Sundays I would wander up to the 'Station' clamber down the half spiral staircase to the place where the platforms would have been to inspect the walkway side of the premises. There are of course no platforms, so my inspections were confined to the lower lift levels, and smaller rooms built in WW2.
I was often alone when I undertook my visits. Although the risk is minimal - I would not advise doing it on your own, as if you trip or fall - rescue might be along time coming.
It is eerie in there - so I did get spooked once or twice in there, buts thats all in the mind!!
Oh and yes I am twice the man now - thanks in a large part to the Cafe! Where have those years gone.
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Post by railtechnician on Jun 28, 2014 4:41:11 GMT
It's many a year since I last saw the Bull & Bush from the tunnel, walking past there pushing a trolley with 500 or 1000 metres of 2 core 1/064 lead covered cable every night from Chalk Farm to Golders Green tunnel mouth during the resignalling works in 1977/8. In those days as 25 year old young wireman in my first year of LT service it was customary for new recruits to be given the dirtiest, worst and most labour intensive manual jobs. Beginning my trade predominantly on the Northern was a good intro as, apart from the Bakerloo in the Baker Street to St. John's Wood section (prior to becoming the Jubilee), it was the filthiest line I'd worked on and a good example of what the next 25 years+ might be like! Central line enabling works at Tottenham Court Road station circa 1990 was the only place I can recall thereafter that was filthier! Back in the 1970s the tracks between Chalk Farm Golders Green were quite treacherous with lots of voids between sleepers and many trip hazards so I quickly developed the habit of walking the neggi when pushing a loaded trolley uphill, all that could thwart a smooth forward transition was a gap in the juice rail. I soon found that it was quite easy to 'drop off' while pushing only to be jolted back into reality when the juice rail disappeared and I dropped to ballast level. A potentially hazardous situation especially with two 500 metre drums of cable, A frame or drum jacks and bar on board the loose 1" plyboard topped trolley with no brakes. Back then it was rare indeed to find a trolley with brakes or more precisely a trolley with a brake and that worked. There were no quick release 'brake on' mechanisms then, any working brake on a trolley was a screw down type. Sometimes we'd "have a blow" at the Bull & Bush for a few minutes and if I was lucky a colleague might volunteer to push the trolley the last stint to Golders. One reward in those days for running all the cable out at/from Golders Green was being able to ride the trolley all the way back to Chalk Farm at considerable speed with only our boots for brakes, usually including the chargehand and lead man there'd be six of us on board, the three at the rear ready to 'stamp' the runners and neggi when we neaded to slow or stop as happened one morning when our Inspector stepped out of a bolthole waving his torch at us from about 150 yards ahead and shouting 'stop that trolley'. We managed to do it stopping a couple of metres short of the 'guv' who had remained in the four foot throughout. He simply said to the chargehand, "make sure you keep that trolley under control" and never had occasion to challenge us again. Later in the project I found myself wiring up the new locations and preparing wiring in the relay cases at the Bull & Bush headwall. My own supervisor and chargehand were elsewhere and myself and a colleague were working for a different supervisor for a few nights. The supervisor was with us at the Bull & Bush and as usual he 'cleared' with the P-Way walker giving the usual off track time as was the habit under the old 'line clear' rules of the day. Given the 'hurry up' by the 'guv' we subsequently finished up and walked back to Chalk Farm after tidying up, arriving to see the mess man filling the buckets lined up along the platform with hot water for washing. Just then the supervisor began querying whether all the relay cases had been closed and 'buttoned up' at the Bull & Bush and he insisted we return there and check, my colleague refused as it was already the wrong side of 0430 and he figured there was not enough time to get there and back before juice on. I was sure that all was closed up but the supervisor was worried about his derriere and so the two of us returned even though we had no protection. It was the fastest I ever walked to Bull & Bush and back again and of course we had found nothing undone there, all was closed and bolted as it should have been. I never found Bull & Bush eerie but then I only saw it from trackside. Years later when in the comms section a couple of my colleagues went there via the street entrance to divert a cable and used the lift which was apparently reported as being intermittent and therefore unsafe. The lift was not an issue for them but on one occasion they found there was no working lighting and on another occasion the autophone was not working. I used to spend lots of time working quite happily alone at Down Street so I understand what people find eerie but in all my years on the system I found the most eerie places were parts of tunnels where ventilation fans could be heard running, under the Thames where boats could be heard moving and where Mail Rail ran nearby. I have no doubt at all that others shared that especially when I was diverting cables in the bowels of Tottenham Court Road at night and used to turn the vent fan on and off to work in some of the NPA spaces around the disused lift shafts to prevent the spread of dust!
Happy days indeed despite all that would be regarded as privations these days!
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Post by deansullivan on Jun 28, 2014 9:43:16 GMT
Railtec, I was warned off that lift. When I used to go in there - it did apparently work. But as I was alone I did not fancy getting stuck in it. It was very tiny and claustrophobic, and I don't think we would have known how to rescue someone from it, as it was nothing like our passenger lifts. And the stairs did me a power of good...
As you say the tunnel fans are a bit scary. For those who have never seen one close up, some resemble small jet engines. I had one at Notting Hill Gate and a smaller one at Shepherds Bush. Both had to be shut down before you could enter the vent shaft.
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Post by dave1 on Jun 28, 2014 10:20:02 GMT
Reading the article there are a few things that I thought that were not done until the 1950s. Which rooms were done for WW2 and which ones were 1950s?
I went to a talk at the LT Museum many years ago where it was said that there was a communications centre located at track level or thereabouts?
I have used very small lifts in buildings I have worked and they always had some sort of phone in them although it may well have not worked when called upon, would there have been a phone in the lift at Bull & Bush?
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Post by deansullivan on Jun 28, 2014 11:42:06 GMT
Dave1 - not sure when it was done, so your right it might have been later (Cold War perhaps). It did have a room which was connected to the Flood gates around the system. Located at platform level but in a room built in between the two platform tunnels. Even in 1989 the lights on the panels still worked. There was also plethora of batteries in there too. It was accessed through a heavy metal door. Mostly the door was open - but on a few occasions it was locked. Unfortunately during the course of my visits I noticed some of the parts within the control room had started to go missing. Which I thought was rather disappointing given that it had survived all those years.
There was a toilet on the Northbound platform, plus various smaller rooms, which I assumed were for those using the control room. All of these were sooted with brake dust and dirt to make them particularity unpleasant places to visit. There was open access onto what was the Northbound platform. The platform floor on both sides is at track level.
Not having a camera at the time (Could you believe such a thing!), I took a couple of other LUL employees who did have a camera to photograph what remained. They photographed the control room and various bits & pieces. Not sure where those photos are these days.
Shortly after we invited the press in. We received some strongly worded advice from the LUL/LT Press Office instructing us not to do such a thing in future. Although it was a line initiative, it was not sanctioned at Broadway.
Despite all the mystery - there's not a great deal down there.
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Post by railtechnician on Jun 28, 2014 14:24:59 GMT
Railtec, I was warned off that lift. When I used to go in there - it did apparently work. But as I was alone I did not fancy getting stuck in it. It was very tiny and claustrophobic, and I don't think we would have known how to rescue someone from it, as it was nothing like our passenger lifts. And the stairs did me a power of good... As you say the tunnel fans are a bit scary. For those who have never seen one close up, some resemble small jet engines. I had one at Notting Hill Gate and a smaller one at Shepherds Bush. Both had to be shut down before you could enter the vent shaft. I imagine the lift at Bull & Bush to be similar to the one that once existed in the centre of the staircase at Down Street. The lift was long gone before I first worked there in 1979 but the unlocked access door at the top landing opened to the void which once boasted a car that would surely have been impossible to squeeze more than one adult into. Tottenham Court Road once had a dangerous unlit void at the top of a lift shaft in the late 1970s. We had a cable store in the capped area of one disused shaft and the other was uncapped and had no guard rails. When I worked there later in the late 1980s the geography had changed somewhat at top station and the dangerous shaft was no longer accessible there. Of course the station supervisor office was built in one disused shaft, the vent fan was in the adjacent disused shaft one level above the supervisors office and directly above the walkway from the bottom of the escalators. One had to go to the bottom of the shaft at Central line track level to find the vent fan control panel. Funnily enough the fan there reminded me of a food mixer although I'm sure I'm thinking 'mincer'. Oxford Circus is one of several other sites where I worked in potentially hazardous disused lift shafts over the years, in that case running cable from Western House to Oxford Circus House via two disused shafts in the current and disused stations on opposite sides of Argyll Street. Being trapped in a lift is no fun, been there and done that at Belsize Park in the wee small hours with two supervisors and a dozen colleagues for company. I believe we had overloaded the lift all getting in together, except the messman who was topside already, with our tools and other items. Fortunately our supervisors knew what to do and were able to shout instructions to the messman who conveniently happened to have access to the motor room. We had several incidents at that end of the Northern as I recall, we were pretty much all smokers back then and used to smoke in the tunnels while running cable, wiring up locations and also when dropping the old cables into balata straps disturbing all the dust. We used to unscrew a 60W tunnel light and plug in a cluster with a 150W and two 60W bulbs to give us better light to work by moving down the tunnel as we went, we also all had our Tilley oil lamps too and in all that light it was impossible to see tunnel dust burning until one moved on. One early morning not long after tea break (the messman used to bring the teapot and cups etc down the tunnel ion a relay crate around 0230-0245) as we moved everything on about 10 metres we saw the tunnel glowing red behind us, a discarded cigarette butt had got in the gap between a sleeper and the concrete and the tunnel dust was burning. Fortunately we were able to put it out with the dregs in the teapot and the old lineman's answer to smouldering but there I learnt two things that I have never forgotten, tunnel dust burns from the underneath and trying to stamp out burning tunnel dust is a bad idea as it spreads fire more quickly. It didn't stop me smoking but it made me more aware of the perils associated with carelessly discarded cigarette ends. It was 1995 before I gave up smoking and for no other reason than to save money!
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Post by railtechnician on Jun 28, 2014 15:09:37 GMT
Reading the article there are a few things that I thought that were not done until the 1950s. Which rooms were done for WW2 and which ones were 1950s? I went to a talk at the LT Museum many years ago where it was said that there was a communications centre located at track level or thereabouts? I have used very small lifts in buildings I have worked and they always had some sort of phone in them although it may well have not worked when called upon, would there have been a phone in the lift at Bull & Bush? The 'communications centre' was actually the Floodgate Control Centre with floodgate control cables running from there to all the WW2 (actually planned in 1936 and commissioned by 1939) floodgates and telephone and indication lines to floodgate telephones and signal cabins on the District, Piccadilly, Northern, Central and Bakerloo lines. The last floodgates were installed at Green Park in 1968 and the floodgate control room was still operational then. Sometime in the 1970s a flood control centre was located in the Kingsway disused tram tunnel which became officially defunct when the Thames Barrier was opened. This was not connected to LUL floodgates or dedicated Floodgate telephone lines but was definitely the flood warning centre for LUL at the time. AFAIR the Bull & Bush Flood Control Centre had not been used for years when I first became aware of it in 1979 and many of the cables and dedicated phones were lost in the station modifications of the 1980s. That said when I was involved in the most recent Old Street tunnel religning in the 1990s I had to divert and reinstate the Northern Bank Branch floodgate control cable at Old Street even though it was believed to be disconnected elsewhere! The last I heard about floodgates was that there were plans afoot to make them operational again, that was a couple of years ago. Many of the floodgates have been locked in normal position for 20 years or more for fear that if they somehow closed accidentally it would be impossible to open them again! Believe it or not floodgate circuitry remains in signal selections where LT conventional signalling remains, I can't help wondering what connection, if any, they have with TBTC on the Northern ! The last 'floodgate' related work that I did was to change a delta relay in the floodgate relay room at Green Park circa 2000.
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Post by deansullivan on Jun 28, 2014 15:35:13 GMT
RailTec - the lift at Oxford Circus House was quite small too.
Regarding the failure of passenger lifts in shafts - I found that there was a high incidence of lift failure when traction current was being charged / discharged. So from a station staffs point of view - don't trust them at close of traffic and especially don't travel in the lift if you are holding the station/machine room keys. Queensway lifts used to fail fairly frequently. Belsize Parks were not too bad. Hampstead's lift 5&6 which were about 80 years old were brilliant. But numbers 1-4 which were modern replacements for old lifts were less so. If a lift fails in the shaft at "last knockings" and you was alone on the station, it could become a mammoth task to get the passengers out, especially if they are trying to catch the last train. The first port of call would be to the machine room which houses the motors and electrical equipment. Sometimes the disturbances in the current supply would have caused a Circuit Breaker to pop out. If it was, you could reset it and get the lift underway. However most modern lift stations also had Motor Alternators which work on a similar principle to those on trains. They would act to smooth out variations in current supply and provide the different voltages needed to power the lift. I had one drop out at Queensway and try as I might I could not reset it. In the end I had to hand wind the passengers out of the shaft. This entails turning a large wheel in the machine room while a colleague holds down a lever which releases the brake. The car had failed near the bottom landing. It surprises people when you tell them that its easier to wind a lift up the shaft than downwards. This is because the car is counter-weighted. The Counter-weight being heaver than the car and a full load of passengers. Although your not told too, but you can release the brake and let gravity do most of the work. But you have to keep the lift under control otherwise it would overrun the top landing. We used towels to reduce the possibility of friction burns on our hands. Never owned up to doing it though!
Theres a mark on the cable and a similar one on the drum, so once both lined up - you knew the car was at the top landing.
The older ones at Aldwych & Hampstead (and Lancaster Gate in the early 80's) were so much easier to get going. If one failed, it was normally something quite simple. But if all else failed, you stood on a rubber mat, pressed a porcelain button marked "P" (for potential) which was attached to a live electrical contractor (running at 630v), and then pressed a similar button (also attached to a 630v contractor) marked either Up or Down for your intended direction of travel.
Fun stuff!
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Post by deansullivan on Jun 28, 2014 15:44:51 GMT
AFAIR the Bull & Bush Flood Control Centre had not been used for years when I first became aware of it in 1979 and many of the cables and dedicated phones were lost in the station modifications of the 1980s. When I visited the control room - it had a number of (I think 9v) batteries connected in series. They looked fairly well maintained, and I assumed they were providing a battery backup. There was also a telephone directory pasted to the wall, with lots of interesting numbers.
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