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Post by dave1 on Jun 28, 2014 17:42:21 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. Dean thanks most interesting how it could be a sanctuary in times of war and I like the bit about upsetting HQ. |
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Post by dave1 on Jun 28, 2014 17:44:05 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! Rail Tec Down Street was used by Churchill I wonder how he used the lift I would not have wanted to share it with him. |
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Post by dave1 on Jun 28, 2014 17:45:53 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. Rail Tec I suppose it was a bit of hype for the talk and he never mentioned the Floodgate control room, the person who gave the talk was Mike Ashworth. |
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Post by cstock on Jun 28, 2014 19:40:25 GMT
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. The unreliability of them had made the papers a few times, unsurprisingly all four were replaced last year. |
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Post by railtechnician on Jun 29, 2014 7:59:00 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! Dean I never used the lift in Oxford Circus House, I first worked there when the offices were being refurbished and were empty, thereafter I only went there once to repair the emergency train radio equipment which had been inadvertently damaged by a contractor when being relocated within the area of the emergency control desk. Generally I used the stairs especially on stations, Hampstead, Angel, Caledonian Road, Russell Square, Gloucester Road, Queensway are the ones I recall as being particularly taxing when carrying tools and equipment but it went with the job. Let's say that climbing the spiral staircases was far easier than negotiating many of the other shafts on the job such as Leicester Square, Baker Street, Bond Street and some of those on the eastern end of the Central or vent shafts like Manor House or Clapham Common when the fans were on. In many ways escalators were hard work too because of the height of the steps compared with those on the staircases and of course worse when climbing the escalator shafts themselves, the worst that I recall being escalator 123 shaft at Liverpool Street where it was dodgy running cables even with the escalators off and all the guards in place. Back in the day when most stations were unmanned at night Hampstead was said to be haunted and people were afraid to be there alone because lifts were reported as running up and down on their own and some reported hearing people on the lower landing. I spent a few nights there alone in the late 1970s and heard nothing but the usual clicks and bangs of contracting rails and noises associated with air movement. The Aldwych lifts were I believe 80 years old when I did my lift training in 1987, in fact my lift training was there and at Edgware Road Bakerloo and escalator training was done at King's Cross Picc and Vic escalators. That was when engineering staff were first allowed to operate and isolate lifts and escalators without an L&E safety man in attendance. I had an engineering level lift and escalator licence for four years by which time I was an installation supervisor and it was deemed that I no longer required the lift qualification. Thereafter escalator refresher training took place at Paddington college near Edgware Road station until I transferred to the Picc line engineering signal maintenance and the qualification was not renewed on the basis that if we access to chambers the station supervisor would accompany us as we were all 'working together' under line devolution! In fact the only time I needed to enter an escalator chamber on the Picc was when I was called out to get the vent fan restarted at Bounds Green. I had never seen such a glass enclosed motor controller before, I believe it was the original 1930s installation, but we got the fan going again with a little patience letting it run up before moving the control handle to the next notch. I never had to restart a lift or wind one, whenever I was operating them myself I never had any trouble, I guess that was just luck! I remember the Aldwych lifts and their open copper isolators and circuit breakers and recall being amazed at how flimsy they looked and the potential danger when it was my turn to isolate and then restore the 600vdc supply. I don't recall the rubber mat but I had my track boots on anyway! Perhaps my biggest involvement with LT lifts was with the lift telephones, you are probably aware that the system uses a 10 line electronic CB exchange located in the lift motor room. I expect the system is still the same Gustav A Ring's exchange which uses discrete transistor electronics on a single board located in a painted grey electrical enclosure. I installed the Tufnell Park system when the lifts were being installed in 1980/1 and also installed some parts of the Camden Town system soon after. |
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Post by railtechnician on Jun 29, 2014 8:25:56 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. If the batteries were made of wet cells there were probably strings of nominal 2v cells to make a 24v battery. There would probably have been two batteries, main and standby on a charge/discharge float system for the telephone panel / switchboard. Having never seen the room for myself I can only guess at what was in it but I am aware of the equipment at the other end of the circuits, indeed I recovered a floodgate phone at Liverpool Street as it was located in an end of platform relay room which was demolished to make way for escalators 789. I also recall the lines to Bull & Bush from the Baker Street substation switchboard which I first saw in 1980. The lines and the phones were magneto so I am guessing at a 24v switchboard at B&B because I suspect that it might also have had CB and auto lines too as most LT telephone panels and switchboards usually did. How I would have loved to have seen that telephone directory! |
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