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Post by GentlemanJim on Jul 15, 2014 13:12:09 GMT
Well it looks like ASLEF are going out but surely the issues effect RMT members as well? www.aslef.org.uk/information/115858/140781/central_line__ballot_for_industrial/There are always two sides to each story and ASLEF don't call people out for nowt. Having had the (dis)pleasure of meeting and having to deal with aggressive managers is not a pleasant experience. I found personally that most were/are working mostly to there own agenda, trying to make an impression on those in the Ivory Towers...... well guess what, you are not indispensable and while you might impress a few once your job is done it's bye bye. Bully boy tactics only create disharmony and resentment, grow up and sort yourselves out, act like adults sit down and sort the issues out failing that get an independent body in that both sides trust and let them sort it out. and I don't mean ACAS.
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Post by class345 on Jul 15, 2014 13:34:58 GMT
From my own experiences, there are some good managers that I get on with well, but unfortunately they get tarnished by the others who aren't as good at their job or friendly.
One of the issues I see is that you have managers who enjoy going on power trips with staff. Taking them into a room, no union rep and making threats to put them on poor performance measures if they don't give names of people who aren't pulling their weight, go early, etc.
I find I have managers at work who now go out of their way to avoid me, because they have tried "bully boy" tactics in the past, even brought my partner into it at one point, making allegations he had no proof of whatsoever. For example, saying the person I was working with on a shift had made a complaint about something is done when I was on my own for that particular shift due to sickness!
The "making a new procedure for the sake of it to make me look useful" is also one of the normal routines by management on my line.
The people I feel sorry for are the members of staff who give these people everything they want on the promise of promotions etc that they have no intention of carrying through with.
I'm at the point now where I won't be in an office alone with a manager unless there is a witness present or the conversation is being recorded.
Of course all above views are my own, if anyone from my company is reading this then I have evidence of all the above!
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Ben
Box Boy
Posts: 65
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Post by Ben on Jul 16, 2014 21:57:10 GMT
Are staff allowed to audio-record their dealings with management?
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Post by GentlemanJim on Jul 17, 2014 12:22:25 GMT
Are staff allowed to audio-record their dealings with management? I would hazard a guess and say 99% of phones are recorded as a matter of course. I know all Control Rooms are on tape and would assume all major interchange stations would be, minor stations I don't know. When I worked in the Central Line SCC we used 30 hour tapes that were kept for 31 days then wiped and reused, this method was open to abuse and indeed I saw it happen first hand. If any incriminating evidence was on a tape it could easily be wiped clean, everything went over to digital recording with no access by staff to erase conversations.
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Post by railtechnician on Jul 17, 2014 18:55:22 GMT
Are staff allowed to audio-record their dealings with management? I would hazard a guess and say 99% of phones are recorded as a matter of course. I know all Control Rooms are on tape and would assume all major interchange stations would be, minor stations I don't know. When I worked in the Central Line SCC we used 30 hour tapes that were kept for 31 days then wiped and reused, this method was open to abuse and indeed I saw it happen first hand. If any incriminating evidence was on a tape it could easily be wiped clean, everything went over to digital recording with no access by staff to erase conversations. It is not just phones that are recorded! Operating staff were known to be monitored when in station ops rooms. This was achieved over the always live Mic on the PA console. I discovered it by chance after several calls to resolve station PA faults and found the Mics disconnected and replaced by person or persons unknown. Unplugging the Mic and then reconnecting it left a PG (permanent glow) alarm on the appropriate card at the PA rack and on the console which could only be cleared by the radio lineman or CET. Of course the 'live room' concept was initiated operationally with the opening of the new Bakerloo control room in the late 1980s with microphones embedded in the ceiling. A similar technique is used at all stations in designated locations of which I will say no more. When the station PA systems were installed from the 1980s onward platform microphones were installed which the line controllers originally could select, later the facility was transferred to the info assistant. Thus train staff standing at say Baker Street platform 5 headwall awaiting a pickup could be heard quite clearly in the control room, ISTR there always used to be a clutch of three or four staff having a chat there for several minutes at such times! All control room comms audio has been recorded for decades now, autos, direct lines, tunnel telephones, train radio, etc, this being primarily for the preservation of audio evidence such that the full picture of any incident can be created when required to corroborate the testimony of those involved and independent witnesses. Any and all telephones at stations which are designated as 'strategic' are generally monitored and recorded, this may include platform autos but could be every phone on the station. AFAIK all section 12 stations have digital recording equipment these days, the monitoring also includes the audio from all the passenger help points. Of course CCTV is now very well established and video is also recorded, there are also covert surveillance facilities installed from time to time as part of specific initiatives, these can occur anywhere, e.g. during survey work in the 1990s I came across cleverly hidden cameras and microphones located in cable bracket runs at a site on the H&C and at certain locations on the south end of the Northern line in the late 1980s one initiative to mitigate vandalism involved the fitting of covert cameras inside platform PA loudspeakers. As for abuse of surveillance, I was in the Engineering Works Control office at South Kensington one night some 20 years ago when one of the EW controllers was having a ding dong row over the phone with, IIRC, a Central line Controller regarding running an additional train and holding the traction. It was heated and took place in front of a dozen of us and our Track Access Refresher Instructors as well as the manager in charge of the office and all the line clear and line safe EW controllers. Despite all the witnesses this incident never occurred!
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Post by class345 on Jul 18, 2014 12:04:27 GMT
Are staff allowed to audio-record their dealings with management? If I get pulled into an office for something, I tell the manager I am going to record the conversation for future reference, if they object then I will not have the meeting alone and will want a witness, normally a union rep. If someone is doing their job properly they won't have a problem, if they are going on a power trip and bullying staff then they do.
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Ben
Box Boy
Posts: 65
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Post by Ben on Jul 23, 2014 18:58:42 GMT
Thanks for the replies. Makes sense to record everything. If thats the way that officialdom want it to be then the worker should be able to match such methods for the mutual good of him and the company.
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Post by railtechnician on Jul 25, 2014 7:44:31 GMT
Thanks for the replies. Makes sense to record everything. If thats the way that officialdom want it to be then the worker should be able to match such methods for the mutual good of him and the company. Ben, LT was always happy to advertise what was behind the scenes. When I began my career depots were wide open places that almost anyone could wander through. When we worked on stations there was no booking in with station supervisors and the only place we wore hi-vi vests was on the track in traffic hours, seldom on stations and never anywhere on the system on night shift unless we would be working into the next day's traffic hours in which case we had to have them in our pocket or tool bag. The LT canteens often served city dustmen and other non-LT night workers, City of London police and vagrants often had a warm seat and a cuppa for a couple of hours too. The Earl's Court canteen used to serve the Corps of Commissionaires who were on the doors of the exhibition centre etc. Things began to change in the 1980s when hi-vi vests became compulsory wear for engineering staff even if wearing hi-vi protective clothing and suddenly we all had to book in at all premises, there were also visitors books placed in every equipment room that we were bound under disciplinary rules to complete every time we entered any such room giving details of the work undertaken. It was also when the first audio surveillance outside the LT police info room was installed, all line controller and regulator/signalman (before they all became signal operators and AFAIR before there were any women in the grades) telephone and train radio being recorded on multitrack tape recorders much as already in use in the LT police info room. The first cameras on the system were installed when the Victoria line was built in the early 1960s, in those days the typical layout was head and tail wall cameras per platform and one camera in the ticket hall for a two platform station, Seven Sisters had seven cameras. The system used a single composite (co-axial for the video and muticores for control) cable to carry a single 4MHz video channel to the control room, the local CCTV matrices having 8 inputs and 5 outputs. I recall being told that the very first camera was a trial installation at Holborn station in 1964. In the early 1980s we began putting cameras on the big interchange stations, my first CCTV job as a chargehand was installing all the cameras on platforms 1-6 at Baker Street, but I also worked on the Tottenham Court Road installation routing the video and control lines back to Baker Street, while colleagues were doing the installations at Waterloo and Piccadilly Circus. These installations could have a maximum of 20 cameras, 6 local monitor outputs and 4 longline outputs and were cabled back to the relevant control rooms each via a single TR116 coaxial cable. In practice only two channels were routed to the control room, the other two being reserved for future use. In the interim stage 1 Jubilee had, had cameras installed using the same longline technology and cabling but having matrices allowing 12 cameras and 8 outputs of which a maximum 5 were local monitors and 2 of the remaining three were routed to the control room. Through the 1980s CCTV was installed at stations during various modernisation programmes, a 20 input 10 output matrix becoming standard and by the end of the decade we began providing police access to all cameras on all stations. My end of that was to install a brand new longline CCTV system from Heathrow T123 & 4 all the way back to Earls Court with a link to 55, Broadway new police info room, along the way I upgraded all the switching equipment at Heathrow T123, Hatton Cross and Hounslow West which had originally been installed when the Heathrow extension was built and provided the additional equipment necessary for BT police to select an output from any camera at those sites. In the 1990s new CCTV technology was being installed apace by external contractors and included new features being integrated with passenger help points (PHPs) and in theory at least no limit to the amount of cameras placed on any one site. By then the line controllers were no longer having to watch the CCTV as the grade of Info Assistant had been created, although it was not long before they were demanding to be called assistant controller and by the time the new Bakerloo Control room happened at the end of the 1980s one man could wear many hats, sometimes more than one simultaneously. As I mentioned PHPs some may recall there was similar technology installed on the Victoria line as built, those units, however, were known as PIPs (passenger information points - the vast majority of which I had the job of removing along with all the local site control relays right at the end of the 1980s). There were also the PAPs (passenger assistance points) which were the red units with emergency pull handles installed by my colleagues at the east end of the Central line and one very large installation at Oxford Circus station where the CCTV cameras were also linked to automatically zoom in on anyone using a PAP. The south end of the Northern line received more specialist treatment in an effort to combat local violence and vandalism with the introduction of highly visible focal points (FPs) located in ticket halls and closely monitored safe zones on unstaffed platforms where passengers could be observed and communicated with if need be. As I have mentioned in another thread at some of these sites hidden cameras were also installed. All the above is old hat nowadays, at least 25 years out of date and there is a lot of new technology around which I have no doubt whatever that LUL is using. However, it is very very sensitive to being observed itself, it doesn't like customers (I prefer passengers but customers I think is apt in this case) taking photos of cameras on stations but if it has nothing to hide what has it got to worry about? Terrorism? Vandalism? In all honesty IMHO banning someone from taking a snapshot of a camera makes no difference whatsoever, AFAIK there is no rule banning staring although I suspect loitering would be deemed to be suspicious in places other than on platforms, I have no doubt whatever that terrorists and vandals with good memory are not rare resources!
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Post by hellocontrol on Jul 25, 2014 17:57:15 GMT
I can remember when the Bakerloo control room opened before the ceiling mikes were in place certain people would leave the phone handset on so as to record the conversation we soon got to know who did it and would start talking about things we should not have.
I also can remember sorting out secret cameras for catching people out I won't say where as we caught a load of people doing things that they should not have, a very underhanded management practice.
I remember when the phones were engaged after the upgrade that if you dailled 64R you could listen in on people's conversations only trouble was every so often there was a giveaway noise.
Now with CCTV all people did was get the tape as it was and put it in the eraser to wipe clean I have seen so many things leave a station and then the tapes were cleaned.
I suspect it is a lot worse now and would treat every conversation as well as emails as intercepted it's worse than having MI5 on the case.
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Post by railtechnician on Jul 25, 2014 19:25:38 GMT
I can remember when the Bakerloo control room opened before the ceiling mikes were in place certain people would leave the phone handset on so as to record the conversation we soon got to know who did it and would start talking about things we should not have. I also can remember sorting out secret cameras for catching people out I won't say where as we caught a load of people doing things that they should not have, a very underhanded management practice. I remember when the phones were engaged after the upgrade that if you dailled 64R you could listen in on people's conversations only trouble was every so often there was a giveaway noise. Now with CCTV all people did was get the tape as it was and put it in the eraser to wipe clean I have seen so many things leave a station and then the tapes were cleaned. I suspect it is a lot worse now and would treat every conversation as well as emails as intercepted it's worse than having MI5 on the case. All sorts of things happened in the early days of surveillance technology. However, at that time in the very early 1980s the usage of the technology was in an embryonic stage and stayed that way for several years. Often when various linemen when to deal with faults on controllers desk comms equipment they were unaware of the installation of surveillance audio pairs, which were known only to those installing them, and would sometimes disconnect them (an old practice - if one didn't know what it was and it wasn't on the drawings, if there were any drawings, cut it down and wait to see who screams!) and on the operating side I'm not sure if controllers were aware they were being recorded then but divisional management certainly was. It took a few years for procedures to be updated i.e. for calls between controllers and signalmen in the same room to have to be made over the direct line between desks rather than shouting at one another after the glass screens were taken down which is certainly how I recall Earls Court control room when I first worked in it circa 1979. With changes in operational organisation and better technology available control room upgrades came with more surveillance and then the idea spread to station ops rooms. As for controllers priority cut in on telephone lines that was a long standing feature of the old Strowger telephone system pretty much the same as done on public exchanges in those days where an additional selector on each final selector switch shelf could double switch (the technical term for a fault enabling overhearing in electro-mechanical telephone systems) into a connected line, an operator facility known as trunk offering (TKO). Busy lines would put an earth on the 'private' wire to prevent double switching but a TKO selector simply looked for the required line and didn't test for busy condition at all. I'm not sure of the exact details in the old LT exchanges but the principle was exactly the same and IIRC back then the controller dialled 6 + the number he wanted to intercept. In the 1980s CCTV didn't seem to be taken too seriously either, not that surprising as some of the earliest cameras gave rather poor resolution black & white images and that didn't really change until BT Police were given CCTV access to every single camera on every single station and demanded colour images, they were very unhappy with black and white as the cost of the access facilities and necessary conversion and installation works across the combine had come from its budget. One of my bigger jobs following dealing with the aftermath of the Kings Cross fire and installing its then new ops room was to install the temporary ticket hall 'X' ops room at Liverpool Street during the Broadgate development. That was the first job that I installed colour cameras on, little Panasonics powered over the video cables, unlike the early JVC cameras I had installed at Baker Street several years earlier which required a mains cable and local 240volt supply, a beam switching cable and video cable both run to the station matrix. IMO it was the installation of Panasonic and similar line powered colour cameras on station upgrades in the wake of the report into the Kings Cross fire that was the real beginning of Underground CCTV video surveillance and the technology has been improving ever since, these days they could hide dozens of cameras which would never be seen by the keenest observer and of course many of the new cameras also see in infra red night vision very well too. I don't know if BTP officers are wearing bodycams yet but that will surely come and I wouldn't be surprised if LU managers uniforms are produced with built in 'button hole' cameras and microphones to record in close up video and audio in any incident. Email was monitored from the very beginning of the LU Intranet, other types of surveillance included remote monitoring of lifts and escalators. I ran dozens of lines for that in the late 1980s and modems were installed in all the UMCs in the central area to send data back to the L&E report centre. Of course there are also the various fire detection systems, I learnt about most of them through doing station survey works and having fire protection contractors in my survey team but the one I knew nothing about until I set it off at Hampstead station was the infra red smoke detector at the bottom lift landing. I raised the step ladder to get a closer look at a cable route just outside the lifts and gave the station supervisor a bit of a moment. While attending incidents as a call lineman I did encounter various other systems but I would not discuss those here except to say that after diagnosing a fault on one such system and then repairing it, hitherto having no knowledge of it, or how it worked it was touch and go whether I'd get my collar felt while convincing NCC as it was then that I was the call lineman and had been despatched there! As it happened I got a pat on the back and a written commendation for working outside my remit when the official maintainers had failed to attend, to this day that remains with several others attached to my CV, something to remind me of my past endeavours when the job was so much more to me than a job.
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Post by hellocontrol on Jul 26, 2014 17:40:51 GMT
I seem to remember that Connect has a load of surveillance output like if the set is switched off it can be remotely turned on with authority but I bet they would try it if there was a good reason.
I remember someone I worked with who had games on the account they said to me that they had been removed I asked what was the name of the folder Games was the reply I told them to put under a different name and with other stuff in there well it worked for me for over 10 years as I kept changing it at intervals and all because IT people having access to your account without you giving it.
Liverpool Street I remember it well I suspect it may have been you but when they put the alarms in for the Dockland railway I was given the numbers which were used to test the alarms (for all locations) If there was someone on who had upset me I rang the number and the next time I came in ha ha.
The NOC as it was had lots of feeds to do with a lot of things that some were not aware there was the obvious for duress alarms and the like but there were others I suspect the new control is even more, what you mention can you say the location without it giving anything away?
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Post by GentlemanJim on Jul 26, 2014 18:48:10 GMT
I seem to remember that Connect has a load of surveillance output like if the set is switched off it can be remotely turned on with authority but I bet they would try it if there was a good reason. I remember someone I worked with who had games on the account they said to me that they had been removed I asked what was the name of the folder Games was the reply I told them to put under a different name and with other stuff in there well it worked for me for over 10 years as I kept changing it at intervals and all because IT people having access to your account without you giving it. Liverpool Street I remember it well I suspect it may have been you but when they put the alarms in for the Dockland railway I was given the numbers which were used to test the alarms (for all locations) If there was someone on who had upset me I rang the number and the next time I came in ha ha. The NOC as it was had lots of feeds to do with a lot of things that some were not aware there was the obvious for duress alarms and the like but there were others I suspect the new control is even more, what you mention can you say the location without it giving anything away? NOC were a pain in the backside at times, no, most of the time. As far as I was concerned they had far too much information at hand and would get involved with minor issues, sometimes creating a bigger issue as they 'new best'..... not. In the Central Line SCC if the juice went off, overload etc. a Blue line would show on the section affected on the line overview, quick as a flash NOC would be on the phone 'traction current discharged in XYZ section' they'd ask 'no, we just like the pretty Blue line on the overview' ha ha...... half the time we hadn't the chance to find out why before they tried to get involved. Sometimes to much information is not the best policy especially if those receiving it haven't got a clue what it means, guess work prevailed and they became a nuisance. Probably even worse now!
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Post by railtechnician on Jul 26, 2014 19:32:58 GMT
I seem to remember that Connect has a load of surveillance output like if the set is switched off it can be remotely turned on with authority but I bet they would try it if there was a good reason. I remember someone I worked with who had games on the account they said to me that they had been removed I asked what was the name of the folder Games was the reply I told them to put under a different name and with other stuff in there well it worked for me for over 10 years as I kept changing it at intervals and all because IT people having access to your account without you giving it. Liverpool Street I remember it well I suspect it may have been you but when they put the alarms in for the Dockland railway I was given the numbers which were used to test the alarms (for all locations) If there was someone on who had upset me I rang the number and the next time I came in ha ha. The NOC as it was had lots of feeds to do with a lot of things that some were not aware there was the obvious for duress alarms and the like but there were others I suspect the new control is even more, what you mention can you say the location without it giving anything away? DLR - not me! I might have had a six month secondment there as a supervisor running the cables on the Beckton extension, however, my supervisor was picked and while he was away I did his job. Apart from a day out with the signal supervisors, all former colleagues of mine from more than a decade earlier, to take a walk around Gallions Reach installation depot, Poplar control centre and canteen and then go to the pub for a few jars (it was still allowed at the time) the nearest I ever got to DLR was enabling works at Monument station such as diverting PA SAPs and cabling. In fact that day was the first time I ever boarded a DLR train, the second was when the massive pro-hunting demo march was on. My friends being from the hunting fraternity came down from Lincs by coach and I met them at Westminster, their coach was parked out in a ginormous coach park near Beckton and at the end of the day I travelled with them to see them safely back to their coach. I 've never travelled on DLR since! I was in at the very beginning of the NCC and MICC running cables in the floor trunking, then I was off doing other works before returning a few months later to install the BBMS equipment (desk mics on the four desks and the amplifier with chime unit in one of the 19" cubicle racks in the room. I also designed, built and installed the TED monitoring equipment, the panel installed to the left of the main display screen, the control rack installed upstairs in the BT Police CER where I also installed a radio sync clock. There was so much metal including the window frames up there that it was a struggle getting a decent radio signal. I also shifted the BTP satellite dish from near the very top of the building down to the roof of WOS. For the BBMS I also had to install a distribution amplifier at Leicester Square. I did a lot of rejumpering work in the basement switchroom at 55 Bdy to reroute all the TED lines from the old HQ info room to the NCC. AFAIK NCC was renamed NOC sometime after I retired, IMO a pointless renaming with the popular translation of the renamed abbreviation being only slightly less obnoxious than that of the original. AFAIK all other installation work at NCC was done by external contractors who provided the two 19" cubicles in the room, all the telephone equipment and cabling, CCTV, remote monitoring etc. I was of course present on the night the NCC took over from HQ info room as I had to commission the TED and BBMS. The NCC did have various alarms, the ones I was aware of were access alarms for secure rooms until I got that call to aid a station supervisor who wanted to lock up and go home but couldn't set the alarm. That was when I discovered duress alarms, I have no idea who did those installations and I assume they were installed when all the ticket offices were converted to UTS ticket offices. I did a lot of UTS ticket office installations but that was BBMS, clocks, telephones and standby data lines. Sometimes we installed the Hectaphones back in the day but not on the UTS upgrades, Westinghouse Cubic (renamed since to Cubic Transportation Systems) did most of the work as it was all kit connected back to the PDP11 station computer via the main data network which it also installed but I really have no idea who installed duress alarms. In my time I installed various alarms in places but it wasn't day to day work, for instance I installed fire alarms in the RTC way back in 1980 and around the same time also in substation offices, I can also recall installing the Baker Street canteen burglar alarm not long after transferring to the telephone section from signals in 1979. Our most common alarm installation was the big red Yodalarm in ticket collector boxes before the boxes came with alarm built in. I can also recall installing water level alarms in the running SM office at Morden and elsewhere circa 1980/1. Back in the day so many alarms were local but I suspect that with ever greater centralisation myriad alarms have been concentrated to ever fewer monitoring points and of course with heightened security there are many more alarms these days so I'm inclined to agree that the new control caters for much more.
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Post by hellocontrol on Jul 27, 2014 7:14:44 GMT
Railtec I did not mean DLR as such but the alarms that were fitted at various stations flashing lights and the automated message and there was a few signals on the Central that went back to danger all to do with the construction of the Bank extension.
I have had dealings with most of those alarms that you mention. I had a call to go and check Kilburn Park substation exterior as the power control room had the alarm to say the door was open all it turned out to be was someone out of their head on drugs banging and kicking the door.
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Post by railtechnician on Jul 27, 2014 8:29:02 GMT
Railtec I did not mean DLR as such but the alarms that were fitted at various stations flashing lights and the automated message and there was a few signals on the Central that went back to danger all to do with the construction of the Bank extension. I have had dealings with most of those alarms that you mention. I had a call to go and check Kilburn Park substation exterior as the power control room had the alarm to say the door was open all it turned out to be was someone out of their head on drugs banging and kicking the door. Well HC you have the advantage of me there, I had not realised you were referring to the construction phase! I know about the disturbence alarms at Bank/Monument but I simply wasn't thinking about them being indicated elsewhere although it is simply commonsense to want to prevent trains running into danger! When tunnelling to Bank there was a concern that disturbance below Monument station would break its back so the station was vertically cut in half such that each half was allowed a certain amount of tilt. In the deep level existing running tunnels lasers checked the alignment of tunnel segment targets to monitor any movement and similarly other areas on the stations were monitored. Flashing blue lamps and 100dB Bedlam sounders were fitted throughout the danger area to indicate a dangerous situation as a result of ground movement. To the best of my recollection the Civil engineers did not detect any dangerous movement during the works and IIRC this was the first time that such a method of cutting the station vertically in half had been used on the Underground. So much of the enabling work at Monument was required in order to use that method, i.e. cable diversions and equipment relocation. All the disturbance alarms were withdrawn from the Bank/Monument complex and running tunnels at the completion of the works and were hidden away somewhere for several years. Some years later after I transferred to the Picc and was trying to obtain spare parts to keep the station to station phones going, one donation from another department included a bag full of the flashing blue lights and sounders that I had seen in the tunnels when doing the cable diversions at Bank. Colleagues did most of the comms work at the complex and my involvement was minimal being called in to assist when deadlines were getting tight. Somewhere I think I have a couple of pictures from one of my shifts there. Ah yes Kilburn Park substation! There might well have been an explosion there, my first time doing T/T routine maintenance at that site I noticed the rechargeable 24 volt batteries were oscillating, its the only time I have ever witnessed visible movement in a battery case anywhere, these batteries each being about half as big again as an average car battery. When I checked the wiring the battery charger circuit had been incorrectly wired to a 33 1/3 Hz transformer instead of a 50Hz supply and the batteries were charging themselves to destruction. I got my guv to sort that one out PDQ. Substation alarms went to the appropriate Electrical Control Room Operator and there was additional security for the substations with grid intake and the 22kV ring. As I spent lots of time in subs and used to chat to the ECROs often regarding T/T trips and other failures I was fairly well known, indeed one of the ECROs used to be a wireman in one of my gangs when I was a young chargehand and left me to train as a substation tester way back in 1981. I spent 25 years in and out of substations all over the combine although not that many on the Central, mainly Liverpool Street, Bethnal Green, Old Oak Common, Park Royal, Wood Lane but I did also walk all the cable routes from running tunnels to the eastern extension subs. Interestingly I have only recently discovered that the Power Cointrol Room is at Blackfriars from a newspaper article so I presume that Leicester Square is just another sub now. Back in 1980 I built and installed the Central SPARCS telephone panel there and in 1981 did all the comms work for the new shift supply engineers desks including building CER No2 on the cable flat which later became home to all the ECRO comms equipment. The last time I was there both the CERs had been designated secure rooms with alarmed doors. Once upon a time one could walk in and out of Leicester Square sub front door all day long as the Electrical Drawing Office was directly opposite and managers and staff used to lunch in the canteen there and I was a keyholder there for a year using the back entrance as a more direct route to my location. A colleague's father was the substation superintendent at the time, the good old days when LT was a very friendly family oriented environment pretty much throughout as I recall.
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