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Post by mrhappy on Nov 26, 2013 17:53:09 GMT
Hi, I am an oldie originally from the Central Line served at West Rusilip traincrew depot, then White city depot. Spent 18 months at Acton Town District before going to the Hot & Cold. Did a couple of years shunting in Hammersmith depot before ending up at Edgware road traincrew depot on the hot & cold. After 35 years, my driving days ended on the 7/7 bombing when the train I was driving was blown up at Edgware road. Then medically retired.
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Post by GentlemanJim on Nov 26, 2013 20:21:12 GMT
Hi, I am an oldie originally from the Central Line served at West Rusilip traincrew depot, then White city depot. Spent 18 months at Acton Town District before going to the Hot & Cold. Did a couple of years shunting in Hammersmith depot before ending up at Edgware road traincrew depot on the hot & cold. After 35 years, my driving days ended on the 7/7 bombing when the train I was driving was blown up at Edgware road. Then medically retired. Welcome to the Forum, looking forward to your input. We've only been going since April and promote the Forum as somewhere our members can be straightforward , honest and even controversial without interference from outside bodies or organisations. I'm sure you'll find us a friendly bunch. I've read your intro. and there's not much more that can be said except 'I hope your quality of life is as good as can be expected' GJ.
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Post by mrhappy on Nov 26, 2013 20:54:04 GMT
Thanks. Quality of life is better being medically retired. I am a moderator on several car forums and a police forum. Got into that when pushed into helping organize car shows. Last one was at the NEC Birmingham a couple of weeks ago. I am sure you are all a friendly bunch and look forward to reading posts.
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Post by railtechnician on Nov 27, 2013 3:45:19 GMT
Hi, I am an oldie originally from the Central Line served at West Rusilip traincrew depot, then White city depot. Spent 18 months at Acton Town District before going to the Hot & Cold. Did a couple of years shunting in Hammersmith depot before ending up at Edgware road traincrew depot on the hot & cold. After 35 years, my driving days ended on the 7/7 bombing when the train I was driving was blown up at Edgware road. Then medically retired. Welcome Mr Happy, I'll never forget 7/7 as my official retirement day was 8/7 although I had handed in all my keys and assets a week before then and red tape had delayed my retirement by a week. I spent just over 28 years in the job working on all lines in Comms, Signals and Training divisions and covering installation, maintenance and call duties as well as undertaking surveys and design work and working at all grades from labouring to management. I took early retirement on medical grounds but with a normal pension at age 52. The forum is pure nostalgia for me as I left London for the rural East Midlands as soon as I retired and will never see London or any of its transport again except on TV and online. I do still communicate occasionally with former colleagues but many have departed this world since I retired and others have taken advantage of the many changes over the last decade to move to pastures new while those that are left report that I wouldn't like the job these days and I know they're correct! There seems little left nowadays of the camaraderie that once existed right across the combine for anyone completing the probationary period and becoming a 'sticky'. Somehow the 'can do' work ethic that kept LT running for decades evaporated as LRT gave way to Corporate LU, the 'combine' is long gone and the railway quite simply "just ain't what it was".
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Post by mrhappy on Nov 27, 2013 14:43:54 GMT
Hi railtechnician, When I joined in 1972, the railway was run like the army. Yet everyone helped each other out. It was a case of do whatever we can to run the trains. There was a very bad shortage of staff then. I came into work one sunday to be told there was only two trains running on the whole of the central line and which one did I want. When I retired, you couldnt do anything if it was not within your duty. Before I joined, my mother had been working in the ticket sorting place at Harrow just before war broke out. She told me that the 'sticky' was your staff pass because it stayed with you wherever you went!
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Post by railtechnician on Nov 29, 2013 6:45:03 GMT
Hi railtechnician, When I joined in 1972, the railway was run like the army. Yet everyone helped each other out. It was a case of do whatever we can to run the trains. There was a very bad shortage of staff then. I came into work one sunday to be told there was only two trains running on the whole of the central line and which one did I want. When I retired, you couldnt do anything if it was not within your duty. Before I joined, my mother had been working in the ticket sorting place at Harrow just before war broke out. She told me that the 'sticky' was your staff pass because it stayed with you wherever you went! Hi, I joined in 1977 working out of Whitechapel New Works depot, Golders Green and Arnos Grove temporary New Works depots before transferring to Telephone New Works at Earls Court. From there I worked out of a temporary depot at Kennington before the depot was relocated to South Kensington. When I subsequently transferred to the Training division I worked at South Woodford New Works training school, Earls Court signal school and at my own Comms Training Centre at Wood Lane. In 1986 I was recalled to the 'tools' to commission the Central line long line PA system and then to take over maintenance of the Met longline PA system while commissioning infill sites installed by external contractors and then moved onto the District to do much the same for the Bromley-by-Bow to Upminster contractor installed sites. Thereafter I installed and commissioned the then new Picc line west end longline CCTV system between Heathrow and Earls Court. Along the way I worked pretty much at all sites on all lines doing telephone, PA, CCTV, station radio, train radio, sumps and pumps, data and other installation works before supervising a large part of the main communications cable network uplift of the late 1980s as the new telephone system expanded to fill the existing network to capacity. Much of my work involved the installation of operations rooms including the then new one at Kings Cross following the fire and as engineering began to be downsized in the run up to devolution in 1990 I found myself covering larger and larger portions of 'the sinking ship' as the management 'rearranged the deckchairs on the Titanic' so to speak. By then Signal and Comms New Works had been operating as the 'internal contractor' otherwise known as Signal & Electrical Engineering for a few years, South Kensington being the main S&E depot. Circa 1992 we moved to Signal House at Acton Works, where the remnants of Signals, Comms, Cables, Electrical installation and maintenance sections from all the depots (Whitechapel, Earls Court, South Kensington, Wembley Park and Baker Street/Finchley Road) were marshalled into a single internal organisation, Signal, Electrical & Communications, following masses of early retirements, VS and devolvement to lines. The outsourcing of all things engineering left us with little more than odd jobs and dirty jobs that we had always done but which the external contractors didn't want. Often we found ourselves tracing circuits across the combine in order to hand over the information to the contractor so that they could locate and correct faults. It was daft as we could have fixed the faults ourselves while tracing the routings but were forbidden to do so because the repair contract was outsourced! Many that hadn't already left LU, not being eligible for retirement or VS and not required by the devolved line maintenance organisations saw the 'greener grass' in the new signal and communications installation companies already staffed and/or run by former LU managers and decided to 'jump ship' leaving S,E & C having to hire agency staff to meet contractual commitments as the department continued to run down. In 1996 I jumped myself, onto Picc Line Engineering (the devolved line maintenance organisation) as the Comms maintenance Technical Officer working closely with my signal maintenance and electrical maintenance colleagues and very quickly retrained to become a Signals Technical Officer although I kept all my comms maintenance duties as well and also took on a training role to cross train my signal and electrical colleagues in communications maintenance. Of course Picc Line Engineering soon became part of InfraCo JNP and subsequently in 2003 we were 'sold' to Tube Lines under TUPE arrangements. Yes when I joined LT it was definitely run like the army, many of the old hands in the signal department had served in the Royal Navy in WW2 and some of those in the Telephone department had come from Royal Signals although others like me had come from PO Telephones originally or from the PO contractors, GEC, Plessey, STC. When I joined I took the job I was offered on Signals where they were looking for cable jointers, I had a three year PO apprenticeship under my belt and had spent three and a half years subsequently on telephone exchange installation. LT was a real eye opener with very limited attention to H&S at that time and standards that fell far short of those I was trained to adhere to. The governors were 'gods' of a sort much as line controllers were in those days and expected us to paint the grass green, the coal black etc, dig holes and fill them in again, shift a pile of equipment from one place to another and back again or otherwise to 'stand there and look busy' ! The first three months was designed to make people crack and to leave (I knew many that didn't last a month, mostly sacked for disobedience, not pulling their weight or failing to comprehend what had been barked at them by chargehands) if they could not 'fit' into the organisation but once probation was successfully passed one was 'in'. Back then Signals was a filthy job and personal protective equipment was limited to safety boots, overalls, Donkey Jacket and recycled mitts when running lead covered cable. Safety helmets and respirators were not personal issue and had to be shared if available, there were never enough to go around and no-one really wanted to wear one that someone else had been wearing. As I was 'in' I was lucky enough to be issued a dustcoat when working on the Northern line resignalling a few months after joining LT. It didn't make much difference, I still went home black to the skin every morning from that job and later on the Bakerloo too when resignalling it to become part of the new Jubilee line. Of course the cameraderie was great and I was in a good gang, we worked hard every night and had a 'can do' reputation as did rival gangs whom we saw as competition as we went 'head to head' in adjacent tunnels replacing the air main and hanging new cable brackets trying to outdo one another in terms of sections replaced per shift, number of brackets hung, amount of cable dropped into balatas and subsequently the number of 500 metre drums of single and two core lead cable run per night. I'd say that I saw the last few years of what was the heyday of LT engineering before it all began to change in the 1980s. Back then everything we did pretty much relied upon stamina and graft and those who couldn't 'cut it' at the 'sharp end' were soon found out and sorted out, that is those that didn't pull their weight would not be 'carried'. I look back on those early days in the job as very happy days, helping to provide and maintain a service to the travelling public come hell or high water, something that seems to have been lost in many ways despite better modern technology.
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Post by mrhappy on Nov 29, 2013 15:22:58 GMT
Many thanks for that. Its always good to hear from other departments.
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