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Post by mrhappy on Feb 28, 2014 17:33:14 GMT
Saw this today and understand the unions are now saying they are in dispute over it. If and when it comes in, I expect I will have met my maker. It will be a sad day to see it though.
Transport chiefs today began seeking a supplier of 250 driverless Tube trains for a contract that will be worth £16 billion.
London Underground has advertised in the Official Journal of the European Union for the trains that will begin operating from the middle of the next decade on the Piccadilly, Central, Bakerloo and Waterloo & City lines.
Branded the New Tube for London, the model will not feature a driver’s cab, although the trains will be staffed. For the first time, passengers on the lines will benefit from air-conditioning and walk-through carriages, and capacity will rise by up to 60 per cent.
Among those expected to bid are Siemens, Bombardier, Hitachi and Spanish firm CAF. The contract will be awarded in 2016.
Mike Brown, managing director of London Underground, said: “We want the New Tube for London to encompass the very latest technology, as well as respecting our design heritage.”
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Post by hellocontrol on Feb 28, 2014 20:09:08 GMT
Saw this today and understand the unions are now saying they are in dispute over it. If and when it comes in, I expect I will have met my maker. It will be a sad day to see it though. Transport chiefs today began seeking a supplier of 250 driverless Tube trains for a contract that will be worth £16 billion. London Underground has advertised in the Official Journal of the European Union for the trains that will begin operating from the middle of the next decade on the Piccadilly, Central, Bakerloo and Waterloo & City lines. Branded the New Tube for London, the model will not feature a driver’s cab, although the trains will be staffed. For the first time, passengers on the lines will benefit from air-conditioning and walk-through carriages, and capacity will rise by up to 60 per cent. Among those expected to bid are Siemens, Bombardier, Hitachi and Spanish firm CAF. The contract will be awarded in 2016. Mike Brown, managing director of London Underground, said: “We want the New Tube for London to encompass the very latest technology, as well as respecting our design heritage.” Mr H I think you have put this in the wrong area. |
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Post by hellocontrol on Feb 28, 2014 20:12:25 GMT
Saw this today and understand the unions are now saying they are in dispute over it. If and when it comes in, I expect I will have met my maker. It will be a sad day to see it though. Transport chiefs today began seeking a supplier of 250 driverless Tube trains for a contract that will be worth £16 billion. London Underground has advertised in the Official Journal of the European Union for the trains that will begin operating from the middle of the next decade on the Piccadilly, Central, Bakerloo and Waterloo & City lines. Branded the New Tube for London, the model will not feature a driver’s cab, although the trains will be staffed. For the first time, passengers on the lines will benefit from air-conditioning and walk-through carriages, and capacity will rise by up to 60 per cent. Among those expected to bid are Siemens, Bombardier, Hitachi and Spanish firm CAF. The contract will be awarded in 2016. Mike Brown, managing director of London Underground, said: “We want the New Tube for London to encompass the very latest technology, as well as respecting our design heritage.” The Mike Brown's of this world will always go for this sort of thing I remember when I came on the Underground I was told all signal boxes would be closed within 5 years that was over 4 decades ago and there are still signal boxes on LU. They will achieve it, it is just when. |
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Post by railtechnician on Mar 5, 2014 22:55:06 GMT
Had LT/LU had the budget required to do so I have no doubt that all signal boxes would have gone decades ago. When I joined LT in 1977 the Jubilee was still known as the Fleet and was going to Thamesmead. It was disappointing to discover later that Charing Cross was to be the end of the line and that stage 2 was to be held in abeyance. Between then and the JLE we got the cheap version of stage 2 with alterations as the DLR. Of course the Jubilee was never going to Canary Wharf until the government of the day intervened. Similar events can be shown for many of LT/LU planned future works from before WW2 almost from the very beginnings of the LPTB. Government control of finance and transportation policy is the reason that so many planned works were either never begun or fell by the wayside. Add to that no overall vision of the future at any time in the last 100 years and one begins to see why every solution suffers inevitably from 'short termism' to a greater or lesser degree. I worked on the Crossrail project in 1995/6 and by then some £30 million had already been spent, what a waste of public money with the project not beginning to be built until nearly two decades later. Interestingly the Crossrail surveys I did at Paddington then were not completely wasted as the information I collated was used later for the remodelling of the Lawn Ticket Hall. Similar work done at Liverpool Street was to some extent null and void within a couple of years as the shelving of Crossrail in 1996 allowed other projects to use what had until then been protected areas for Crossrail works. Of course the Underground is just one area of ever changing transport policy, Network Rail and the National Road Network are a similar hotch potch of short term solutions with little or no thought of working towards a properly integrated national transportation infrastructure for the future. In all honesty with the national debt as high as it has become the UK should have the best Roads and the best Rail services and Utilities in the world but our politicians are seemingly predominantly self serving incompetents. |
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Post by GentlemanJim on Mar 6, 2014 15:34:44 GMT
Here's a little something that puts the under investment in to perspective.
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Post by hellocontrol on Mar 6, 2014 18:17:35 GMT
Here's a little something that puts the under investment in to perspective. Some old faces there Malcome Hoole signalman at Baker Street when I knew him, Wally Hopping signalman on the Bakerloo Tim Bowdry was a driver on the Northern and a few more. |
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Post by railtechnician on Mar 7, 2014 4:01:42 GMT
1996 is when I transferred to Picc Line Engineering from SE&C. I recognise a lot of the faces at Earls Court but can't name any of them, I'm pretty certain that most of them were no longer there when I retired in 2005.
I like the comments about the phone system, it's true all the phones, autos and direct lines, were in a right state and as the Picc Line Comms TO I took over all telephone maintenance in the tower from SE&C. I spent a lot of time in and out of the tower dealing with bells that didn't work and phones that were intermittent. Strangely the bell faults were generally not faults at all but deliberately wedged gongs! Similarly many of the phone faults were due to bad habits, several phones I changed out had coffee inside them and others had been deliberately abused by frustrated signal operators. The inside of the controllers desks was an eyesore with some of the wiring on hinged panels as tight as guitar strings and lots of junk that should have been recovered years earlier. Of course the whole room was an asbestos hazard especially under the controllers plinth and behind the signal diagram. I used to spend nights changing all the blown diagram bulbs, there were hundreds of dodgy lampholders and I had many shifts squat behind the diagram rewiring all the SPT circuits to relocate them from under the diagram back to the signal operator desks.
Wearing my Signal TO hat I became night control room TO when ill health forced off the track in 2001 and I finally got the chance to clean up most of the desks in the room recovering all the redundant comms equipment and cabling and tidying up the remaining wiring. I also gutted all the redundant kit from the Turnham Green card room downstairs including the old direct lines telephone rack which still contained the by then long defunct DRICO relay sets.
All the desks got decent multibutton autophones in the end of course, the old controllers telephone panels were covered up and the signal operators telephone panels were left in situ but redundant. One of my final jobs there was to assist in installing the new diagram panels and install the new digital clocks.
Right at the end of the film showing engineering works a quick shot was of a Picc line track gang and I recognised the track manager as Joe Padalino from Acton Maxwell House P-Way depot. I first worked with Joe not long after passing out as a signal TO in 1997 on a busy rerailing job at Oakwood. He was a character, he knew that I was 'new' and tried to take the P, he didn't know that I was a 20 year veteran who spent his first two years on signal New Works or that I was a stickler for rules, regs and procedures so we had words but thereafter he was good as gold and that reminded me of the old days and the way that all new recruits had their mettle tested in their probationary 3 months.
I haven't seen that video before, it was an excellent watch which I thoroughly enjoyed for the nostalgia value.
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Post by mrhappy on Mar 7, 2014 14:07:00 GMT
Gosh that was a good video. I remember so much of it happening. Terry Laws I didnt even know he had left while I stil worked there. Remember Lots road closing and the underground getting all its electricity from the national grid. Couple of years later, I was driving a District line train to Upminster. Approaching Barking, all the signals went out on me. Some clipping and scotching later and I reached Barking bay road. To find our great national grid had cut off the electric supply to Barking station! Someone had not paid the bill! For years, our national railway had paid the bill. Then with the transfer of the underground from lots road to the national grid, somehow it was decided the underground would take over the bill. No one told the national grid though. So the bills kept getting sent to the main line railways to pay. They of course did nothing. The bill was hundreds of thousands of pounds!
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