Delays due to "train cancellations"

[Lewlew]

Never knew Chiltern Railways served Wembley Central!

Well it says they will be serving it "as normal" and they won't be serving it so it's technically true

Bakerloo line will now be running normally

 

[Horizon22]

Apparently in the last two years, six people have left Hammersmith Control Centre. Four retirements, two to National Rail.
One person has been trained up as a replacement.

One who left said, "Not even a thankyou from Senior Management, despite running with 4 out of 16 staff for a period last year."

Some of those retirements were early retirements, as Hammersmith is a pain to get to/low morale/short staffed, they just had enough.


It looks to me as though TfL have their heads in the sand, ostrich style, over the issues.

This appears to be the crux. I don't buy the "oh its hard to recruit" and "oh it's a specialist position". It's been nearly a year now and I'm sure it will be a position that several will be intreested in if sufficiently renumerated and plenty would have the right skils. It's a serious morale and management issue. SWR had a similar problem early on when they moved their control centre.

 

[Snow1964]

Apparently in the last two years, six people have left Hammersmith Control Centre. Four retirements, two to National Rail.
One person has been trained up as a replacement.

One who left said, "Not even a thankyou from Senior Management, despite running with 4 out of 16 staff for a period last year."

Some of those retirements were early retirements, as Hammersmith is a pain to get to/low morale/short staffed, they just had enough.


It looks to me as though TfL have their heads in the sand, ostrich style, over the issues.

Why on earth, would a business offer early retirement, if it was a critical role and they had no spare trained staff.

If they left voluntarily that is different.

But the terminology early retirement is used when incentivised to leave by the employer, and offered a pension enhancement so it just seems bonkers to me

 

[bramling]

Apparently in the last two years, six people have left Hammersmith Control Centre. Four retirements, two to National Rail.
One person has been trained up as a replacement.

One who left said, "Not even a thankyou from Senior Management, despite running with 4 out of 16 staff for a period last year."

Some of those retirements were early retirements, as Hammersmith is a pain to get to/low morale/short staffed, they just had enough.


It looks to me as though TfL have their heads in the sand, ostrich style, over the issues.

Yep this is about right. They need to realise that their usual “people should be grateful” recruitment process simply isn’t working. For this role they need people more than people need them.

Why on earth, would a business offer early retirement, if it was a critical role and they had no spare trained staff.

If they left voluntarily that is different.

But the terminology early retirement is used when incentivised to leave by the employer, and offered a pension enhancement so it just seems bonkers to me

It won’t have been an “early retirement” as such, simply people doing the sums and bringing forward their retirement date. Covid has led to quite a bit of this, for understandable reasons.

LU has serious issues with staff morale, and this is what is biting them in the backside.

This appears to be the crux. I don't buy the "oh its hard to recruit" and "oh it's a specialist position". It's been nearly a year now and I'm sure it will be a position that several will be intreested in if sufficiently renumerated and plenty would have the right skils. It's a serious morale and management issue. SWR had a similar problem early on when they moved their control centre.

It’s all of the above. The failure rate doesn’t help as it means quite a bit of time and resource can be spent on one person, all for nothing. This is why the recruitment and support needs to be top-notch, and quite simply it isn’t.

Whilst there is interest in the role, one has to bear in mind that the salary is a draw for many, and this can lead to the wrong people clogging up the system. Meanwhile better candidates lose interest, especially if they’re already on a similar salary. I know a couple of people who went for this role and got through the application process, but have lost interest.

One thing is for sure, this issue isn’t going to go away in the short term. On the contrary, as more people hear about the issues, it will be more and more a case of less qualified / experienced people forming the bulk of the applicants.

 

[philthetube]

Why on earth, would a business offer early retirement, if it was a critical role and they had no spare trained staff.

If they left voluntarily that is different.

But the terminology early retirement is used when incentivised to leave by the employer, and offered a pension enhancement so it just seems bonkers to me

retired early is a better way to put it,

do the sums, see what the pension pays, check house values, move somewhere cheaper and happy days, loads of drivers have done it as well, covid really set people thinking.

 

[Dstock7080]

MET H&C
District (High St-Edgware Rd)
PICC South Harrow-Uxbridge
suspended from 0900, lack of Control room staff.

 

[pitdiver]

MET H&C
District (High St-Edgware Rd)
PICC South Harrow-Uxbridge
suspended from 0900, lack of Control room staff.

No Met at all. Although I no longer live in London. I am still interested in the Met. Being an ex Met employee I was staggered to see there was no Met service. What on earth is happening?

 

[Leisurefirst]

Not for the first time lately plan a trip in advance, checking that either H&C and or Circle is running earlier in the week.
Rock up to the station this morning with 86yo in tow to find "planned" work means it's shut.
Cue bus journey or and or walk and multiple (full and standing) deep tube journeys trying to avoid stairs as much as possible.
We wouldn't have bothered had we not committed to being there already.
(And more fares for the bus or else walk to alternative stations in my case and meet said 86yo there).
What I think irks me most is the devious republishing of the poster ("update" indeed) as though they planned the closure all along and no indication that they just did this after stating there wasn't a closure during the week.

 

[Mojo]

No Met at all. Although I no longer live in London. I am still interested in the Met. Being an ex Met employee I was staggered to see there was no Met service. What on earth is happening?

It only requires one person to be off for the service to start to be disrupted, depending on the location. At such short notice you may also struggle to find someone available to cover the shift on overtime, particular with such a high number of people unavailable for work due to vacancies / other shifts conflicting with rest periods / self isolation / nice weather / etc.

 

[sammyg901]

Control staff pinged by Track and Trace whilst at work according to news reports

 

[Leisurefirst]

Control staff pinged by Track and Trace whilst at work according to news reports

That's not great for anybody obviously but completely understandable.
Just put that on the whiteboard rather than pretending it's planned engineering work and making people think they didn't notice it earlier in the week.

 

[96tommy]

I recently moved to Notting Hill and commute to King's Cross. I don't think there's been a single day since I moved that the Circle, Met, H+C or indeed the District Line between Edgware Road and Earls Court has run without any issues....

 

[Peregrine 4903]

It feels like the Cricle, Hammersmith and City, Metropolitan and District Lines all pretty much permanently have some kind of disruption at this point.

I get that this specific issue today has obviously been caused by track and trace, and that in general a shortage of control staff is not easy to solve, but it is starting to get embarassing at this point with the continued disruption. I feel for anyone that lives at any tube station between Paddington and Hammersmith via Ladbroke Grove.

 

[MikeWh]

I feel for anyone that lives at any tube station between Paddington and Hammersmith via Ladbroke Grove.

To be honest I feel more for people who live further out, beyond Wembley Park, where there are few if any alternatives. I notice that today's status says passengers can use Chiltern Rail services, which is a complete lie because they are also cancelled between London and Great Missenden.

 

[Peregrine 4903]

To be honest I feel more for people who live further out, beyond Wembley Park, where there are few if any alternatives. I notice that today's status says passengers can use Chiltern Rail services, which is a complete lie because they are also cancelled between London and Great Missenden.

TfL often do that. There is a block between Spa Road Junction/Bricklayerms Arms Junction (Basically London Bridge) and Norwood Junction tomorrow and tfl suggest to use southern service between New Cross Gate and Norwood Junction instead of Overground ones, forgetting the fact that the line is blocked to all services.

 

[Horizon22]

It only requires one person to be off for the service to start to be disrupted, depending on the location. At such short notice you may also struggle to find someone available to cover the shift on overtime, particular with such a high number of people unavailable for work due to vacancies / other shifts conflicting with rest periods / self isolation / nice weather / etc.

But as we know from this thread, they were no doubt running very fragile staffing levels already, so this just tips it over the edge. I also think TfL might have used it as an excuse to some extent - I know another TOC that used "Covid self-isolation" as an excuse, when in reality, they were short on the usual overtime take-up as it was a warm weekend because they've been historically understaffed anyway.

 

[whoosh]

Bearing in mind how this thread has gone, I was none too surprised to see the 'ping' of test and trace being the apparent culprit.

For this weekend at least!

Covid: London's Metropolitan Line closed after staff pinged by NHS app

Control room staff on the Metropolitan Line are isolating after being sent alerts by the NHS app.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[TFN]

We were told that Whitechapel station would be open on Saturday for LO but I rocked up this morning and it was shut. Passengers coming up to me saying "there's nothing on the website about it" and then I have to explain that you have to press the stations button on the status page on the TfL site.

Then last minute cancellation to the Met and Circle only made the matter worse. Then in the afternoon, the Central Line was down between Liverpool St and Marble Arch for a good while. Honestly, not a good year for TfL, poor showing.

I'm hoping that the TfL Rail West holds next weekend when the Piccadilly Line to Heathrow will be down, but no hopes up here.

 

[Peregrine 4903]

We were told that Whitechapel station would be open on Saturday for LO but I rocked up this morning and it was shut. Passengers coming up to me saying "there's nothing on the website about it" and then I have to explain that you have to press the stations button on the status page on the TfL site.

Then last minute cancellation to the Met and Circle only made the matter worse. Then in the afternoon, the Central Line was down between Liverpool St and Marble Arch for a good while. Honestly, not a good year for TfL, poor showing.

I'm hoping that the TfL Rail West holds next weekend when the Piccadilly Line to Heathrow will be down, but no hopes up here.

I feel like though ARL and MTR operate almost rather seperately from tfl and are much closely aligned to Network Rail so don't tend to have anywhere near as much issues.

 

[Mojo]

I notice that today's status says passengers can use Chiltern Rail services, which is a complete lie because they are also cancelled between London and Great Missenden.

Customers could use Chiltern services as an alternative between West Ruislip and Marylebone, as there are three stations (West Ruislip, South Ruislip, and Wembley Stadium) that are not far from Met line stations.

 

[Horizon22]

We were told that Whitechapel station would be open on Saturday for LO but I rocked up this morning and it was shut. Passengers coming up to me saying "there's nothing on the website about it" and then I have to explain that you have to press the stations button on the status page on the TfL site.

Then last minute cancellation to the Met and Circle only made the matter worse. Then in the afternoon, the Central Line was down between Liverpool St and Marble Arch for a good while. Honestly, not a good year for TfL, poor showing.

I'm hoping that the TfL Rail West holds next weekend when the Piccadilly Line to Heathrow will be down, but no hopes up here.

TfL Rail are pretty reliable (now that 345s have stopped breaking down in the tunnels...) - they're completely separate in that they're run by MTR more akin to TOC and the infrastructure is still Network Rail

 

[TFN]

TfL Rail are pretty reliable (now that 345s have stopped breaking down in the tunnels...)

There was a 345 ETC failure at Stockley Jct causing mayhem for an hour last week.

The ETCS failures are far more common on the HeX 387s but they still disrupt the TfL Rail. But that's a story for another thread.

 

[Horizon22]

There was a 345 ETC failure at Stockley Jct causing mayhem for an hour last week.

The ETCS failures are far more common on the HeX 387s but they still disrupt the TfL Rail. But that's a story for another thread.

Used to be the reverse and 345 performance used to be atrocious. But yes a bit off-topic.

Hopefully TfL try something new with regards to recruitment & retention for this role because clearly something isn’t working.

 

[Mojo]

Looks like the C&H will be closed every night this week from 21.00 until Close of Traffic.

Most frustrating to see that the TfL website describes this as being subject to a “planned closure,” when it was not planned in any usual sense of the word. What was even more annoying is when I left home last night it said words to the effect of “Severe delays until 21.00,” which to me implied that the delays would improve, but of course when 21.00 hit that subsequently changed to “Planned closure.” Now we’re on a new day the website doesn’t mention anything about the fact that the service will be closing early tonight, the only way to find out is to select a date this week that is in the future (because of course you can’t select today’s date) and then it will tell you the closure at 21.00 applies from 19-25 July.

 

[700007]

Looks like the C&H will be closed every night this week from 21.00 until Close of Traffic.

Most frustrating to see that the TfL website describes this as being subject to a “planned closure,” when it was not planned in any usual sense of the word. What was even more annoying is when I left home last night it said words to the effect of “Severe delays until 21.00,” which to me implied that the delays would improve, but of course when 21.00 hit that subsequently changed to “Planned closure.” Now we’re on a new day the website doesn’t mention anything about the fact that the service will be closing early tonight, the only way to find out is to select a date this week that is in the future (because of course you can’t select today’s date) and then it will tell you the closure at 21.00 applies from 19-25 July.

Whilst it's understandable what has happened and can in some context be hard to prevent, it's incredibly poor communication by TfL online and in stations about what is going on and when to expect disruption. District line services to Edgware Road are also affected and it seems the Metropolitan line is also in a state of semi-paralysis this week with majority of trains - especially those not heading to Uxbridge or beyond Baker Street - being cancelled.

 

[Dstock7080]

this weekend 24/25 July:

As London continues its recovery, we’re committed to delivering the best possible service that we can. However, due to planned engineering works and a shortage of staff in our control rooms, we’ll have significant service disruption over the weekend (24/25 July 2021).
Services may also be affected at other times at short notice so we’d encourage you to regularly check before you travel. These service disruptions may continue for the foreseeable future.

Circle and Hammersmith & City Lines​

• No service on either line on Saturday and Sunday

District Line​

• No service between no service between Turnham Green and Ealing Broadway (planned)
• No service between Edgware Road and High Street Kensington, between 06:45 and 11:00 on Saturday and Sunday

Metropolitan Line​

• No service on the entire line until 12:00 each day. This will also affect the service on Chiltern Railways between Marylebone and Great Missenden via Amersham
• Please note, there will be rail replacement buses across some affected parts of the line

Piccadilly Line ​

• No service between Hammersmith and Heathrow/Uxbridge (planned)

 

[Snow1964]

TfL have some strange left hand not talking to right hand type problems with advance info this weekend, eg

Piccadilly line suspended west of Hammersmith, and says use Metropolitan line Rayners Lane - Uxbridge

Go on Metropolitan line and says it is suspended

Tube, Overground, Elizabeth line, DLR & Tram status updates

Realtime Tube, Overground, Elizabeth line, DLR & Tram travel updates.

tfl.gov.uk

The District line Headline has the not helpful “part suspended part closure“. do passengers really benefit from knowing in advance if it is suspended instead of closed, as both mean no trains. Oddly if you click into the District Line entry get info about a replacement bus service to Rayners Lane and Osterley (I thought District hasn’t served these for decades)

All very muddled

 

[Mojo]

Piccadilly line suspended west of Hammersmith, and says use Metropolitan line Rayners Lane - Uxbridge

Go on Metropolitan line and says it is suspended

The Met is only suspended prior to midday, therefore the information is sort of correct, as you use the Met line after Midday, and the Met line replacement bus before Midday. Dare I say the reason the Piccadilly entry says that is because it was written before the Met closures.

The District line Headline has the not helpful “part suspended part closure“. do passengers really benefit from knowing in advance if it is suspended instead of closed, as both mean no trains. Oddly if you click into the District Line entry get info about a replacement bus service to Rayners Lane and Osterley (I thought District hasn’t served these for decades)

This will be because those buses also serve District line stations, for instance the bus to Osterley stops for all District stations between Hammersmith and Ealing Bdy, and the bus for Rayners Lane stops at Gunnersbury, Acton Twn and Ealing Common.

 

[Mojo]

A separate issue to that previously discussed - around trains being cancelled or service suspensions due to lack of Train Operators or Service Controllers; I’ve just seen an email from TfL advising that from 21.00 tonight, and between 21.30 - 07.00 tomorrow; there will be no service Aldgate to Uxbridge / Rickmansworth, with a limited service Amersham - Watford. This is due to the non availability of a signaller (Service Operator) at Harrow on the Hill.

Confusingly however the TfL website for this evening has a different message - warning of no service “Harrow On The Hill and Uxbridge / Watford / Amersham / Chesham”

 

[Horizon22]

I did wonder if this was a separate issue or not, considering it still effects the Met. Got an email from TfL at 1700.

Edit: This is the rainbow board Saturday at 0730. Severe staff shortages.