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Old July 8th 05, 07:07 PM posted to uk.transport.london
David Howdon David Howdon is offline
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First recorded activity at LondonBanter: May 2005
Posts: 54
Default London bombs - what to make of the 'power surge' claim?

Duncan wrote:
On Thu, 7 Jul 2005 19:42:28 +0100, "nick" wrote:


Was there a power surge?

If so, what caused it?

Certainly, if there was a power surge, there should be a very good
record that it occurred.



My personal thought is that this was just a cover story to avoid mass
panic while trying to evacuate the rest of the Underground network.


That was my thought as well.

I arrive at Westminster station some time about 08:55-09:00 and the
announcers were saying something like "due to power fluctuations the
escalators are not working. But there is no need to be concerned" (not
an exact quote as I don't normally memorise LU error messages). The
last tag on seemed odd to me at the time - why would a power fluctuation
or a non-functioning escalator on London Underground cause me to panic -
neither seem like unusual circumstances.

As I came in on the District line and did not use or see the escalators
I have no idea what was actually happening with them

Since no incident occurred at Westminster I thought of two explanations

1) there really were power fluctuations that caused the escalators to
stop working and it was just a coincidence
2) it was part of a plan to stop people getting on to trains (by
stopping the escalators and holding people whilst they were having their
"fuses reset".

Probably something else entirely of course.

Getting home was surprisingly easy, 2 buses taking about the amount of
time the TfL Journey Planner[1] suggested they would.

[1] Incidentally I don't think this was ever taken down as mentioned on
other threads in this group, it just didn't have any links to it from
the TfL Home Page. My bookmark of (the low graphics version of) it
worked fine.


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