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Old September 22nd 06, 10:50 PM posted to uk.transport.london
Peter Frimberley Peter Frimberley is offline
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First recorded activity at LondonBanter: Apr 2006
Posts: 83
Default Lack of trains on the drain

On 22 Sep 2006 10:54:57 -0700, "
wrote:


As for the trains, I agree with a previous poster: what's the point in
fitting C.C.T.V. cameras (if that's what's happened) to these trains,
and given that they were relatively new, "overhaul" seems premature to
say the least.

Marc.


I think the overhaul was more about "behind the scenes" or
"undercarriage" stuff. These five units having been isolated on the
W&C had apparently become very different to the supposedly identical
1992 stock on the Central Line - e.g. I don't think the motor mods
that had to be done to the whole Central Line fleet when they started
dropping off had ever been done to the W&C stock; and a whole series
of similar in-cab and underfloor alterations that had been done to the
Central stock meant that the drivers could no longer drive each
others' trains. So to enable possible driver rotations in future
(because driving the W&C is boring as hell so they want to look at
just spending a few months at a time on it), and to keep costs down by
applying the same fixes and spares to both sets in future, they had to
do a lot of "catching up" work on the W&C stock.

Also this project originally was just a track/signalling replacement
project that was going to mean a couple of years of medium length
disruptions. Metronet put the idea to TfL that if they could close the
line for the whole summer, they could do the job quicker and cheaper
(they split the expected saving half and half with TfL if I remember
rightly) and in to the bargain Metronet said they would do the
platform works and lift the trains out for the overhaul now (they
would have had to come out in the next five years or so for a heavy
overhaul anyway).

So it should have been a win-win-win situation for Metronet, TfL, and
the passengers too, but unfortunately Metronet seem to have done only
a 90% job as usual.