Northern Line problems - Half the trains taken out of service

Forty five out of ninety Northern Line trains being safety checked

OHMIGOD my sympathies if you are trying to get into work this morning using the Northern Line (also commonly known as the Misery Line). I think I vaguely remember hearing yesterday on the radio that some drivers were refusing to drive them as they didn't think they were safe and had faulty back up brakes. The BBC reported on this yesterday. "London Underground (LU) said for safety reasons, from Thursday Tube cabs are being manned by an extra driver, leading to a reduction in services." The RMT said "the emergency braking system failed last night (Wednesday) for the fourth time in as many weeks."

Now this morning this means that half of the trains have been taken out of service for safety checks or possibly because of the extra drivers running on other trains - it's not quite clear yet on what's going on although the Tube's website says "signalling problems".

In any case this is going to mean severe delays to your Northern Line service this morning and possibly all day, so good luck.

Keep checking on the London Underground's real time travel webpage for more news on this.

Update 9.35am - at last something on the interweb about today's Northern Line problems:

"Today a furious London Underground spokesman said TfL bosses were were "angry and frustrated" with private train operator Tube Lines after the company had failed to resolve on-going problems with the train's emergency braking system.

TfL is demanding that Tube Lines returned the service to normal "as quickly as possible."

A spokesman for London Underground said: "There is an issue with signal equipment on Northern Line trains. Safety checks were conducted overnight.

"At 8am we were running only 49 trains out of a normal service of 90 trains for the first shift. But less than half of the entire fleet of 108 trains is in service.

"We are extremely angry and frustrated with Tube Lines. We are pressing them to resolve the issue as quickly as possible."

Plus a bit more information from Bloomberg's news site.