London Transport hit by Snow

Good luck getting into work this morning, as an "extreme" weather warning has just been issued by the Met Office for London & the South East, due to heavy snowfall overnight. Last night all London buses were taken off the roads because of the conditions and they are still not back this morning.




At time of writing (7.20am) every London Underground line with the exception of the Victoria Line has disruptions to service & suspensions.


Stansted and London City Airports are closed at the time of writing. Heathrow has only one runway open and even if you wanted to get there, you'd have problems as the Heathrow Express service has been suspended & the Tubes going there, err.... aren't.

Your best bet is to watch the news, listen to the radio and keep an eye on TfL's website, which was a mass of blue "suspensions" and "part suspensions" this morning.

The snow is expected to continue falling throughout the day, so there may not be much let up. 20cm of snow will be expected by the end of the day. Anyone from countries that get a lot of snow reading this blog or looking at #uksnow trending on Twitter, will think "What are they all moaning about, that's not heavy snow". But for a city that relies so much on public transport, whenever there's the wrong type of snow or too much of it, we're screwed.


That's the current view from my study window above, as regular readers know, my house backs onto a railway line and normally, I can see trains. But for the past half hour, there have been no trains!

Update: Made it to the station to be told, that I should have believed the view outside my house and there's no trains. Here's a few pictures from the snowy station




Absolutely tons of pictures on Flickr of the snowy Tube, but my favourite has to be of the, for once appropriately named, White City by pgchamberlin


2003 was the last time I can remember really heavy snow like this (I actually broke my leg in two places the next day falling on ice), and there were talks of us being prepared for it next time. Guess what? We're not.

Changing Fuses on the Tube

You might have seen the display of London Underground roundels on Westbound platform of St James's Park Tube station (home of London Underground's headquarters). On Saturday, I was waiting at the station for a train home after spending some time at Tokyo Day (some pics of iDogs, mecharobots, emo teenagers & other stuff here). In the display there's some "roundel style" fuse wire holders, which were given out as freebies.


This is pretty generous of an electricity company, as I can't see fuse wire being handed out today. But even if it was, I wouldn't have a clue what to do with it. I'm always slightly worried about the fuses in my house going, as I don't think I'd know how to change them.

Thinking of fuses, reminded me that I'd seen a brilliant cartoon, taken by Andy Davison, which illustrates how Toprate Percy was used to teach drivers how to deal with defects (such as changing fuses) on the Tube.


Andy kindly let me use the picture for the blog and said "I've been told that these were drawn by a manager called Alec Gorton a long while ago so would have been when 1938 stock was the conventional stock. Also Percy changes fuses without a fuse puller."

The cartoon above, is only half of the story, so I'm not sure how Toprate Percy resolved the problem. There's another couple of cartoon from the series here.

Do drivers, sorry train operators, have to change fuses on the trains now, or are there engineers and other people to deal with that? I never hear of trains being pulled out of action because of fuses going!

London Underground cutting 1,000 jobs

Looks like the doom and gloom of the recession has finally hit the Tube as London Underground announce that 1,000 people will lose their jobs.


Unlike the picture of skeleton staff above implies, LU said no front line staff or Tube drivers, would be out of a job, the cuts would be from temporary and administrative posts.

However, as we'd probably expect with the railway unions, they are saying they will fight the cuts, as they believe the reduction in jobs will lead to a reduced service.

Gerry Doherty, leader of TSSA, said: "This is a real body blow for staff and the London travelling public. There is no way that cuts of this size will not hit services. We should be investing in the Underground in the run up to the Olympics, not cutting back."

Bob Crow, leader of the RMT, was more bullish and hinted at strike action as a result of the announcement: "Any attempt to impose compulsory redundancies among our members or to undermine their terms and conditions will be met with a ballot for industrial action."

He added "Once again it seems if you are a banker you get protection, but if you are part of a team providing a public service you don't. There is no way that London's transport workers should be made to pay for the failure of the bankers and privateers whose greed has created the crisis our economy is now in."

He also agreed with Doherty by saying "There is no way that redundancies on this scale can be implemented without affecting the level of service. If the mayor is looking for efficiencies he should bring the Tube Lines PPP contracts back in house, because they are still draining huge sums of public money from London’s transport budget."


The London Underground employs about 20,000 staff, and the jobs which are slated to go are from finance, IT, procurement, human resources, legal and administration.

For once I tend to agree with Bob Crow (well not about the threat of strikes bit, which he plays too often). I find it hard to see how an organisation can lose that many staff - in whatever functions - and for this to make no difference to the service it provides to the public.

Friday on the Tube

And in the midst of all the recession misery, some staff on the London Underground can still try to remind us one good thing:


Spotted by the lovely Melanie Seasons this morning at Warwick Avenue Tube. She said "The man who works there in the morning always writes the most ridiculous happy-go-lucky messages on the status board and I finally caught one.".

Stop Standing on my Feet Postcard

I wish this had been made into an official poster for the London Underground. The cartoon postcard below from the London Transport Museum deals brilliantly with two common Tube complaints. Standing on other people's feet when it's overcrowded AND the hot potato about giving up seats.


The disgruntled gentleman seated is moaning as a woman is standing on his feet. "I say Missus, if you're anything of a lady you'd stop standing on my feet". The lady gives back an answer that I'd love to have given myself. "Well, If you're anything of a gentleman you'd start standing on 'em yourself".

So even in Edwardian times, it certainly wasn't given than a man would give up his seat for a woman. I don't expect to be given a seat on account of being a woman, but I if a man offers me a seat (which happens occasionally), I'll gladly take it. I don't know if that makes me feeble, but it's nice that some old fashioned courtesies still exist.

However, I know that a number of men say they won't give up their seat, as they're worried that women will take offence. I think this is mainly down to the dilemma of suggesting that you're only giving up your seat because you think the woman's pregnant.


I wonder if the Edwardian postcard approach would work any better than TfL's current Considerate Londoner / Together for London campaign? There is a poster in the series above which has one of the numpty cartoon characters saying "I'll offer that person my seat" and a female numpty saying something like "I'll politely take it".

It's trying to promote a little give and take or to quote the campaign: "A little thought from each of us, makes a big difference for everyone." Maybe they should test a more humorous or blunt standpoint as seen in the postcard, unless that would lead to even more raised tempers!