A trifle on the warm side

After weeks of grey skies and mild weather we plunge straight into heatwave. Temperatures in London on Sunday exceeded 30c, hotter than Florida or the Caribbean. Combined with high humidity this made for a very sticky and uncomfortable weekend. There was no time to acclimatize - on Friday it was cool in the morning and very hot by the evening, nothing in between. It's rather unsettling.

But you can count on London Underground for consistency. There was a problem on the Metropolitan on Friday, and - dang me - there was a worse one this morning. No trains between Wembley Park and Aldgate thanks to our old friend "signal problems". (aka it was a hot weekend and our lads are still nursing giant hangovers). How does this affect me using the relatively stable Piccadilly? It meant that my train, which should have been half empty, was full early on and stayed full all the way. Just what you don't want at the start of what may or may not be a fairly unpleasant week, travel-wise. Here's hoping that, as Wimbledon gets underway, we have some good old-fashioned cloudbursts and everything cools off a little.

Summer approaches

It's feeling a tad more like summer now, a beautiful clear blue sky this morning and a little warmth in the air. Regular commuters judge the onset of the holiday season not by the portents of sunshine and cloud but by the availability of seats on the morning trains. LU don't change their schedules for the summer, so as soon as the kids stop going to school (whether for exams, holidays or just bunking off) and their parents start taking more time off, the trains empty out.
You might have thought that, given that the holiday season runs over three months or so and that most people would not take off more than two weeks at a time, that the numbers using the Underground would diminish by no more than 10% maximum in any one week. And tourists would more than make up the difference anyway. But it doesn't seem to work like that. This morning, although all seats were taken by the time we got to Acton Town, my train was not overcrowded and I stepped out at Baron's Court without the need to thrust through the massed ranks of strap-hangers that normally block the doors. And the schools are not even out yet, so the full holiday season has not begun.
A uncrowded train, moving at normal speed, is surprisingly restful. Without the mental stress of people leaning against your arms, and others tripping over your legs as they fight for breathing room, and with the reasonable expectation the journey will be completed on time, one can relax, enjoy the scenery and flick through the morning papers. I actually did two of the clues in the Guardian cryptic crossword. Don't sneer, this is an intellectual achievement that demands respect. Most days I fail to solve a single clue.
The rebuilding of my home station, Ruislip Manor, continues. Much of the eastbound platform has been rebuilt but the covered section where the steps lead down to the street is still a shell, and all the safety fencing, lights and cables need fixing in place. Ominously, the TFL website just says that the platform is out of action "until further notice". Who knows when it will be complete?

The Bleedin' Obvious

It was Basil Fawlty who turned it into a catchphrase - "Can't we get you on Mastermind Sybil? Special subject the bleedin' obvious" and it runs through my head every time I see one of those notices about warm weather at a tube station. You probably know what I mean - "To avoid discomfort in hot weather carry water" :that sort of thing.

So are there drinking fountains at stations? No
Do they sell bottled water at stations? No (there might be a kiosk at larger stations but not as a rule)

Bleeding obvious? I should say so.

The Announcer of Doom

It's a warm and pleasant evening at Baron's Court station. I descend to the westbound Piccadilly platform, passing the sign that informs me that good services are operating on all lines. I wait for the first train - Heathrow - and while I wait the station announcer (with his jarring Australian accent) tells me that good services are operating on all lines. The train comes and goes. The next train, after several minutes, is for Northfields.

Now, for those of you unfamiliar with the Piccadilly, Northfields is a nondescript station on the Heathrow branch, important only in that it is one of the main depots for the line and is equipped with double platforms and sidings. Trains terminate there either when going out of service or when being pulled out of the normal timetable. LU are bound by contract to supply a minimum number of trains per hour on the Heathrow branch (a station manager at Acton Town told me one day when neither of us had anything else to do given that no trains were running)and will always give priority to this route. So if a train has Northfields as its destination during normal hours this indicates a problem and given the priority of trains to Heathrow, it probably started life as an Uxbridge branch train instead.

You will understand from the foregoing that whatever the announcer may be blathering on about, the sight of Northfields as the destination is the sure indication that normal services are not running. And so it proved. The next train was one I wanted, to Ruislip, and we crawled between Hammersmith and Acton Town, at one point stopping for several minutes. The driver told us it was going to be slow going but did not say why. Yes, folks, another delay from those wonderful people who think that trains sitting idle on the track between stations constitutes a good service.

At least we did proceed normally once past Acton (I was half expecting that our train would be terminated there).

So what, I ask, and not for the first time, is the point of announcements about good service? They are a complete waste of time. Tell us about the known problems and stop being smug about your ignorance about the rest of the system.

I thought I would feel better having got that out of my system but I don't really. Hey ho, let us see what tonight may bring.

Reverting to type...

We've just enjoyed the bank holiday weekend (and what perfect weather!), and now it's back to work for some of us (the streets are eerily quiet thanks to the continuing school holidays). I reported yesterday on the morning journey. Naturally that was not good enough for LU and there was a nice little delay going home last night as well. Apparently signal problems at Earl's Court earlier in the day (it's always earlier in these announcements) caused delays westbound. I waited about 15 minutes, just long enough to trigger a refund claim.

And, as usual, one is left wondering. Why, if the problem occurred earlier and has, presumably, been fixed, are there still delays? Surely all the trains backed up behind the faulty signals are now running? They certainly were on the eastbound line - I counted over 10 in a 20 minute period. Why not divert at least one of these virtually empty trains to plug the gaps going west? There is a siding at Hammersmith perfectly placed for this function.

Oh well, at least the trains were running ok this morning. Or were they? I certainly arrived on time, fortunately, because I was attending a conference across the road at Olympia. The opening session was delayed - why? Problems on the tube, they said.