A touch of damp

As regular readers will know, my home station Ruislip Manor was extensively rebuilt during 2005. Each platform was out of use for 6 months. Even today some work is still being carried out on the land around the station.

So you would think, would you not, that a little rain would present no difficulties of any sort to our newly rebuilt station? That’s a loaded question, you are now thinking, when he presents a statement like that he is always setting up a straw man to be shot down. And you are right, as always. For we had some thunderstorms yesterday, not enough to flood my pond or leave pools of water in the lawn (so not torrential by any means) yet on arrival back at Ruislip Manor last night, I found the eastbound platform closed and a large puddle of water at the foot of the stairs that lead up to it.

In the excellent book Good as Gold by Joseph Heller, the narrator unwittingly coins a slogan that is instantly taken up by the US Administration. “Nothing succeeds as planned”. I commend it to London Underground and their ilk.

Farewell to the builders

You may, in an idle moment, have clicked on the Photos link and gazed with a wild surmise at the pictures of the rebuild of Ruislip Manor Station. The epoch that they depict is gradually becoming history. The colony of Portakabins, clustered about like the besieging tents of the Assyrians before Jerusalem, has dwindled away as the builders wind down and steal into the night. The yellow diggers and tractors delight us no more as they grind up and down the man-made slopes of mud. The roofs are on the platform shelters, the exposed cabling is tucked away and passengers arriving at the station entrance are now greeted by a large CCTV screen showing them what the back of their heads look like.

Work continues around the fringes of the site but it no longer makes any impact on those of us who use the station. I have given up expecting the electronic information signs to give us any useful information. All in all things are back to roughly where they were before all this started, in January 2005.

There is one general trend that is slowly becoming apparent. This is the increasing lack of contact between passengers and station staff. I no longer go to the ticket window to renew my season ticket. I go to the automated machine and put cash onto my Oyster card. Departing the station, I no longer flash my ticket to the collector but touch the Oyster card to the exit gate. It used to be unusual for there to be no station staff about. Now it is normal, especially at night when the ticket office is closed and the exit gates are often left open. In the place of a friendly face or two, we have a battery of cameras. All part of the sad progression that turns us from “passengers” to “customers”.

How do they get away with it?

We’ve got brand new information displays at my home station (Ruislip Manor). They are supposed to tell us what trains are due in. On Tuesday there were no Metropolitan trains for a period of at least half an hour. The information displays remained blank. The only announcement was by a driver in a Piccadilly train who informed passengers on the platform to come aboard rather than continue to wait. He made this announcement at Eastcote, the next station, naturally, rather than at Ruislip Manor.

Plus ca change, c’est la meme chose, as we say in Ruislip

Are we getting there?

Another exciting development in the ongoing rebuilding will-it-never-end saga of Ruislip Manor station. They switched on the information signs. Before you gasp with astonishment and call for smelling salts and therapy, let us review the facts. The sign said “Eastbound trains, Metropolitan and Piccadilly Lines” and gave the correct time. But that was all. It did not say when we could expect the next train and its destination. As I strolled up the platform a Piccadilly came in. The information display remained blank. So the intentions appear to be good and the delivery remains as crap as ever.

Oh, and on entry to the station the handwritten status board advised Piccadilly line users to go to Rayners Lane. This normally means that all Piccs are turning round there. But they were running as usual, as I have already informed you. So we have here, your honour, a clear case of no information on the electronic system and misinformation on the manual system. The prosecution rests.

More rejoicing

OK, it’s happened. There are decent sized roofs on both of the shelters on the platforms at Ruislip Manor station. So we can tick this one off the list of long-standing moans and whinges. If you want to see what the shelter looks like without a roof (and let’s face it, why wouldn’t you?) then click here

Signs and portents

Another great leap forward at my home station, Ruislip Manor. I do hope I’m not boring you with my tales about the rebuilding that has dragged on now for more than 15 months (into the 2nd great year as they would say in the theatre) but today they put up an information display actually on the eastbound platform (compared to the one at the top of the stairs that you cannot see from the platform). So we will, at last, have some idea of when the next train is due.

I hold that lack of information is one of the most stressful things about travelling. You don’t mind delays if you know when you are going to get on a train. But standing about waiting when you don’t know is frustrating. Time drags. You read a bit of newspaper, look up hopefully, see a still-empty track, read a bit more, look at your watch, observe your fellow passengers doing the same things, another look at the eternally unoccupied tracks, blissful sound of a train, oh no its going the other way, lucky sods on the other platform, feel your blood pressure rise, read some more….

So the day that the new signs work will be most interesting. I will keep you posted

Get ready to Rejoice

A glorious victory is at hand. My campaign for better platform shelters at Ruislip Manor station has achieved its fundamental goal. Previously I have recorded how inadequate shelters were put up, providing almost no protection. Last week they removed the roofs. Today they have rebuilt the supports on the eastbound platform and they extend the full width of the platform. When they put back the roof then the shelter will do the job for which it was intended. You can see this for yourself by clicking on the Photos link just under my profile on the right (or click here )

The mystery of why they built the first shelters so small may never be solved.

Update: I entitled this piece originally “Rejoice”. But let us not be hasty. The time to break out the champers is when they actually put the roofs back on.

Update to the update: They have at least put the full roof on the eastbound platform.   (4th April 2006)

Easy come, easy go

Just when you thought it could not be more exciting, yet another unexpected twist in the saga that is the rebuilding of Ruislip Manor tube station. I have been complaining for over a year about the inadequate shelters that are in the middle of each platform. They comprise no more than a metal roof perhaps 50 foot long and 5 foot wide suspended about 10 feet in the air. Useless in driving rain or wind, or indeed in blazing sun.

So I arrive at the station this morning and the roofs have gone. The supports are still there but either the builders have decided that they need the roofs for their own nefarious purposes (and I have previously written that it seems obvious that they are making a permanent colony for themselves behind the platforms), or a bold criminal gang has executed what I believe our American friends would call a “heist”. There was no sign of the police but then again maybe nobody had reported it.  After all, who would care?
  

Signs of the times

I’m all of a tremble. One of the recurrent themes of this blog is the shameful lack of information provided to passengers at my home station, Ruislip Manor. Even the bus stops at many points in London have electronic display signs to show the next arrivals. At my station - zilch. But all that may be about to change.
They’ve been rebuilding Ruislip Manor since January 2005. The place is festooned with cameras, speakers and electronic bits and pieces. We’ve even got a couple of those useless “information point” stands; where you press a button in order to hear a phone ringing. And today I saw what surely must be an display sign, a long narrow tube with as-yet blank face, positioned strategically as you come up the steps to the London-bound platform. Can it mean that we are about to get the same sort of information that many stations have enjoyed since the 1930s?

There is also some sort of sign over the station entrance. Now if this were also to be a live display of train movements it would mark a major departure. London Underground tells the would-be passenger almost nothing until they are passed through the barriers. (They have begun putting some train info on the Internet but naturally not for the Piccadilly line). In nearly all cases you must be on the station platform before you discover when your train is likely to arrive.  In the deep stations it may take several minutes walking down escalators, steps and dingy corridors only to find that you could have stayed up top and had a coffee because your train is not due for fifteen minutes.  I have argued for years that there should be information displays outside the stations as well as inside, and then people arriving could make intelligent decisions if they faced delays.

Intelligence is not a word normally associated with the operations of London Underground (where a 20 minute wait for a grossly over-crowded train is described routinely as “minor delays”) and perhaps the sign outside Ruislip Manor is merely going to be for advertising – (you have to imagine a standard Pearl & Dean cinema advert voice at this point)  “Why not enjoy a tasty pizza at Pedro’s? Only one minute from this station” *.

We shall see. Further bulletins will be posted as soon as there is something to report.


*One of my favourite lines from the ads for hot dogs in the cinema was the tag “An hour from now you’ll be glad you had one”. In the case of Pedro (who plies his dubious trade just opposite the station) one feels that “An hour from now make sure you are close to an A & E department” might be more appropriate.

Revealed! The shocking truth

They are still building my home station, Ruislip Manor. Well, not so much building as endlessly messing around outside it. The platforms have been reconstructed since work began in January 2005 but the land on both sides has become a permanent tip, festooned with Portakabins, diggers, great mounds of earth, and metal fences to keep us out. Check it out here Today I observed with some bemusement some of the builders moving benches from the spot on the ground where they had been parked for several days to a spot a little nearer to the one of the Portakabins. Funny, I thought. Either those benches are destined for a station platform or they should go back to whence they came, presumably Acme Bench Supplies Inc. Why, I pondered, are the builders moving them and not for the first time?

The answer struck like a thunderbolt (oh yeah? Ed). All this guff about rebuilding the station is just a blind. Those cabins are not temporary and the earth mounds are not just spoil-heaps. They are here to stay. The builders are moving in. No wonder they want the benches. They are going to sculpt the earth into a giant rock-garden and of an evening they will sit, each with his yellow hard hat, on the benches arranged neatly outside their new homes. The building job will never end. By day they will drive up and down in the mechanical diggers, scooping up earth here and depositing it there. By night they can retreat to their wooden cabins, light up the gas lamps and cook up something tasty on the old paraffin stove. And if they are bored then there’s bound to be something on the closed circuit TV system – there must be more than 20 cameras deployed around the station. Yes, I exaggerate not one jot. Everywhere you look there is a camera looking back. Actually none of them are wired in yet. The builders might get round to it one day, when they’ve quite finished rearranging the benches.

Baby it's cold inside

Another week of grey, extremely cold weather.  But apart from the odd flurry of snow (and rather pathetic little snow particles at that), it has been an exceptionally dry period. This combination is unusual for southern England. Cold winters normally mean frosts, snow, lots of rain. We have had a fiercely unpleasant east wind for day after day but almost no precipitation at all. A drought in this part of the country seems likely for the summer (why no national pipeline for water?

And what, you may ask, does this have to do with the daily journey to work so vividly brought to life in these chronicles? Quite a lot, actually. The long wait this morning for a train (no indicator boards at any of the stations on the Uxbridge branch line means the extra frustration of not knowing how long the wait will be), enhanced by a biting cold wind forcing a gaggle of commuters to huddle together at the top of the stairs at Ruislip Manor. Since the rebuilding removed the main shelter halfway down the platform there is nowhere else to go.

And there was not much relief on the train. Normally they are warm, sometimes searingly so. But the moment the doors open and a blast of freezing air enters, the carriages become almost as cold as the platforms.  Fortunately today we were not held for several minutes at Ealing Common, as often happens when there is congestion around Acton Town, because then the doors would have been open for an achingly long time.

Can the spring be far away?

A Plethora of Benches

There’s always something new going on at my home station of Ruislip Manor. They have been rebuilding it for over a year and there is no sign of the work coming to an end. Today I noticed a little cluster of benches parked on one of the huge mounds of earth thrown up by the excavations beside the eastbound platform. They had cardboard wrappers that were half torn off and two of the builders were inspecting them closely. One might conjecture that, stumbling over what may have looked like a giant Valentine’s day present left overnight, they could not resist the impulse to rip off the packaging and caress the smooth wooden sides and gleaming iron frames of the seats.

We have plenty of benches already. A few more won’t hurt but as I have previously written, it is the lack of cover that is the stumbling block.  When it rains all the benches are exposed and the only real shelter is at the ticket-office end of each platform. So why not send the benches back, guys, and put in a proper shelter at the eastern end?

Perhaps sponsorship is the name of the game. A tastefully framed sign mounted on the seat-back of the bench might say “You are parking your bum here courtesy of Pedro’s Pizza.” Pedro (just opposite the station entrance) doesn’t get much business – whenever I pass by the shop is empty and makes a sad contrast to Pizza Hut just two doors along. Question is, can our Iberian friend afford any advertising? I expect the big conglomerates in the Manor – Budgens and the more upmarket restaurants – will grab their chance. Or perhaps they will let the commuters put on messages, like the many benches you find in Kenwood marked “in memory of so and so who loved this view”. What might I put? How about “Here sat Anthony on many a boring morning wondering where his train was?” A bit mournful, perhaps. I’ll think of something better the next time I’m standing on the platform wondering where my train is.

The Big Brother station

More exciting developments at Ruislip Manor station to report today. There are 19 lamp-posts on each platform, spaced out at about 8 metre intervals, and each has been adorned with what looks like a loudspeaker.  There are cameras on no less than 7 posts on each side. This is surveillance and control with a vengeance.  Forget the Big Brother House. When they have finished rebuilding the ticket office, let’s all crowd in there and watch the commuters of our choice in their natural habitat.

Coils

It’s all gone rather quiet. Services on the Piccadilly ‘twixt beautiful Ruislip and the heart of darkness, aka Hammersmith, have settled down. Frequency and reliability are back to the standards of last summer when I made far fewer claims for delays than in the past. This is not to say the service is a particularly high standard – a ten minute gap this morning with at least one Piccadilly cancelled shows that. But all things are relative.

Ruislip Manor station continues to be a builder’s tip – what do they do all day, these men with their JCBs and colony of Portakabins? Some coils of wire have appeared adorning each of the metal poles on which the station lights are mounted. Maybe they will be used to hoist some brightly coloured bunting to cheer us up in these dark January days. Or to put in a loudspeaker system? That would be a waste of time. No useful announcements are ever made at this station – there are almost no staff to do them. Today there was a plaintive message on the information board that tells you about delays – it read “Unable to display information – our computer is down”. Quite out of the question for anyone on the staff to phone for info, of course.

One blessing is that there are no advertising hoardings but no doubt they will return. Meanwhile those of us pacing up and down (thanks to unannounced ten minute gaps, see above) can at least admire the view.

Back to normal (?)

Celebrations are in order. Let beer flow in the fountains. Let flags unfurl and fireworks ignite. The westbound platform at my home station, Ruislip Manor, has opened after six months of rebuilding and my journey from work is back to what it used to be.
There is a notice at the station congratulating the builders on finishing early. Actually they are only a few days early and there is still work in progress on both platforms. Now, just to be grouchy, here are several reasons why congratulations are not in order.

• No disabled access. They could have put in a lift or ramps. They did nothing. The station remains inaccessible to wheelchair users and hard for anyone with pushchairs and the like


• The awful shelters on the platforms. Inadequate. Almost no protection from the elements. And though there are seats on the platforms, there are none under the shelters. So if it rains you can sit and get wet or stand (and probably get wet). But not sit in comfort.


• No information. South Harrow has a nice electronic display board and it only has Piccadilly trains. Metropolitan and Piccadilly trains run through Ruislip Manor and we are told nothing and must continue to wait in ignorance.


• Destruction of trees. Many fine trees stood behind the platforms, especially eastbound where they effectively screened the station from the houses. We were promised that they would be replanted. When? The eastbound side has been a builder’s tip for a year. Yes, an entire year, just to rebuild a single concrete railway platform. Impressive or what?

It all feels like a missed opportunity. There was no consultation with the regular commuters before the rebuilding (we actually got just two weeks notice that first one then the other platform would be closed for six months apiece). So I feel no ownership and see no reason to be grateful. On the other hand it is Christmas. So thanks for letting us have our station back. Ho Ho Ho. Or not, as the case may be.

A Refinery burns

Poison cloud hits London, screamed the headline in the Evening Standard. Err, up to a point Lord Copper. The skies were clear and there was no hint of oil-laded pollution in the air. Despite the awesome satellite photos of the huge black cloud covering most of southern England, following the fire at the refinery near Hemel Hempstead, there was little sign of it on the ground. The day the fire started, Sunday, was foggy, cold and very still and the air had a slightly prickly taste but then it does anyway on this sort of late autumn day.
Now the fires are out and the recriminations have begun. But this won’t deter London Underground who managed another round of “faulty communications equipment” problems last night with the usual cancellation of most of the Piccadilly trains up to Rayners Lane. Sod them. If only they would finish rebuilding Ruislip Manor then at least a further useless 10 minutes could be cut from my journey. Sometimes you just wish that the odd poison cloud would drop over Broadway and render helpless the “line controllers”.
And finally, as I ruminated a few weeks back a timely bonus from work has provided the means and the impetus to get a Creative Zen Sleek mp3 player. Lovely. The bloke fiddling with the dinkly little white box in the corner of the train - that's me you know

Danger: Leaf-fall

I’ve previously written about how my homeward journey requires a stop at Ruislip and the crossing of the platform bridge in order to catch a train back to Ruislip Manor, that station’s westbound platform being under repair. In the wet of the gathering autumn a fresh hazard looms menacingly. The steps of the bridge are prone to gather leaves and wet leaves are about the most slippery objects I know.  The danger of somone debarking from a westbound train and racing for an eastbound train (you race because you simply have no idea when the next one might be), slipping on the steps and falling amidst a heap of flailing bodies of one’s fellow commuters (OK, yes, I admit that I’m the “someone” I have in mind), where was I, yes, this seems like a real and present threat.

So should I simply walk more slowly up and over the bridge? Easy to say. Hard to do, when just as one is ascending, an eastbound train appears and you know that you need to move a little bit faster to be sure of boarding. These train drivers don’t hang about, you know. They can see that a westbound train has just disgorged its load of homecoming commuters and they know that some of these will wish to hurry over the bridge and take the train back east. Occasionally the odd sympathetic driver holds the doors open for a few seconds longer. Normally they pull out as quickly as regulations allow, leaving irritated passengers still scrambling down the stairs of the bridge.

This nightmare of moral and physical ambiguity (a little exaggeration here surely: Ed) should come to an end around January when down t’manor is completed and my commuting reverts to normal. Let us hope so. Lives may depend on it.

Bridge over troubled waters, or something

Whilst my station, Ruislip Manor, is being rebuilt, I have to travel onward to Ruislip at night. Then comes the big decision - to catch a train travelling back or to walk? This presents some interesting problems in timing. Let me first explain that there is only one exit at Ruislip. Passengers coming out of London must cross the tracks using the wonderful Victorian bridge - pic thanks to Chris Cobley - and thus emerge on the eastbound platform.

The westbound tracks curve sharply and trains are invisible, and unheard, until just a few seconds before they pull in. It takes exactly as long for the train to stop and open its doors as it does to walk briskly over the bridge. Here then is our first dilemma. If you alight some way from the bridge it is possible for an eastbound train to come and go before you can reach it. This is solved by alighting exactly by the bridge, from the middle carriage of the train. So far so good. But if there is a crowd going up the stairs, one can still be held back and miss a train. Most people leave the station rather than travel back, so it seems legitimate to use a certain energy in getting to the front of the mob and then legging it briskly. Indeed if one is to maximise the chances of getting an eastbound train this strategy is vital. I have had the doors close in my face before now. Yet it seems somewhat indelicate to beat off the old ladies and barge past the women with pushchairs when there is nothing actually in view - people can understand it if they see that you are running for a train but otherwise you stand revealed as an insensitive boor.

Why bother? Why not just stroll over the bridge, go with the flow, get into the groove and chill out (er, is this the right slang?). Because, my dear Watson, as I have demonstrated, it is perfectly possible that a train will come and go before one can get to the eastbound platform, and that is most frustrating. When this happens one must ask oneself, do I feel lucky? Shall I wait here for who knows how long (because London Underground make no information whatsoever available to passengers at this station) or start walking. Should I stay or should I go? (Hmm, sounds like a potentially catchy pop song). The trains do sometimes come through at the rate of one every three minutes. Or there can be a ten to fifteen minute gap. You just don't know. You can try counting the trains between Rayners Lane and Ruislip and estimate if the frequency appears normal but it doesn't mean anything. I know, I've tried. You cannot estimate with any accuracy the probability of the next train arriving soon merely by knowing how many trains have recently preceded it.

The last three nights I have barely had time to cross the bridge before my train has arrived, which is really nice (the lack of delay, not the rush down the steps). There's another four months of rebuilding to go. How many more heart-stopping moments?

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?

Rebuilding blues

My home station, Ruislip Manor, is being rebuilt (Cheers and calls of "not before time"). They have been working since January on the eastbound platform and it is supposed to be ready in June. I rather doubt it. Now LU have announced rebuilding of the westbound platform starting in July and lasting 6 months.

This is becoming depressing. I suspect the whole station will be out of action for a while during the summer, just when it gets too hot to be walking the streets to and from work. But a walk from Ruislip is going to be the norm (as it already is in the morning).

Meanwhile Mayor Ken presses on with his money-grabbing scheme to extend the Congestion Charge zone into Kensington. The edge of the zone will be the main road where my office is located. Doesn't bother me too much because I take the tube to work. What I would like to see is some real improvements on the tube, especially if loads more ex-drivers are going to be taking it in future on the lines and stations that I use. How about a few extra trains at peak time? How about publishing the timetable? How about proper display systems instead of the antique rubbish at Barons Court and Hammersmith (and non-existent at Ruislip Manor)? How about live updates via internet showing the trains actually running so that we can leave for a station with confidence about how long we may have to wait?

I wonder if a summer of discontent is brewing?