The Met Comes Good

 Here's something not seen that often. The RMT union has called a strike today and most of the stations in central London are shut. Every one of the traditional tube lines has either no service or a "special" service (meaning very long gaps between trains). Except one. The good old Met appears to be running normally. Which, given that I need to travel on it fairly shortly between beautiful Ruislip and Finchley Road, is rather nice.

Tube status at 11:00am

Back To The Crush

 I had to attend the funeral of a friend today. The ceremony was in West Norwood, a delightful cemetery amidst lushly planted grounds but of course there was the little problem of getting there. I hate driving into London and naturally chose to go by public transport, using the tube to reach Victoria and then the novelty of a trip on Southern railways.

Southern was splendid. The train was clean and comfortable, with sensible announcements (including saying which carriage one was in, useful info for the short-length stations where some carriages do not open their doors), it left on time and arrived on time.

The journey on the tube was less convivial. Though I began my journey shortly before 10:00 from beautiful Ruislip, the Met was fairly busy when it arrived and damn near full by Harrow. Being too close to people in confined spaces still makes me nervous - the country has become used to the covid pandemic but I still want to minimise any chance of catching it. I did not expect the train to be so well-used at that sort of time.

The plan was to transfer to the Jubbly at Finchley Road. We arrived to find an empty one waiting for us. I should have realised... as I and many others swiftly crossed the platform in search of a seat, we were told that due to a person under a train at Green Park, the train was going nowhere. So about-face and back to the still-waiting Met only now my seat had been taken. 

Oh well, I stood in the crowded carriage to Baker Street and transferred to the Bakerloo. Though it was now well after ten, still the platforms were thick with people and it was a push just to get into the train. At Oxford Circus I made the easy crossing to the Victoria Line and blow me, that was also jam-packed, though at least quite a few left at Green Park.

Coming back, around 16:30, was fairly similar, although the Jubbly was now running again but it was still standing room on the Viccy, the Jubbly and the Met (until Wembley Park.)

The Elizabeth Line (aka Crossrail) finally opened for business last week. It was built to relieve the enormous pressure on the Central Line for east-west travel. Seems like a new one rotated at 90° would be handy as well.

Back on the Met

 I last took a London Underground train in the first week of March, 2020. The growing fears about the Covid epidemic convinced me to stay away, well before the first official lockdown. Today I finally ventured back with a short trip on the Metropolitan to Finchley Road (and a return via the Jubilee from Swiss Cottage).

It felt good to be riding the rails again and somewhat disconcerting, too. Most of my fellow passengers wore masks but several hold-outs sat defiantly with mouths and noses exposed. Coming back, I was struck by the number who propped a bag in the adjacent seat, as if to ward off those thinking of sitting next to them. The technique here is to avoid all eye contact with anyone who looks wistfully at the seat on the grounds that most people are far too polite to ask for the bag to be put where it belongs, on the floor.

The journeys themselves were not remarkable, although the Met on the return was held several times for a few minutes; we were very close behind another and they might have been "regulating" the system as they used to call it. There were no announcements about covid precautions, no station assistants were to be seen and, of course, nobody was enforcing the wearing of masks although this is a legal requirement under London Transport's own by-laws. We used to get loads of announcements about not smoking, standing behind yellow lines, keeping one's property with one, all that sort of thing, so it was strange to have a peaceful journey.

I also noticed that some of the signals on the Chiltern Line northbound out of Harrow were covered up. These tracks are also used by some Met services (indeed, a fast Chesham was due in according to my tube app) so it seems that the Automatic Train Operating system, promised for God-knows how many years, may be in force on that section. This system has been running well on the Jubilee for quite a while and it should mean that Mets can go faster. It has been a long time since I used to get hurled around in the swaying carriage of the old A stock belting up from Neasden at 60mph plus; it will be fun if they can push the S stock trains to their full potential over that section.

Once more the chugging of pistons ...

Six years ago the Metropolitan Railway celebrated 150 years of operations. Steam trains hauling vintage carriages delighted our eyes. This past weekend it was the turn of younger sibling District to reach that venerable age and as usual we had the pleasure of watching the old trains once again.

Metropolitan number 1 was fortuitously saved from the wreckers yards when London Underground (shame on them) were trying to get rid of it some 50 years ago. It was built at the turn of the 19th century to haul the express services from Baker Street to Aylesbury, and beyond to Verney Junction. It led a preserved train of "Chesham" set carriages dating from 1890 and had the electric locomotive Sarah Siddons at the back in case a bit of extra puff was needed.

I loved the driver's enjoyment of his role - he waved nicely to us as he passed - and his bowler hat, waistcoat and red scarf.

The introduction of new signalling systems on the Underground means that there may be no more such runs (unless maybe they stick a modern S stock carriage at the front, which would totally ruin the effect). Indeed, this particular journey only went from Ealing to High Street Ken before turning round, so not a lot of real smoke would have got into the tunnels.

Quaint though the train may be to our eyes, a hundred years ago people really did commute into central London from way out in the countryside in just such a way.

How Low Can You Get?

Travellers wishing to take the scenic and rather relaxing Chiltern Line north of Harrow-on-the-Hill may sometimes stray up to the very end of Platform 1 whilst waiting for the next train to arrive. Should they be thinking of a pleasant sit down they need to be warned. Only the very short will find any comfort here. For in this quiet and rather unfrequented part of the station is to be found a bench that no person of normal height is likely to use; unless they wish to incur a severe degree of back ache.

Here is that strangely undersized piece of railway furniture, looking a little like those tiny chairs found in infants' schools when compared to the ordinary benches on the adjacent platform. It's been there for a long time. I can't be the first to have commented on it.

By the way the white triangle at the base of the picture is not a camera error. It is the amazingly bright sunshine of what has become the warmest February day on record, going up to around 20c.

An Unexpected Destination

Here's something I've never seen before in all my years travelling on the Metropolitan Line. There is a siding at Rayners Lane but it is used exclusively by Piccadilly trains. You might think that maybe this shows there is a problem further down the line toward Uxbridge but whenever there is, then they invariably halt the trains at Harrow-on-the-Hill. Indeed if a Met were to use the siding then it might well screw up the Piccadilly timetable [Not that anyone would notice: Ed]

The services wasn't that good at this time but the Met were keeping very quiet indeed about it. There were delays on the Circle and no doubt these were impacting on the Met as well.  I had to detrain at Preston Road so took the Watford and when I alighted the indicators showed the train behind was for Uxbridge. And so the mystery may never be solved.

We Have Been Here Before

Some things change and some same exactly as they were. Some fourteen years ago this very column was established with a principal aim of documenting the daily irritations of commuting. At the time my normal journey was on the Piccadilly from beautiful Ruislip into West London. Typical pieces like "New fares, old problems",  "Communications and Stupidity" and "Not a good morning", to select just three examples from the many penned up to late 2006, expressed the frustration of coping with cancelled trains, trains that were supposed to go to one destination but which were rerouted to another, utterly inadequate information and blatant lies about there being a "Good service" or only "Minor" delays.

This evening a fellow commuter let rip with precisely the same complaints on precisely the same line, indeed at the same station (Acton Town) where many of my pieces were born.

This tweet was one of about ten fired off  by "Lofty" this evening but the picture says it all. A crowd of weary commuters standing on a cold platform waiting for a train when they should by now have been well on their way home.  His invective includes the staff, although to be fair they are as often in the dark about what is going on as the passengers. I went through exactly what Lofty went through one grim evening back in October 2005 and you can read all about it in "Having a Laugh"

Tube English - 6 Serving

Well, I never. I've been forced to resurrect a sequence from ten years ago, back in the days when I travelled daily on the Tube. I cannot claim any credit for spotting this one, it was delivered to me wrapped in brown paper and ribbons on Twitter, but it is worth logging here where it will be stored somewhat more permanently.

I don't recall the use of the word "serving" in this context before. They used to say things like "there is no service", which refers directly to the trains or "services are suspended" which is the same thing but somehow more elegant. How a train service can serve a station is hard to fathom. You can serve a meal (to a person). You can serve at tennis. A server, in computer terms, can supply data to a client computer that requests it. Service, in the context of the Tube, is supplied to the passengers. What I think the hapless tweeter meant to write was "Piccadilly trains are terminating at Rayners Lane, passengers wishing to continue toward Uxbridge should change there for the Metropolitan", as the BBC Travel tweeter nearly managed to say.

Anyway, as I don't commute any more I shall go on serving up vituperation and contumely from the comfort of my office at home, whilst wondering if dear old Milton was a commuter and whether he might have penned the following

They also serve who only stand and wait
For a non-running service that, if it ran, would be late

Advice to Travellers: Don't!

The cold blast is continuing. Red alerts (danger to life) have been issued for some parts of the country and snow is severely hampering travel everywhere. We only had an inch or so overnight here in beautiful Ruislip but a lot more has been forecast. I usually take the tube to Finchley Road on a Thursday but, fortunately, my class has been cancelled. I say fortunately because here is the current status of the Tube (and one taken from yesterday when I also made that journey)

1st March 10:30 am

28 February 9:20am

Few of the reasons given for the problems mention the weather. It is the usual suspects of faulty signals and defective trains that dominate. Odd that two such awful days should exactly match two of the most difficult days, weather-wise, but you may draw your own conclusions.

Snow on a Sunday

Photo: Mrs. Commuter

Here's something not seen in these parts for a long time. I've been trawling the archives and it was seven years ago that I last saw fit to write about snowfall here in beautiful Ruislip. That was the horrible winter of 2010, which began with a cold snap in the last week of November and seemed to go on right through Christmas. The worst day was Saturday 18th December when we had about six inches in a very short time and there were the amazing pictures of aircraft stuck at Heathrow unable to move or even to allow their stranded passengers to debark.

This morning we awoke to about an inch of the white stuff and with a forecast of more to come all day. As you can see, it looks pretty in our back garden but is not particularly serious. We seem to be at the edge of the storm - a family member just a few miles north of here reports four inches - but there are reports of very bad conditions in the Midlands.

And for our regular readers [Do me a favour! Ed] here is this morning's status update for the Tube. Guess what? All the exposed lines in North and West London are snookered. Ah, happy days. I wonder what tomorrow's rush hour will be like?

The Met Throws A Wobbly

The Metropolitan Line was not on good form today. Two weeks ago there was a long gap in the service into town, exactly matching the time I wished to travel and they only bothered to tell people on the platform at Ruislip Manor after I had pressed the button on the Information panel to speak to a member of staff. Today exactly the same thing - nothing ran into London for some 20 minutes, nothing showed on the platform electronic displays or on my phone app that shows a much wider range of movements, not even to show trains ready at the terminus, Uxbridge; but this time nobody bothered either to answer the information panel (which broadcast the sound of a ringing phone for very long time; whether this a real phone or just a sort of placebo sound effect to calm irritated passengers I cannot tell) or make any announcements. And exactly as last time, on arrival at Harrow-on-the-Hill our train was promoted to be a "fast", saving some of that precious time lost hanging around the platform for me but making the journeys of anyone hoping to stop off before Finchley Road even longer.

Ah well, the problem would be bound to be fixed five hour later on my return, eh? Wrong. There was no now service between Baker St. and Aldgate; fortunately trains were running north but were packed about as full as could be. Today I broke my journey at Preston Road to visit a newly home-from-hospital Mother-in-Law [That's a lot of hyphens, they don't grow on trees you know: Ed] but kept an eye on the trains to make sure of the final leg. And just as well that we left when we did for not long afterwards this was the joyful news:

The various reasons for today's pleasantries were given as signal failure at Finchley Road, security alert at Moorgate and finally the absence of control staff. Yeah, maybe they were trying to commute in via the Met and gave up.

Plan B fails

I ceased real commuting some years ago but I regularly take the train from beautiful Ruislip to Finchley Road. Today I was nice and early for the departure from the Manor. We stopped short on the approach to Harrow, with another train on the fast line also stopped. Potentially a bad sign, suggesting congestion ahead. We eased into the platform and the driver told us the other train was going first. So almost the entire trainload crossed the platform. So far no problem. Except he did mention something about a track problem...

No sooner had we pulled out of Harrow than we were told our train was now stopping at Wembley Park. We arrived, about three hundred people piled out and we all played the same guessing game - was it worth taking a Jubilee? The Met driver announced that it was possible the train behind would be running normally but he didn't sound very confident.  A Jubbly arrived and almost everyone got on. This is my normal fallback in the event of a problem on the Met and it usually works.

Except today it did not. We reached Dollis Hill (and if a station in London could be described as the middle of nowhere this surely must be a good candidate), stopped and were informed that there was a suspect package at North Greenwich and all Jubbly's were being held. Oh Joy. Naturally the Mets began running again but from this station all one can do is watch as they thunder by on the fast track. I decided to return to Wembley Park. Good plan.  A minute after I took my seat in a Stanmore-bound train, almost everyone from the inert southbound joined me, the driver no doubt having advised it. Presumably they could maintain a reasonable northbound service?

No. We sat at Dollis Hill for a long time due to "the trains ahead". Eventually we moved off, we all crossed over at Wembley Park and got back on the now normally running Met and back again past Dollis Hill (southbound still stuck there) and so on to my destination a mere 35 minutes late.

The only laugh was when the driver of the northbound Jubbly at Dollis Hill made his third announcement about the ongoing delays and suggested we all take local buses instead. Yes. Good plan. When I got home I checked if such a journey were possible. It is. London Underground  TFL's website allots 54 minutes to a trip that takes 7 minutes on the Jubbly and about 4 on the Met. We won't be bothering, thanks.

The Posh Line

Other rail lines lay on replacement bus services when things go wrong. Not our beloved Metropolitan. Spot of bother in the verdant countryside north of Rickmansworth? Taxi!

Summer at last (2)

In the good bad old days when I earned a living in central London, the onset of a bit of really hot weather was a mixed blessing. Nice to be able to enjoy it with a cold drink in the shade, uncomfortable on the daily commute and downright unpleasant when things went wrong. So you can imagine what my feelings would have been, had I still been gainfully employed, from the following two exhibits:

The first is a current tweet from my good friends at the Metropolitan Line informing the world that there is no service from Harrow towards beautiful Ruislip and the second the thermometer by my back door. Yup, I would be sitting on platform 4 at Harrow, quietly frying and drumming my fingers whilst waiting for a train. Or perhaps queuing in the sultry street for a bus that would then lurch around a route that would get Mandlebrot excited before crawling up to Ruislip Manor.

This present heatwave will not last long, and compared to parts of Western Europe (45c in Spain anyone?) it is not too newsworthy but it's a while since we've had one. So worth a little blogette, anyway.

 

Extremely late update (2022): It came to my attention that this piece bears the same title as one posted in May 2012. I have therefore amended it by adding the "(2)" as a suffix. I have also admonished the Editor and fined him/her (whatever) a month's supply of biscuits.

The 10 Year Struggle is Over as Ruislip Manor joins the 21st Century

Important historical background

10 years ago my home station, Ruislip Manor, had a refurbishment. On other stations electronic display boards show passengers the expected times of arrival of trains. In the days before smartphone apps put this sort of information at our fingertips, they were a blessing. I hoped that one of the improvements of the rebuild would be the installation of such boards and said so in this very column.

It took them three months after the rebuild but in a piece at the end of March 2006 I celebrated the appearance of the self-same signs. Three weeks later they switched them on and, as I noted at the time,  they showed nothing more than the direction in which trains ran, and they couldn't even get that right. But I thought it would be all sorted out pretty soon. By May I was becoming more cynical. In February 2007 the utter uselessness of the boards, which continued to display only the wrong direction of travel (and the time, to be fair) was taken for granted.

All the information about train movements, including on the Metropolitan, was made publicly available in  March 2009 and I celebrated this development by crediting London Underground. Of course the information was not displayed on the platforms at Ruislip Manor - the electronic signs continued to show nothing of any value. Why did they not hook them up the same data that was made available to any smartphone app developer? I have no idea. I returned to this theme a couple of weeks later.

Being able to use one's phone to check on train arrivals was, and remains, a pure joy for the experienced commuter. But it always irritated that LU refused to use the expensive equipment that should have been the primary source of such information. I had another go at them late in 2010. After that, as I began to commute less, it didn't seem to grate so much. And I suppose I had begun to assume that nothing would ever change again.

And now today's momentous news

This picture tells the story. Apologies for the usual blurring caused by a combination of my cheap phone's camera and the gathering gloom of a late winter afternoon. But what does that matter? For the information boards are finally doing what they should have been doing 9 long years ago - giving us information!

It does say "Service under test" and I noted that there were no signs working at other stations on the section up to Harrow (south of which they have been merrily doing their job for many years), so too soon to crack open the Bollinger but maybe a glass of weak lemonade would be fitting.

And not only that - for at the entrance to the station they have activated another long dormant display - this one showing the arrivals at both platforms. Another huge positive, though Waterloo tube station had one installed - and working - in April 2009, as I noted at the time, and of course most other stations have also had them for ages.

So, assuming that it all works once the testing is complete (and I have no reason to think otherwise), this brings a very long and frustrating period to a happy conclusion. How about that?

The end of the endless tube upgrade?

Something rather bewildering to report from the commuter front. A poster at the station announced it first and now the calendar of planned engineering works on the TFL website confirms it, at least for the next two months. Barring one weekend there are to be no closures for upgrade work on the Metropolitan.

If this is not your tube line of choice then you may ignore the rest of this column and shrug. But for those for whom this steel road is the transport lifeline that makes living on the edge of London possible, then this is amazing news indeed. We have been living with regular weekend closures for so long it is difficult to grasp that the Met can run all through the week on a regular basis. Fancy that! Come Saturday we can stroll down to the station expecting (oh, joyous word) that normal services will be provided. The dreaded phrase "Darling, the trains aren't running, can you give me a lift to..." will become otiose. Hanging about in the car, in teeming rain, parked on the yellow lines outside a station where the trains are terminating short, with one eye open for traffic wardens and the other on the precious phone app that shows the arrival of the train one hopes is conveying one's loved one, will be one of those quaint memories one dredges up in later life to bore one's great-nephews and nieces when they ask "What was it really like in the bad old days?". They won't believe a word of it, of course. That's the trouble with modern youth. Soft. Given everything on a plate. [We seem to be digressing a bit: Ed].

Anyway, we've had years of it and I'm heartily glad that the current round is completed. Once upon a time the Met trains used to hurtle at speeds of over 60mph on some sections, swaying and jerking sufficient to hurtle luggage off the racks. Well they did away with the racks on the new "S" stock units (sod them) but they have promised a return to faster journey times when the track was improved. I'm looking forward to a bit of adrenaline-pumping action in the new year. [Is this a euphemism?: Ed]

Summer Lightning

The English summer has arrived with a heatwave, the traditional English batting collapses in Test Matches and a furious thunderstorm that woke up Mrs. Commuter and myself at 2:00 am. Although a centimetre of rain fell (lit by intense electrical discharges that made our darkened bedroom resemble a photographer's studio) today has been hotter still and will probably be the warmest of the year. Once upon a time it would have been my melancholy lot to spend all day in a hot airless office, at the end of the day to trudge up the baking canyons of the London office blocks to a station and wonder if my stifling and sweaty train would arrive on schedule and, when it finally did arrive, whether it would make it all the way or be diverted (due to an "incident" twenty miles away).  But not any more. Today your correspondent was sprawled out at home watching the Tour de France (and reading e-books during the interminable ad breaks). So I am unable to report what it was like at the front line of commuting today. I could easily invent a few lurid details, I suppose, but you only have to browse through some of the back issues of this column and you could do just as well by yourselves.


Written a little later from the above, at 18:30.
You really couldn't make it up.  Here is the TFL service status for right now.

Yup.  On the very route on which I used to travel each day (until that great day in 2006 when my office moved to Waterloo) there is currently no service. Just think, I would have left my office say at 18:10, reached Barons Court and found a seat, with luck, on an Rayners Lane bound service at, say, 18:25 and just after we pulled out of Hammersmith (last chance to switch to another line) our train would have been diverted to Northfields. And there I would be, sweltering and abandoned at Acton and not knowing whether to go back into Central London or hang around on the platform. Happy days, what?

Le Tour visits Epping

All quiet before the Sprint tears up here

The Tour de France completed its third, triumphant, day in England today with the Cambridge to London stage. As the route was to pass through Epping, at the very end of that self-same Central Line that also serves beautiful Ruislip, what could be better than a day in the sun watching the world's largest annual sporting event coupled with a jaunt on the Tube into deepest Essex?

Mrs. Commuter was up for it so we packed lunch, folding chairs and our hopes for good weather and set off.

It was quicker and more comfortable to take the Met to Liverpool Street than to walk three quarters of a mile to the nearest Central Line station. Both lines were on form. You could spot the spectators easily - loads of them with casual clothes and an air of being on holiday contrasting nicely with the few workers going in to town rather late in the morning, but most seemed to leave at Baker Street bound for the finishing sections along the Embankment and the Mall, and the Central Line train was surprisingly quiet. Actually this was an illusion. Our carriage was half full but there were plenty further up the train and a fair number emerged into the bright sunshine at Epping to march up the hill and find a place to watch the race.

In the past two days the stages in Yorkshire have brought out huge crowds, even in the most obscure of villages and we had no idea how far we might have to walk to find a decent spot. The friendly helper with the "Tour Maker" T-shirt who was strolling up with us mentioned that no sooner had the area by the sprint finish (bang in the centre of the town) opened that morning than it was filled up. This seemed a bit ominous even though we were there before 11:30 and the race was not due until 2:30 or later. But the High Street is long and wide and there was plenty of room. We took a prime pitch on the road itself (behind a barrier), well shaded by the huge oaks that line the whole street, and settled down to wait. Gradually the crowd thickened until there was a wall of people as far as one could see in both directions.

When we arrived the local bell-ringers were having a fine time banging away with great gusto but when they concluded, rather bafflingly with two single chimes at exactly 11:41, the only entertainment was cheering the parade of vehicles that preceded the race. Some blared their horns. The British police motor-cyclists waved and, as they roared past, extended gauntleted hands to be slapped by people leaning over the barriers. The French Gendarmarie were grim-faced and stared straight ahead. One or two official cars played what must have been important announcements but as they were in French and as the cars were driving past at high speed, so that we only heard a few distorted words anyway, who knows what they were trying to communicate?

Every cyclists's dream - chips

Around 1pm the official publicity caravan began pouring through. A bewildering succession of cars and floats, some with young ladies prancing around, others tossing the odd freebie into the crowd (We nearly scored a small pack of Tetley's Tea and had a carton of fruit juice sail overhead whilst a red sunhat was scooped up by a lady within arms length) and some giving us a blast of pointlessly loud "music". The photo shows the approach of the McCain Oven Chips platoon. And no, they weren't chucking heavy packs of frozen chips at 40mph into the spectators.

After the caravan we had no real idea how long the racers would take. Someone heard that the race was running late. The clouds gathered, the day cooled and a few drops of rain fell but fortunately nothing more serious. More cars and motorbikes came by, the police continuing to be the noisiest contributors. Things seemed to pick up when a few vans stopped nearby and what have must been a hand-picked team of specialists emerged to spend some time stacking up some traffic cones before driving away to applause.  Everyone was cheered at this stage, the team cars, the official cars and the mysterious interlopers from French institutions. There was a lull. A red official car, the first such, came by. This suggested the race was pretty close. Suddenly there were press motorbikes hurtling by, the helicopter was clattering above and with a burst of cheering from further down the high street two real competitors flashed into view and were gone. A louder cheer and the peleton were with us in a blur of black, green and blue. A long tail of team cars each bearing a rack of spare bikes. More cheers for a couple of stragglers. A few more official cars and a van bearing the legend "Fin de Course".  And that was that.

Now for the journey home. A mob of tired but satisfied spectators trudged back down the hill to the station, found the main entrance cordonened off and had to walk a bit further to go round the back, to be greeted by a waiting, empty train. Everyone was able to get a seat and it left a moment later, with another alongside ready for the next contingent. We had been apprehensive about this bit, fearing a long wait even to gain entry to the station, never mind boarding a train, but the Underground did well today. To arrive at Liverpool Street and wait approximately 30 seconds for an empty Uxbridge that took us home was the icing on the cake.

Congratulations to the organisers, the huge number of smiling volunteers and our good-humoured fellow spectators. Social historians might care to note that nobody was smoking - how's that for a massive change in customs in the space of a generation?

A half-baked strike

I was wrong when I wrote last week that the strike called by the RMT union would cripple the tube from Monday evening to Friday morning. The strike finishes tonight so the tube should be back to normal tomorrow (Thursday) morning. And although it has caused serious disruption to normal services the tube is not crippled. Every line has run services today, (apart from the Waterloo & City) and the vast majority of stations are open. I was able to reach my drama group after all, although there were long delays, and the fortuituous arrival of a bus just as I exited Finchley Road station meant I wasn't late (but it needed a sprint to catch the bus, and that sprint began on the platform because I knew, thanks to my smartphone app, that the bus was only a couple of minutes away).

At least it was a beautifully warm and sunny day and sitting out on the platforms waiting for the trains was a pleasant enough way to pass the time. I guess retirement from the daily grind does have some consolations.

Tube website "upgrade" - Will somone tell me what is going on?

It used to be easy, using the London Underground website, to see what trains were due at any station, making it easy to plan your travel. You can also use dedicated apps for smartphones. And just as well because while those apps continue to be well designed and useful, TFL have revamped their website and ruined it. Look at this picture which is supposed to show arrivals at Ruislip Manor:

The eastbound arriving train is designated as both Metropolitan and Piccadilly as are the first two Uxbridge-bound. And then we apparently have two Piccs followed by two Mets, each arriving in tandem. What on earth? The line controllers know which is which. My smartphone app knows. But they can't put that info on the website (and don't get me started on the platform electronic displays which still, after 8 years, show nothing except the direction of travel and they even get that wrong! (They show London-bound as southbound, rather than eastbound). Curiously, the direction of travel is correctly shown on the website example.

So, if I need to know when the next eastbound Met is due in, no point in wasting time looking at the official website. By the way, the "check front of train" is another symptom of one part of the organisation not talking to the other because, of course, the destination of each train is assigned before it starts each journey.

Perhaps these are just little glitches and will be sorted soon. On a more positive note, you can now see bus arrivals at the station as well so credit to TFL for this bit of long overdue integration.