Delays all round

My normal journey home is on a Piccadilly line train from Barons Court to Ruislip Manor. In emergency I take a Central Line from Shepherd's Bush to Ruislip Gardens, a longer walk at each end but a slightly shorter train journey. Having a fall-back is a great comfort, meaning that I can easily change my travel plans if the Piccadilly has problems.

Imagine my feelings yesterday then, when the TFL website displayed "severe delays" on the Picc due a person under a train at Kings X (and signal failure at Hammersmith for good measure), and also severe delays on the Central due to some obscure problem miles away at Gants Hill. Things cheered up later when the notice about the Central disappeared. "Ah-ha", I thought, "At least my lifeline is working". When I left to go home the notice about the Piccadilly was still there (6 hours after the original incident!!) so I trudged up to Shepherd's Bush where a suitable train came in quite quickly. And then, having moved about 200 yards, we stopped in the tunnel. And waited. And waited. Then moved from one signal to the next. And waited. Eventually the driver informed us this was all due to 2 (yes 2) faulty trains at - wait for it - Leytonstone (miles away at the other end of the line).

Anyway I got home after a journey of about 85 minutes. Now for an interesting problem. The Customer Charter refund scheme gives you your money back if you are delayed by 15 minutes or more. As indeed I was. But the guts of the delay was because I had to take another route other than the one I had planned. The refund form asks you where you had intended to travel from and on which line were you travelling when the delay occurred. How on earth do I answer that? I had intended to go from Baron's Court but did not. I was delayed essentially by the absence of trains on the Piccadilly but the line I actually went on was the Central. There isn't a box to tick to say that you went one route (which itself may have been running normally) because your chosen route was not working.

Such are the dilemmas of modern life, and such indeed is the lack of imagination of the people who design refund forms.

Size and history

Our Victorian forebears were small people. We know this because if you put two average sized men into two adjacent seats on a typical Underground train (say, for the sake of example, the Piccadilly Line) then their shoulders will touch and forearms overlap. Such enforced bodily contact would have horrified the bewhiskered gentlemen in waistcoasts (and fob watches) and stovepipe hats (or is that IK Brunel?) who designed the system. They probably imagined people sitting comfortably, marvelling at how much personal space they had. Actually if Brunel had designed the Tube it would have been so much better. His wide gauge tracks would have allowed much bigger carriages, with space for luggage and for people to walk between the seats without tripping over legs at every step. And the trains would not jolt and sway so much, inducing fewer incidents involving clashes of flailing limbs.

Health and Safety Insanity

The papers reported that power failures brought some GNER trains to a halt during the recent heatwave. After two hours in the full force of the sun, the airconditioning failing and temperatures rising to 115F, passengers were forced to smash the windows. Why? Because the doors were shut. Why? Oh, "health and safety reasons".

My temperature rose dangerously when I read this. Health and Safety rules have nothing whatsoever to do with Health and Safety but are purely to prevent lawsuits for negligence. It doesn't matter if people faint in the overheated trains (as some did), and they have medical conditions that will be dangerously exacerbated by their ordeal, well they can get knotted as far as the H&S people are concerned. But it is vital that the doors stay shut in case, HORROR, someone might get out and graze their knee on the gravel in the track bed.

I hope the passengers sue, personally, whoever makes these vicious rules and trains the railway staff how to apply them. But of course they won't be able to. 10 people die every day on the roads in Britain. That's fine. Health and Safety couldn't care less. Making people sweat to death in train carriages, yes, that definitely is good for them and much much better than enabling either windows that open (in an emergency) or doors that open (in an emergency).

One good thing about Underground trains is that the doors at the end of each carriage have opening windows and the doors themselves can be used to cross into the next carriage merely by turning a handle. Power or not, passengers can escape if they have to, even get down on to the track if all else fails. I suppose the H&S people will be along soon to lock up the doors and bolt the windows shut. In case some stupid git has an accident. Never mind what the overwhelming vast majority of passengers want.

Let me give you another, albeit much more trivial example of the stupidity of H & S rules. In my office all the interior doors have to self-closing. Because of "fire risks". So if I am carrying something awkward, like a computer, I must either prop the door open (oops, illegal) or put down the computer, open the door, jam it open with my foot, bend down to pick up the computer and then repeat on the other side to close the door. Now I have bad back and picking heavy objects off the floor is not good for it. Let us do a risk analysis and compare the real damage to me and the much worse, but much less probable, risk to me of a fire. There is at the least a bloody good case for saying that the closure of the interior doors is a greater risk to health and safety than keeping them open. But it is not a case we are allowed to make. Only the opinions of the local Council and the Fire service matter.

No, I am not saying a fire could not happen. I am saying that it would be an event with very low probability (our office is non-smoking, has no dodgy electrics, there are always people around etc etc). Whereas I have had back pain and the probability of getting it again is real and measurable.

This rant has been brought to you by The Sick and Tired Society, an organisation for people who are Sick and Tired of being told what to do by other people. Donations by credit card and PayPal will help us carry on our vital work. Thank you.

Enduring the heatwave

Walking home along Hammersmith Road last night the heat was really on. The sun, 5 hours past the zenith, was still intense and the air so warm, even in the shade, that to be out in the direct sunlight was painful. When I'm on holiday I don't go out in temperatures like that, so to have to do so at the end of a normal day's work is most uncalled-for. At least it is possible to find a seat on the Tube now that the holiday season is well underway. But before sinking gratefully into one, there is the need to draw a deep breath of relatively fresh air first, because the atmosphere in a train that has just emerged from the tunnels on a hot day is not one to savour. I know there are technical, not to mention financial, problems with air-conditioning Underground trains but if something could be done to blow fresh air through them as they come out of a tunnel, that would be much appreciated by all.

I'm glad I remembered to fill my water bottle last night before leaving the office. I used to carry a little plastic fan as well but it was a fiddly thing and the only way to switch it off was to unscrew the top which meant the battery fell out. It was worth it to see the look on the faces of my sweating fellow-travellers as they thought "What is that buzzing thing? Cor, that's clever."

The big question is when to switch to shorts? I have to wear socks and I understand that socks and shorts are strictly verboten by the fashion police. Do I risk some very snooty looks or simply dig out my very lightest trousers and have done? At the moment the anti-shorts feeling is on top and I am giving my ultralight American travelling trousers an airing, the first since I wore them in Rome earlier this year when it was about as warm as it is in London right now. Got them in a factory outlet in New England last year and so far they have been an excellent investment.

A view from the bridge

Sometimes, like last night, the Piccadilly train moving westbound out of South Harrow stops on the long embankment leading into Rayners Lane. This is where the Metropolitan line joins and there is often congestion at the station with trains queuing on both tracks. At such times one has the chance to admire what must be one of the most spectacular views available from any Underground line (obviously in this context "Underground" means a train operated by London Underground, notwithstanding that most of them run overground for much of the time).
South Harrow station is not particularly high, perched as it is on the lower slopes of Harrow Hill, but the line at this point is high above the street and the land slopes downward to Rayners Lane quite sharply. To the south and west the plains of Middlesex extend into a green-fringed horizon that speaks of the open fields of Buckinghamshire and Berkshire (mmm, quite poetic this bit). Behind us the spire of the church atop Harrow Hill and the many Victorian buildings of the school. The view appears to run for many miles - there are no hills in the way - and one ought to be able to see Windsor Castle (which you certainly can from the top of Harrow Hill).

On a fine summer evening with the sun flaring over the Thames Valley this really is quite a view, alas taken utterly for granted by my fellow passengers (and, let's face it, me on most nights). It would be even nicer if the trains did not stop so regularly awaiting a green light to proceed down the track.