Workers' Liberty

Female staff at Euston have been kicked out of their female toilets to make way for the men while the male toilets are refurbished.

A CSA at Euston station was standing on the gateline, when a ceiling tile landed on his head!

You know when a member of the Royal Family opens a hospital or whatever (no such ceremony when one is closed, of course)? In preparation for the ribbon-cutting and baby-kissing, the management order the building to be cleaned more thoroughly than it has ever been cleaned before.

Refurb work at Loughton station involves resurfacing the platforms. A tip to Metronet: make sure the new surface has actually set before you let passengers stand on it. One particular passenger was aggrieved to find her bag covered in black sticky stuff ...

Tubeworker has reported previously that the Regent's Park refurb included the physical bricking-up of the Ticket Office. It seems that this is not the only problem with it.

Metronet gets most of the headlines for incompetence, but let us not forget TubeLines.

• Last week at Chalk Farm, contractors working overnight booked off and left the signals failing at the start of traffic.
  
  

Note to LUL management ... the word 'upgrade' suggests that a station's facilities are to be improved. Hence, removing the Omniscan cameras from Bank/Monument - that's the ones you can spin around in all directions and zoom in on anything in view - is a bad idea.

Victoria station needs asbestos removal, and management's plan is that the ticket office should be relocated to a Portakabin outside the mainline station upstairs for the duration of the works.

OK, so a station undergoing a refurb is never going to be the most comfortable place to work, but St Pauls became a nightmare. A mess room unfit to eat in, toilets unfit to use, staff feeling vulnerable on the gateline late at night cos the Supervisors' office has been temporarily relocated away from the ticket hall.

If you've got a refurb coming up at your station, watch out ... You could see it reopen minus a ticket office.

That's what awaits staff at Regent's Park, where the refurb has included designing out the ticket office. It's gone. Completely.

The escalator refurbishment at Tottenham Court Road very nearly didn't go ahead, because Reed Recruitment - who now take care of TfL recruitment - failed to recruit enough staff.

As contractor YJL started work on the floor removal at Bounds Green, station staff were shocked to find their lockers chucked into the back yard, rather than in the promised Portakabin. The lockers were covered by only an unsecured thin nylon tarp, leaving staff to retrieve their uniform in the dark.

Tubeworker has mentioned before the platform humps on the Waterloo & City. And we repeat: anything that makes the Underground more accessible to wheelchair users and buggy-pushers is OK with us.

Another problem in the Waterloo and Cuty refurb series ... advertising posters have been coming away from walls, causing serious problems.

At one point earlier this week, a platform at Bank had to be closed because the platform wall posters were flapping in the face of incoming trains. Original suspicions were that the contractor might be using new glue - but now it seems more likely that the brand shiny new wall tiles were not primed to hold posters properly.

Union reps were surprised to stumble across a "new Victoria Line train" being tested on a recent visit to Derby. It's odd that it could get so far along the production process without our reps being consulted. You could almost suspect that Metronet and LUL are trying to sneak things past us.

Refurbishment at Woodford has meant that the station's public toilets have been closed. The temporary replacement is portaloos in the car park. But it seems that they are only cleaned twice a week, meaning that they really are a vile, reeking hole.

Beware working in the Ticket Hall at Bounds Green. There's some refurb work going on at the moment, and tiles have been removed from the walls leaving dusty brickwork exposed, without any covering.

So it has finally come to light why the Waterloo & City line has been repeatedly breaking down since it reopened. Metronet didn't replace the signalling system during the five-month-long upgrade because its contract with LUL didn't require it to.

After five months' closure, the Waterloo & City line reopened last week, and immediately ran into trouble.

The cabling was incompatible with the signals, causing surges. The Correct Side Door Enabling kit didn't work. There were power feed problems - all of which should have been sorted through a testing process before the line reopened, you'd think. Passengers who've already had five months' inconvenience don't usually take too kindly to a line breaking down as soon as it reopens.

Queensway? Wasn't that closed for over a year for a root-and-branch refurb? Didn't the refurb overrun by several weeks so the contractor could have the time to get everything right?

So what happened earlier this week then? Sunday, the station closed for half an hour because both shiny new lifts broke down. Monday evening, the eastbound platform closed for over an hour as a Way Out sign dangled in mid-air threatening to fall on someone's head.

When the Waterloo & City line reopens, it will have 'platform humps', raised areas that put the platform at the same level as the train for easy access for people using wheelchairs or buggies (or who have difficulty taking big steps).

Chaos at the top end of the Piccadilly Line last weekend, with Cockfosters to Arnos Grove closed for engineering work. Nothing unusual there, you might think, but some bright spark decided to schedule the closure for the date of the first-ever match at Arsenal's new Emirates Stadium. Result: lots of upset footie fans.

London Underground says it prides itself on being a "Customer Led" organisation but apparently radical plans to upgrade Metropolitan Line trains have not gone down well with the travelling public of Harrow. The reason for this outrage is the possibility of 30% of seating being reduced on the new trains.

Metronet appears to be on a charm offensive, or is it a desperate attempt to rescue its deservedly woeful reputation?

Whichever, they invited the media down into the Drain, to tell us what a fabulous job they are doing down there and how confident they are that it will be finished on time. What do they want? A medal?! The Evening Standard (Falling Standards to you and me) and the BBC duly obliged.

Wasn't Queensway supposed to open at the start of May?

Er, yes. But Metronet couldn't manage to complete the refurb in the full year that the station was closed. Their excuse? Replacing the lifts was "complex". Actually, not just "complex", but "extremely complex".

Last Friday evening, the sun went down and Dagenham East got so dark it had to close.

The reason? As part of the station refurb, contractors had fitted suspended ceiling tiles the previous night, which blocked out the lighting!

The Waterloo & City line is closing for refurbishment from April til September, cutting off the commuters' favourite route into the City.

The official alternative is to go from Waterloo to Embankment and change there for the District line to Monument. However, Tubeworker strongly suspects that many commuters will not like this idea and will go to TCR instead.

Cally Road thought it might have a quiet Christmas, as the refurb was supposed to have been finished last month. But no - it still trundles on.

Some people might think that £30k for a desk, £15k for a little cabinet, and £60k for ceiling bulkheads in the Ticket Hall is a right bargain. Others, though, might point out that you can get some of that stuff at Argos for one-thousandth of the price.

Manor House has been in the wars again. About 10m of the westbound platform was resurfaced during engineering hours. But when the station opened, it was found to be a trip hazard, and the platform had to close.

Another non-success story about private contractors reaches us from New Cross.

A tip: When you resurface a platform, try to make sure that it is actually flat. Otherwise, big puddles can develop when it rains.