Projects, refurbs and upgrades

London Underground improvement projects, station refurbishments, new train stock etc - and the problems and issues that come with them

Trail of Destruction

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.
  • At Warren Street, overnight contractors concreted over a trainstop, shorting out a track...

Save Our Omniscans!

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.

Anyone would think that upgrade...

Off The Premises

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.

Station staff are, naturally, concerned that anyone working in the ticket office will be outside the...

St Pauls: Demanding Dignity

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...

Wot No Ticket Office?

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.

It's yet more proof of maangement's absolute determination...

Gis A Job

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.

Station staff have been pulled from other stations to cover the extra work. It is bad enough that a separate contractor...

Left In The Dark

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...

Getting the Hump, part 2

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.

But there's another glitch .. Because the humps are 'experimental', they are hollow. So if too many...

Slip Sliding Away

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...

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