Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Metropolitan Line, 1863

The first underground railway in London, the Metropolitan Railway, opened on January 10 1863. It ran from Paddington (Bishop's Road) to Farringdon St (now just Farringdon), calling at Edgware Road, Baker Street, Portland Road (now Great Portland St), Gower St (now Euston Square) and King's Cross.

According to the February 1863 edition of Bradshaw's Railway Guide, end to end journey time was 18 minutes. It's now 12-13 minutes, which doesn't seem like a massive improvement until you realise that there were at most six trains an hour in each direction on the line compared to, well, a whole lot more today.

Fares were fairly simple - single fares for short journeys were 4d, 3d or 2d for third, second and first class respectively (yes, it had three-class service) and 6d, 4d or 3d for longer trips. The first train was at 0600, the last one was at midnight, and there were even occasional expresses - non-stop from Paddington to Farringdon or vice-versa calling only at Edgware Road.

And of course, it was steam-hauled...

Epping to Ongar

As many people will remember, the London Underground's Central Line used to go all the way to Ongar. In 1994 the single-track line from Epping to Ongar was closed, and it's now run as a preserved railway by the Epping-Ongar Railway Volunteer Society.

The EOR is currently in a period of shutdown for engineering work, and they were kind enough to grant me permission to walk the six miles of their line last weekend. It was an interesting trip, as the line is a combination of London Underground and mainline engineering.

The photos are available here.

London Underground and National Rail photography rules

It's become clear to me recently that there's a lot of confusion along staff, customers and police alike about what the rules are governing personal photography on London Underground and National Rail (Network Rail / ATOC members) stations and trains. Given the number of unpleasant incidents which have been documented over the last year or so, I thought it might be useful to all involved if I were to summarise the results of my various bits of both formal and informal research on what's allowed and what's not. This is just the result of a little web searching, so no responsibility accepted for advice taken, especially as I'm not a lawyer. Get that? I'm not a lawyer - the below just represents my understanding of what I believe to be the situation. You want legal advice, call a lawyer. Don't call me. If you want a UNIX system adminstrator, feel free to call me, but while sysadmins are an opinionated bunch, relying on them for legal advice is like relying on your lawyer to set up your new mail server. Sources are hotlinked.

General

There is no automatic legal right to take photographs on private property. For the basic legal issues surrounding photography in the UK in general, see (download, and print, and carry with you) Linda Macpherson's excellent summary.

Neither Transport for London or National Rail byelaws make any specific mention of photography. However, as with any private place you have no automatic right to be on a railway station, and can be asked to leave the premises if it's clear that you don't have any business with the railway (i.e. you're planning on travelling or meeting someone).

As far as I can understand it, nobody has any right to touch or interfere with your equipment or order you to turn over your film or memory cards. I need a little more research to confirm this, but I suspect that the only people who can do this are police officers, and then only in very specific situations. Under any other circumstances it's a criminal offence. (Not being a lawyer, I need independent confirmation of this. Have I said I'm not a lawyer enough times?)

Be aware that both the Official Secrets Act 1911 and Terrorism Act 2000 impose potential restrictions on what you can photograph. Even if you don't read any more of it, read and digest the National Security section of Linda Macpherson's guide.

London Underground

You may take personal photographs on the Underground, but you MUST NOT use flash. This is specifically addressed in section 4.5 of the Conditions of Carriage, which states that you must not (among other things) "take flash photographs and/or use a tripod or other camera support equipment". It's hard to disagree that this constitutes an implied permission to take the odd snapshot on the Underground. From experience, I'd also recommend that if your camera has an autofocus assist light that you either turn it off or tape over it if you can't - although it's not a flash, they can be pretty bright and I've had drivers complain about them over the PA before.

Notwithstanding the above, serious photography and filming requires prior permission and a permit from the (very helpful) LUL Film & Photography Office. While this doesn't seem to be stated explicitly, I guess this refers to "serious photography", as in photography for photography's sake and photography being the main reason for your being on the station, as opposed to a few snapshots while waiting for a train - the boundary is rather fuzzy, though, and I think this is what's leading to confusion. The permit itself states that station supervisors may also at their discretion permit the use of a tripod under circumstances if you're a permit-holder. Unfortunately, in my experience the type of camera being used seems to be being used as more of a determinant of whether photographs being taken are personal or not than the subject matter and the behaviour of the photographer. In any case, loitering on a station for a long time photographing passers-by or whatever most likely crosses the boundary between casual snapshots and serious photography.

If you are in possession of a permit, it does not give you carte blanche permission to take photographs. Final permission must be sought from the Station Supervisor on duty, and you will be required to sign in and out. Under most circumstances, photography authorised through the permit mechanism is only permitted during off-peak hours.

National Rail

The only source I can find here is the Guidelines for Railway Enthusiasts which have been rather unilaterally adopted by Network Rail and the various ATOC companies. These state that
Taking photographs on stations is permitted providing it is for personal use. For any commercial photography, prior permission must be sought from the appropriate train operator or, from Network Rail at their 17 major stations. On busy stations the use of a tripod may cause a dangerous obstruction to passengers and you may be asked not to use one. In addition, tripod legs must also be kept away from platform edges and behind the yellow lines. Flash photography on platforms is not allowed as it may distract the attention of train drivers and train despatch staff and is therefore a potential safety hazard. You are also not allowed to take photographs of security related equipment such as CCTV cameras.

Finally

This section is composed purely of my own personal opinion, but it's in the interests of everyone to be reasonable. Photographers, enthusiasts and the rules surrounding their activities have once again come under scrutiny recently because some people are quite rightly worried about unusual or suspicious activity. It's easy to simply dismiss these concerns as unjustified paranoia and an excuse for a clampdown, but given that everyone's a little nervous right now it's a good idea to try and understand their point of view.

Use common sense. It's hard to convince people that you're totally innocent if you're going around taking photos of, say, security doors or CCTV cameras rather than arriving trains and platform furniture.

If you do happen to get stopped or even searched by the police (most probably a stop and search under section 44 of the Terrorism Act) then it's most probably for a reason and it's probably easier to agree with good grace than to risk being detained for a few hours at the police station. You might want to check the BTP's guide to your rights and the responsibilities of the police if you're stopped using these powers.

Ultimately, it's in the best interests of everybody involved for enthusiasts and photographers to treat everyone in an official position who they encounter with courtesy and good grace. Going too far in the other direction could lead to photography getting forbidden altogether (after all, "no photos" is a far easier policy to interpret and enforce than the current "photos are usually okay, but.." policy, isn't it?), which would be a lose-lose situation all around. It's also in the best interests of everybody involved for any staff and police officers coming into contact with photographers and enthusiasts to treat them with courtesy and good grace in return, mind.

Photographers, railways and consistency of policy

As I mentioned a few months ago, the current security paranoia prevailing in the UK is making life very difficult for people whose hobbies happen to include photography. While the rights photographers have in law when taking photographs in and around public places are fairly clear and laid out in this excellent summary which everyone should read, people like me who like taking pictures of railways and, in particular, the London Underground have a rather more confusing time. Railway stations are private property, so the owners can impose more or less any conditions they want within reason. Historically, the main rule concerning photography on and around the Underground and the main line railways has been one of common sense. Personal photography - no problem, but don't get in the way of other people, no tripods without the express permission of the station manager, and absolutely no flash because it blinds drivers. If anyone asks you to stop with a good reason or asks what you're doing, be polite. Professional photography, photo shoots, filming and anything else were a completely different area and obviously required advance permission.

Then came the last few years. Notwithstanding the fact that these common-sense rules had generally served people just fine for a very long time, including through a lengthy and unpleasant campaign of terrorist violence lasting from the 1960s to the 1990s, all kinds of bizarre clampdowns and rule changes started happening as a collective mood of paranoia gripped the nation, characterised by weaselly excuses such as "Well, you can't be too careful" and "Of course, terrorists could make use of those photos for planning an operation". After a number of unpleasant incidents involving railway enthusiasts minding their own business being turfed out of stations, threatened with the police and generally made to feel like criminals, it became clear that this decades-old understanding was now At An End. The growth in the use of private security firms rather than railway staff didn't help this, as undertrained security guards with little understanding of railway culture started throwing their weight around.

Still, I thought. London Underground have a sensible policy, which is more or less exactly the one described above. You can see it here on their website. Personal photography is fine, no flash, no tripods, anything else requires a permit. The usual rules. Ambling around there with a camera shouldn't be a problem, right? Well, no. The LU Film Office's FAQ states that "anybody wanting to film or take pictures must seek prior permission from the London Underground Film Office". I found myself shouted at at great length (rather incoherently - I could hardly understand a word of it) over the PA at an LU station a few days ago for taking a photo of a platform sign with my D200, so emailed the Film Office to ask what the actual policy in force is. They were apologetic and helpful, and offered to issue me with a free photography permit for use in future. However - (a) permits only last for a month, and renewing them is going to be a lot of hassle for me and extra work for the Film Office who probably have better things to do, and (b) all a permit entitles you to do is to ask the Station Supervisor with slightly less chance than usual of them saying "no".

I suspect that what caused the tirade was the fact that I was using my digital SLR. Now, point and shoot cameras don't generally work well in the Underground where flash isn't allowed, as their low-light performance just isn't up to that kind of work. If you want bad, fuzzy photos then that's fine - go ahead and use a digital compact (I find them a lot more convenient a lot of the time), but if you want to be able to reliably take sharp photos at handheld shutter speeds it's hard to beat a DSLR and a fast prime lens. However, merely being in possession of such an artifact doesn't make me a professional photographer who needs the permission of the Press Office to be there.

This is becoming a real problem for railway enthusiasts across the board, and I've decided that I'm going to attempt to collect incidents of railway photographers and other enthusiasts being hassled while doing things which were always perfectly ordinary and harmless in the past. By doing this, I hope to to be able to develop a coherent picture of the situation to encourage the relevant authorities to to work with, rather than against enthusiasts and ensure that their staff are also made aware of what is and is not permitted.

If anything like this has ever happened to you, then please do drop me a line with the details (when, where, who was involved, what rules were cited, what the outcome was, etc) and I'll add it to the files.

Dear South West Trains

I just emailed this to the customer relations department at South West Trains...

Dear SWT,

(Note - This piece of terrible doggerel relates to the 2311 departure from Walton-on-Thames on 17/1/06.)

A good evening was spent at the house of my brother
In Walton-on-Thames - we'd been marking my mother's
Successful completion of yet one more year spent in
This world (how many I should really not mention).

We left for the station at ten fifty-five,
As we both had to wake and be reasonably alive
For work the next morning, so we set off to aim to
Catch the eleven past fast service for Waterloo.

The train had left Portsmouth some two hours before,
And was issued the headcode of two T six-four.
After calling at Walton it was scheduled to run
To Waterloo non-stop (well, via Surbiton).

At eight minutes past we arrived at the station,
And hearing the incoming train made to hasten
Through the tunnel which leads from the down "car park" side
Of the building, to the up. We had made it in time!

There the train stood, white paint stained by the sodium
Lights, doors shut tight 'gainst the cold of the night,
While the digital clock on the platform marked time
And the seconds flicked up towards 23:09.

I stepped forward in order to open the door
(Of a Siemens Desiro of class 444,
As being a bit of a trainspotting wonk
I often recall such irrelevant bunk.)

But the buttons to open the doors were inactive,
And the train just stood silent, Teutonically passive
With no visible guard to beg for admission
(He was probably inside with his head in a Grisham.)

As the station clock ticked to fifteen seconds past
Nine minutes past eleven - something happened, at last!
But rather than a ding and the door lights alluming,
The train just whined softly - and then it was moving!

The train had departed! Two whole minutes early!
Leaving us there, tail lights staining its pearly
White paintwork blood red in the dark of the night
As it speeded away and escaped from our sight.

"What the hell?" we both asked. "Don't they give these guys watches?"
"Did the guard just not bother to look at the clock? His
Timekeeping skills must be getting a little bit
Rusty, or was he just being a (censored)?"

And there we stood, stuck in the middle of Surrey
Still wanting to get ourselves home in a hurry
But having to wait there for ten minutes more
For the 23:20, a slow train, which called
At Surbiton, Wimbledon, Earlsfield and Clapham
And eventually brought us to Waterloo at, erm..
Two minutes to midnight, twenty-five minutes after
The train we'd intended to catch, which was faster

But because the guard hadn't been paying attention
We got home much later than had been our intention.

With my bleary, sleep-deprived eyes I implore
You, dear reader (though this poem's beginning to bore)
To remind all those drivers and guards of our fate -
And that early departures are as evil as late!

All the best (and sorry, that really was a terrible poem),
Mike Knell

Railway Signalling Made Easy, Part 1

This is a signal. Don't worry about the fact that it's got four lamps and a bunch of other gubbins attached to it. The important thing is that big red light, which tells us that this signal is at danger. Technically, the signal would be described as displaying a red aspect.

Passing a signal at danger is very naughty and extremely dangerous, which is why incidents of drivers passing signals at danger are handled with such seriousness. While there are a very few exceptions which we'll cover later on, on the British railway network a single red light - or, in fact, any red light - conveys an absolute requirement to stop at that signal and proceed no further.

Next instalment - the other aspects. Bet you can't wait.

Scanning commuters

I'm not the only person to have raised an eyebrow at transport secretary Alistair Darling's recent statement of the bleedin' obvious - that airport-style security would impossible to enforce on the railways. I'm amazed that anyone had actually seriously suggested it as an option, but pleased to hear that sanity has prevailed. There's talk of using millimetre-wave scanners on the Heathrow Express platforms at Paddington as an experiment, but as that's a pretty closed system it's an easy line to secure. I'm willing to put that down to simple experimentation and a desire to tinker with the technology to see what can be done.

It's good news that it's being made clear that it's simply not possible to guarantee that more people won't be able to blow themselves up on our public transport network if they really want to. As Christian Wolmar says in the BBC's article, "we have to accept that there's a very, very small risk that something happens to any particular individual." Every second of our lives we face risk in some form or another, and while it's sensible to minimise risk wherever possible I've been worried recently that the security hysteria - for which public opinion is responsible as much as the government - following the suicide bombings in London would lead to some kind of hamfisted attempt to start X-raying bags at Waterloo. The kind of chaos this would cause can only be imagined, and it's reassuring to hear that the transport secretary has firmly ruled out such over-the-top security regimes out. I'm sure the security industry lobby would love such a regime - after all, there would be lots of great big fat contracts and profits in it for them - but it looks like they're going to be disappointed.

Attack of the goon squad

Right, that's it. It's time to wave the white flag, draw up the surrender agreement and prepare to welcome our new overlords with open arms. The terrorists, it seems, have won. They have succeeding in destroying enough of what makes Britain Britain that the country is no longer its own. Long-cherished values of freedom have been forgotten. Ancient liberties have been cast to the winds. Minorities are being persecuted while engaging in activities which have been a Briton's right for generations.

Yes, people, the nightmare scenario is here - British trainspotters are now being persecuted as a matter of official policy.

Already reeling from accusations made by paranoid security types that people who stand around on station platforms noting the coming and going of trains must be up to no good and planning something evil, the trainspotters of Britain had already tasted persecution. Actual persecution was something trainspotters hadn't encountered before. Being mocked was one thing. It was a hazard of the job. But actual official harassment? Hardly! After all, trainspotters may be an odd bunch, but eccentricity has never been a crime in Britain. In fact, in many ways eccentricity has long been considered an asset. A hobby - albeit a slightly odd one - the enjoyment of which formerly required nothing more than a platform ticket was now being subjected to official scrutiny as paranoia started to triumph over the citizen's long-cherished right to do slightly peculiar yet utterly harmless things on the railway stations of the United Kingdom.

Network Rail runs a number of the country's busiest stations, including all the main London stations and the main stations in the regions. To their credit, as reports of trainspotters and railway photographers being frogmarched off stations just for being there started to pile up they released some official guidelines. They were fairly reasonable, but the health and safety and liability paranoia got added to the mix in the process. You were fine, they said, as long as you stayed out of the way and followed the instructions of station staff. No problem - that's basically what most people were already doing anyway. But oh, for safety reasons we'd also like you to see the Duty Station Manager when you arrive to let them know you're there. So already busy station managers were now going to be given the added task of giving the nod to people wanting to trainspot or take pictures on their stations. In reality, of course, few people ever sought this permission formally, especially if they were only taking a couple of pictures in passing. And given that the guidelines specifically requested enthusiasts not to wear railway orange hi-vis jackets while on the platforms in order to avoid being confused with staff, the actual safety issues involved were vague at best.

While when DSMs have been approached they have almost invariably been perfectly happy for these things to happen - a lot of railway employees are enthusiasts themselves - the hired security goons who enforce the rules on the ground don't seem to have been told. Either that or they have been told but can't be bothered to apply the rules properly. Stories now abound of people being randomly marched out of stations, sworn at and otherwise abused by the hired heavies. Some people have even been told that no, they can't see the DSM, and thrown out of the station anyway. Some have been thrown out even after being granted permission by the DSM. A "no photography" rule seems to have suddenly appeared in the minds of security people, despite the NR guidelines stating that photography is fine as long as it's for personal use. And today, finally, it happened to me in a small way.

While waiting for a train on Paddington station's concourse - not even on the platforms - I noticed that there was a particularly fine and clear view of the station's trainshed, and since I had a couple of minutes to kill I took out my camera and fired off a few shots. One of them accompanies this article. Within about 30 seconds a fat security goon with a radio appeared and told me - officiously and patronisingly - that "you can't take pictures on the station, Sir". I was so taken aback that I didn't have time to formulate a reply before he'd wandered off, but I just knew that if I'd asked why I'd have most likely been told something about terrorism. Either that or "That's the rules." and that if I didn't stop he'd throw me out of the station. I stopped, mostly because I didn't really want to argue with security goons and miss my train but also because I'd got my photos anyway.

I was shocked. Although I'll happily admit to being a tragic train nerd, on this occasion I was there as a bona fide traveller. I had a travel ticket and was waiting for my train's platform to be announced. I was only on the concourse, for heaven's sake - not even out on the platforms. What the hell, in short, is going on? Can I really not take a photo of a virtually empty railway station any more? If Network Rail or ATOC can explain exactly why a person standing in the middle of a half-deserted station concourse with a handheld camera taking pictures of mostly empty platforms constitutes a genuine (rather than made up) safety or security hazard I'll happily bow to their superior wisdom, but in the meantime I'm going to stick to my view that this flowering of petty-minded persecution of people doing utterly harmless things is simply and clearly absurd.

If this is really connected with fears of terrorism, I'd be interested to hear why this has only recently become an issue given the decades of experience the UK has of being targetted by terrorists. On several occasions railway stations and infrastructure were directly targetted. So why is it only an issue now?

So what's permitted anyway?

Yesterday I found myself pondering the validity of a rail ticket that was placed in front of me - the return half of a Network Awaybreak issued in Oxford on Friday for a journey to London and back. The question I was trying to answer was.. is this ticket valid for a return journey from Surbiton to Oxford on a Sunday via Basingstoke? The Basingstoke route, while taking very slightly longer time-wise under most conditions, is faintly more desirable than the others as they all involve crossing London between termini - which, as we all know, sucks.

The ticket was routed ANY PERMITTED, the privatised railway's equivalent of British Rail's ANY REASONABLE routing, where what was reasonable was, well, what a guard or other inspector thought was reasonable or what had historically been considered reasonable. For instance, London to Birmingham via Leicester - reasonable. London to Birmingham via Bristol and Manchester - obviously not reasonable, so excess the passenger for being off route. With privatisation and the Rail Settlement Plan for dividing up fare revenue between the various train companies whose services might be used for a particular journey, however, things got a lot more complex with the introduction of the dreaded National Routeing Guide for determining which routes between point A and point B are permitted with a particular ticket.

At first glance it doesn't seem particularly reasonable to take the journey mentioned above with an Oxford-London ticket. After all, Surbiton isn't London and heading towards Basingstoke is going in kind of the wrong direction anyway. The first two rules of routeing validity are that any direct train is a permitted route and the geographically shortest journey is always permitted. This journey was neither direct or shortest, so it was time to descend into the depths of the Routeing Guide to see if it was possible to figure out the ticket's validity on this route. For reference, and to read along, refer to ATOC's clunky but better than nothing online routeing guide, and to understand its simplicity and logic refer to Clive Feather's analysis thereof which is much better than anything I could have managed as I can only look at the NRG for about 10 minutes without going insane. You'll also need a copy of the maps from the ATOC site, and ideally a copy of the National Fares Manual volumes concerned to work out fares if you have to compare them. Additionally, you might want to check to see if there are any local easements or restrictions which might affect validity. Still with me? Right! Onwards..

The Routeing Guide (yes, I know, but the railway spells it that way) tells us that London stations are treated as a group for purposes of routeing and that Oxford is a routeing point, which makes life simple. Relatively simple. The two stations don't share a common routeing point so as per the instructions we can go straight to the routeing maps, as the ticket isn't endorsed with a particular route. First, we need to look up the permitted routes from London to Oxford. This tells us that routes on maps CS, CS+WR and CS+WX are permitted routes subject to the fairly sensible rules about things like not doubling back.

Map CS doesn't help too much - it shows us that, for instance, Paddington-Oxford via Reading is okay. No surprise there. But we don't want to go from Paddington, we want to pick up a train out of Waterloo at Surbiton then change at Basingstoke. Well, Basingstoke to Oxford is on map CS, and the legend next to Basingstoke indicates that Basingstoke's also on map WX. As CS+WX is a permitted combination of maps, we'll bear that in mind and check WX. Map WX, it turns out, includes the South West Main Line from Basingstoke through to Clapham Junction and Waterloo and.. Surbiton!

So, as there's a permissible route from Waterloo to Basingstoke on WX, and Basingstoke to Oxford is on CS, the CS+WX routeing rule applies. The ticket is routed ANY PERMITTED, so there's no need to compare fares or add any further restrictions. It's a Network Awaybreak, which (after a check of the National Fares Manual) permits a break of journey on the return journey only. Surbiton is on the route from Waterloo to Basingstoke, so the result of the research seems to be that yes, this route is permitted as an implied break of journey at Surbiton would not take the traveller off a permitted route.

And now I have a headache. However, it has since been reported that when the test subject was gripped the inspector didn't bat an eyelid. This whole business of determining validity of a particular route is quite outstandingly baroque and bureaucratic, however, and definitely open to different interpretations by different people. The question concerned was actually fairly easy as both stations were routeing points and whole steps of the process of determining permissibility could be ignored, so I pity anyone who has to work out the permissibility of any routes much more complex than this one.

Public Service Announcement

I just want to point something out after having heard overheard a few other passengers making comments.

If you're sitting on a stationary or slow-moving train and a revving - or sometimes thumping - noise starts up under your feet, it's just the compressor starting up to keep the brake systems (which usually rely on air pressure to hold the brakes off) charged up with compressed air. Stopping the train generally means venting air from the brake system to the atmosphere, with the result that every so often the system needs to recharge itself so there's enough pressure to take the brakes off again.

It is not the sound of the driver "trying to get the train going again", nor the sound of the driver "revving the engines". Most importantly, it doesn't indicate that there's a fault with the train, unless it keeps going for a long, long time when it might just be an indication of an air leak somewhere. Because electric trains are more or less silent when they're stationary this is when you're most likely to notice the compressors running - when the train's moving, or if it's a diesel, there's often so much other noise that you won't notice the compressors starting up unless you're listening for them.

So now you know, and can make yourself look like a nerdy trainspotting smartass next time this happens by informing your fellow passengers that "Ah! The compressors have started up! The brake reservoirs must need recharging.".

No surprises in the rail review

I'd completely lost track of the fact that Alistair Darling's rail review was reporting today, and the results are not too surprising and, in some ways, quite sensible.

The big standout thing is (apart from the abolition of the Strategic Rail Authority, which was kind of inevitable) the hugely increased role of Network Rail, which with its new responsibilities could now be renamed British Rail without too much worry. Most realists would never have considered renationalisation to be seriously on the cards, but what has been delivered brings a lot of things which were formerly disparate and buck-passy back into central control. The train operators are effectively reduced to the status of just getting on with operating the trains and stations, with Network Rail taking operational control of a lot of areas through a series of new integrated regional control centres. This is a good thing.

Network Rail now gains responsibility for timetabling, enforcing punctuality and what's euphemistially termed service recovery - in other words, putting things back together when the service goes pear-shaped. What this means in practice is, I hope, that the current absurd situation where one company's local train usually isn't allowed to be looped for another company's Inter-City express to overtake it will become a thing of the past, improving punctuality all around and putting service regulation back where it belongs - in the hands of the signallers whose skill is a fundamental part of running a solid train service.

The one big surprise for me is the Mayor of London (through Transport for London) being given extra control over services within Greater London and possibly slightly outside the boundaries as well. Reading the lengthy white paper drops a few hints about ways in which this could be useful - at the moment, many railway stations within Greater London have ticket barriers which accept Oyster cards, but Oyster Pre-Pay can't be used. Moreover, Underground-issued Travelcard extension tickets don't work on National Rail - in fact, there's no such thing as a zonal extension on National Rail - which is a real pain as someone with a Zones 1-4 Travelcard wishing to go to Surbiton has to queue up at the Waterloo ticket office to buy a Boundary Zone 4 -> Surbiton single. This is a real waste of time for all involved, and if the greater involvement of TfL can get rid of this, it's all good.

It's a nicely optimistic document, well worth a look if you're at all interested in what happens to our railways. Of course, if you're one of those people who'd rather just sit around and talk authoritatively about How Much Better Things Are Elsewhere, stick to the Daily Mail.

A late-night journey home

You've been out for the evening around Euston and it's time to go home. Threading your curry-filled way through Euston station and into the Underground, you get to the platform and there's a train in two minutes. Ah - now it's flashing 'CORRECTION' and the next train is now in eight minutes. Okay, no problem, but you wish you'd been for a pee before leaving the pub. So you loaf around for a few minutes and get on the tube, which is more or less as it usually is. Warren Street, Goodge Street, Tottenham Court Road, Leicester Square (where it fills up with revellers as it always does at this time of night), Charing Cross (where the last set of doors will not open), Embankment.

Waterloo! Off the train, look up to see exactly where the exit is. Turn right, left, left, up the stairs, left, right, up the escalator, smacking your Oyster card down to stride imperiously through the barrier while marvelling at the pair who've somehow managed to faff around with their tickets enough that neither of them can get out, up another escalator and onto Waterloo station. Straight across to AMT and buy a late-night latte to keep you awake for the journey home, then remember what you wished you'd done before leaving the pub and invest 20p to take care of that. Emerge feeling a lot better, look up at the monitors and head for platform 7 to catch the 0009 to Guildford via Woking (terminating tonight at Woking due to engineering work with a bus forward to Worplesdon and Guildford). The concourse is full of railway-orange hi vis vests as the night shift are starting work, seeking sustenance at Delice de France and Upper Crust.

Onto platform 7. The train's a slammer, eight carriages. An 8VEP, your inner trainspotter helpfully supplies, easily recognisable due to most of the bodyside consisting of doors. There's still eight minutes to go so you head for the front of the train, the quiet end, and lean on a railing underneath a banner repeater showing a horizontal bar (which means the signal it refers to is at danger) for some fresh air. You notice someone stuffing their face with junk food in First Class, and bet they don't have a first class ticket. Further down the train a door opens slightly and a shaky hand drops a bunch of fast food wrappings carefully down onto the track. Not onto the platform, oh no. That would make them far too easy to clear up.

At 0007 the platform starter signal W13 clears to a green as the route indicator next to it lights up to display 'MS', meaning you'll be on the Down Main Slow line out of Waterloo. The banner repeater switches simultaneously to displaying a bar angled at 45 degrees and you hop on the train, sitting by yourself at the front of the first carriage. Whistles blow, the guard dings the bell twice ("ready to start") and you're off, passing a couple of freshly-vandalised class 455 units in the carriage sidings waiting for the night shift to come and clean off the graffiti. Everything's pretty quiet at this time of night and the driver has a nice spirited run under greens all the way to the first stop just a mile or so down the line at Vauxhall. Once again doors slam, ding ding, and the driver pulls away. Ding, goes the bell. One ding - "stop". The driver hits the brakes again - someone must have run up onto the platform at the last moment and seized a door handle. Once that's sorted out it's ding-ding again. This time you get away without further incident.

Passing the new Covent Garden market (which is only just getting going for the night) and a brightly-lit night bus on the road it's another short run down the line to Clapham Junction, still brightly lit and active as trains come in for overnight stabling in the sidings. Various late-night people - party animals, late workers, the just plain lost, whatever - pile on and for the first time you have company in the front carriage. Then it's off towards Wimbledon at full line speed, the cool night air blowing on your face through the open window as you sip your rapidly cooling coffee. The driver pa-pahs the horn a few times on the way down - at other trains, at lineside workers, when approaching stations - then it's the bright lights of Wimbledon depot on the right before the hiss of air tells you the brakes are on for the approach to Wimbledon station.

Wimbledon is fairly quiet, and although you can't see it you hear the doors slamming and know the platform dispatcher's looking anxiously to see if any latecomers are piling down the stairs looking for the last train home. Once it's clear that everyone's on board he looks up and down for doors which aren't closed properly and checks the signal's clear before swinging his Bardic up to show the guard a white light - "platform duties complete". The guard acknowledges this with a ding-ding on the bell and you're off to Surbiton, with the long run giving the driver a chance to pile on the power for a nice speedy run on the clear down line. A couple of guys walk up to the front of the carriage and peer at the network map in some confusion before giving up and asking you if the train's going to Surbiton.

You speed through Raynes Park and New Malden before the first hint of braking and a whiff of sewage through the window tell you you're just passing Berrylands station, that strange place which manages to be in the middle of nowhere despite being in the middle of suburban London. Less than a minute later you feel the leading bogie under your feet clattering over the crossovers outside Surbiton station before platform 3 appears on your left. You drain your coffee, then stand up and lean on the window frame (performing the minor infraction of sticking your head out of the train window in the breeze) as the train draws in and squeals to a stop before you open the door and hop down onto the platform.

As you walk down the platform towards the exit, you hear a chorus of doors slamming with that characteristically satisfying ker-lunk which train doors produce. You reflect on the fact that in a few months that slam, which has been a part of train travel almost since it began, will disappear from Surbiton station forever as the last of the slammers are replaced by shiny new trains with power doors before being hauled off to Immingham to await the cutter's torch after nearly 40 years of service. Sure, the Desiros are safer, they're easier to operate and they're more comfortable for passengers, but well - they just won't have the same personality, you know?

As you reach the stairs you find yourself thinking - to your surprise, you'd never have said this five years ago - that although it's grimy and dirty and huge and impersonal and smelly and covered in graffiti, there could be worse places to live than London.

Why bikes and stations don't mix

At the station today I witnessed an excellent example of why it is a really bad idea to ride your bike on the station platform. If anything unexpected happens - if you fall off, for instance, or if you get a little closer to the edge of the platform than you intended to, things like this happen:

This was taken from a distance with the camera on my phone so the quality's not great, but I've arrowed the object of interest - someone's bike, resting across the live rail and one of the running rails of the down slow South West Main Line. Not only are the police in attendance but there's someone from Network Rail and a couple of station staff there as well, and retrieving this guy's bike from the four foot is a complex exercise. First the current has to be turned off, then the signallers have to confirm that no trains will be running on the line affected or on the adjacent down fast line, then various other manual safety checks need to be done to ensure that the power's off before anyone goes down and touches that bike. It is, in short, a non-trivial exercise involving a lot of people. As a bonus, the rider runs the risk of being charged with causing danger to trains (or something along those lines).

It's lucky this was Sunday evening and not Monday's rush hour, or a lot of people would have been swearing about their trains running late as a result of this. It's even luckier that the rider didn't end up in the four foot along with his bike in front of an approaching train. So, consider this my obnoxiously preachy public service message for the month - when you're on the station with your bike, get off and walk it!

Result!

A few weeks ago I posted a lengthy moan about the difficulties encountered and conflicting advice received while trying to expand the availability of my Oyster Travelcard from 1-4 to 1-6. While I got it sorted out in the end, I was sufficiently irritated by all the hassle that I mailed a somewhat shorter summary with a link to the page to Ken Livingstone's office.

I then promptly forgot about it until today, when - good heavens - I got a reply. It looks as if the Mayor's office sent the correspondence through on to Transport for London, who then forwarded it to the Oyster office with an instruction to respond and copy them in on the reply.

It's a very apologetic and explanatory reply rather than a canned response, and they're sending me a cheque for the cost of a weekly 1-6 Travelcard as a gesture of goodwill. I'm not too worried about the cheque - it's equally pleasing to know that mail messages such as the one I sent to Ken (well, his office) aren't just dropped on the floor.

Railfest 2004

If you know what this is:

or even if you don't, you might find my photos from a visit to the National Railway Museum's Railfest 2004 a week or so ago to be of interest.

This was a week-long event held to mark the 200th anniversary of Trevithick's first steam railway locomotive, for which they'd assembled a whole bunch of locomotives, rolling stock and other railway-related miscellanea. I was mostly there for the modern traction (steam engines don't excite me that much, with the notable exception of the class A4s), which fortunately put me a in a minority - the huge crowds were mostly reserved for the steam displays, as a lot of people turned up to get all reminiscent about how wonderful steam haulage was, and how it wasn't rather grubby and acrid. Then again, if it hadn't been for getting some steam-loco-generated crud in her eye Celia Johnson would never have met Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter, which would have made the fillm much less interesting.

(As an aside, you certainly see some loonies at events where rail enthusiasts congregate. Would anyone believe me if I said "we aren't all like that!"?)

Travelcard update!

I've had a couple of people ask about the eventual outcome of my attempt to get my Travelcard availability changed. As I don't have anything more interesting to say today, here's the end of the story.

A couple of days after handing in the third piece of paper at Waterloo I rang the Oyster card helpline, who put me through to the Altered Availability office. "Oh, is your name Knell?", asked the guy on the end of the phone. In fact he asked if my name was Neill, but as I'm used to people not being able to pronounce my name I said it was anyway. "I tried to leave you a message earlier. Your new ticket can be collected from Waterloo immediately - I'm just faxing the paperwork over now."

Blimey. Well, being an eternal pessimist I wasn't holding out much hope as I trooped up to the ticket window at Waterloo that evening. The first guy just pointed to his colleague at the next window when I told him why I was there, in an "I don't know how to do stuff like that, but he does" kind of way. So I waited and spoke to his colleague.

He found the paperwork (I could see it stuck to the board behind him) and after a lot of looking at the various forms and letters as if they were written in Aramaic, and a conference with another colleague to work out how to issue the new ticket on their shiny new ticket machines, I had my upgraded Travelcard. I had to pay £150-something for the upgrade and a rather unexpected £5 admin charge, but in the end I left the window happy. Sufficiently happy, in fact, that if there hadn't been bulletproof glass in the way I'd have probably reached over and kissed the clerk. Okay, maybe not that happy. Maybe more incredulous than happy, now I come to think of it.

Oops, wrong station.

So I was coming back from an evening in Richmond via Clapham Junction. The train from Clapham to Surbiton was a slammer, which means extra delays on Saturday nights as all the drunken fools can't work out how to close the door properly.

Picture the scene - three extremely drunk lads get on at Wimbledon and proceed to be loud all the way to Surbiton. Now, I didn't catch the whole conversation, but I guess they were on the wrong train as another passenger was telling them very clearly to go to platforms 1 and 2 at Surbiton - which is where the trains back towards London go from.

So we get to Surbiton. As we're rolling into platform 4 one of these lads opens the door and swings it wide open while the train's still doing about 30mph. "Platform 1 or 2", says the helpful passenger again. Before the train's stopped they've jumped off, leaving the door open. I get off and slam the door for them in an irritated way (yes, it is possible to slam a train door irritatedly. Try it for yourself) before looking across to see them piling drunkenly onto the train at platform 3, the other side of the island platform. This platform, of course, is for trains going away from London.

They fumble with the door a bit before finally getting it closed. It's right at the front of the train and the driver's watching them with amusement from the cab window. I look at the driver. I shrug. "Can be a bit technical for some people, closing doors.", says the driver. He pulls out of the station.

I think that even if I'd tried to tell them they were going in the wrong direction it wouldn't have had any effect. Hope they enjoyed Woking, or maybe Basingstoke.

Peoplewatching!

As any commuter knows (well, any commuter who uses Waterloo or Victoria), Clapham Junction is a huge railway delta a couple of miles outside central London. It's where the lines from Kent and Surrey meet in one huge confusion of steel and sleepers before splitting off again to head up towards the termini. A lot of trains stop here as a convenience for passengers transferring between these major routes (few people actually exit the station), and immediately north of the station there are a lot of tracks running parallel to each other. This is superb territory for peoplewatching, as it's common to have trains running parallel to each other at low relative speeds.

Looking out of the window and across to other trains, it's striking how few people seem to be doing anything interesting. People who aren't reading a newspaper or a book are generally gazing into space. Very occasionally you'll see some people talking to each other, but more often the only conversations that are going on are between people and the disembodied entities at the other end of their mobiles. However dull the activities in which people are engaged, it's still strangely compelling to watch other people from such an unusual angle - it's almost as if you were looking out of the window and back at your own train, where everybody's doing the same mundane things.

It's very uncommon to find other people who are looking out of the window. Occasionally I'll look up and find someone looking back - when this happens I get a terrible urge to wave, but as the English are a reserved people I'd never dream of doing anything so, well, direct.

The whole thing reminds me of the time a child wrote into Jim'll Fix It to ask if Jim could fix it for the people on the trains that regularly passed the end of her garden to wave back for once - she always waved at the trains as they passed, but nobody waved back (miserable bastards). Well, after a bit of a talk with "our friends at British Rail" it was arranged, and one day she waved at a passing train (conveniently, a film crew just happened to have popped by) which, just that once, erupted into a sea of waving hands. I'm sure there's some deep philosophical meaning which could be read into the desire to have people on trains wave back, but it certainly made for damn good television (in a low-budget early-80s BBC kind of way).

Great Londoners

Quote of the day for Monday 6 May, 1661 comes from the Diary of Samuel Pepys:

"I hear to-night that the Duke of York's son is this day dead, which I believe will please every body; and I hear that the Duke and his Lady themselves are not much troubled at it."

Please forgive me for this bad daytime television-style link, but another great London institution is the London Underground. There aren't that many really great websites about the world's oldest underground railway system out there, but some of them deserve high praise for keeping geeks like myself informed about how the hell the system actually works. (Or, sometimes, doesn't work - depressingly, as I write I've just got an RSS news ping about a Central Line train derailing outside White City. Nobody hurt, doesn't look like anything serious, but look forward to another round of scaremongering news stories about "how dangerous are our crisis-ridden railways?". Ho hum.)

First up is the granddaddy of them all, which at least to me seems to have been there almost since the Web was invented. Short on poncy design and pictures but long on pure information, Clive Feather's Underground Line Guides will supply just about all the hard facts that are available about the history and topology of the network. I can't recommend Clive's Guides highly enough as a concise, useful reference source - if you want to know the exact date that Clapham South station opened or how the Middle Circle used to operate, this is the place to look.

Secondly, Tubeprune (the Tube Professional's Rumour Network). This is much more of an insider's site, with comprehensive information on signalling, rolling stock and other operational aspects as well as quite a bit of comment on issues affecting the Underground today. If you want to find out why there are four rails instead of just two or three, or how a driver reacts to a "one under", this is the place to be.

Finally, a mention has to be made of one of the more mythical aspects of the Underground - closed stations. These "ghost stations" are a cause of eternal fascination to many people, including some with no other interest in the Tube at all. Alas, in this day and age of Health And Safety and lawsuit paranoia it's almost impossible to get to visit any of these closed stations (Aldwych is a notable exception), so it's just as well that other people have got to do so and put their photos on the web. I'd recommend starting at Hywel Williams' site for photographic accounts of visits to places like Down Street and Brompton Road.

That's my pick of Underground-related websites, but a couple of bits of printed matter are worth mentioning as well. London Under London is probably the definitive work on subterranean London, including sewers, the Underground and other bits of buried stuff. Douglas Rose's London Underground: A Diagrammatic History is a fantastic one-sheet historical map of the Underground. If you're just after a track map that's a bit more detailed than the standard Tube map, I can recommend the Quail Publishing London Railway Map or, for more detail, the relevant volume of their British Railway Track Diagrams series.

Railway Things Explained, no.1

Today - how "Off" indicators repeat the state of the starter signal at the end of the platform. This is really perfectly obvious:

If the Off indicator's off, it's on.	If the Off indicator's on, it's off.

For... freedom!

I did something today. I spoke out for an oppressed minority. I stood up for a cause. A lost cause, even. I stood up to be counted. I did not flinch. I was determined not to be ashamed of who I am. I did not care what people thought.

Yes, that's right. I walked into WH Smith on Waterloo Station and openly, without any furtiveness, bought the new National Rail Timetable without offering a lame excuse such as "it's for the office". Sure, people buying such things without a good excuse usually get the same polite-yet-disapproving smile the sales assistant reserve for people buying porn mags (actually, maybe I'd have been less brazen about it if I'd wrapped the timetable in a copy of Razzle) but, well, timetables just appeal to me, and the National Rail Timetable is a good one. Sure, it doesn't have the authoritative heft of the Deutsche Bahn Allgemeine Kursbuch, a multi-volume behemoth which comes in a box with a handle, or the perky yellowness of the Nederlandse Spoorwegen Spoorboekje, but it's still 2600 wafer-thin pages of closely spaced numbers and armchair travel. And this being Britain, it comes with a booklet of amendments which have been made before it's even come into force.

Oh yes, and I can even use it for planning journeys - I find it easier to use the timetable than the web as with a timetable it's possible to see the bigger picture (how many trains there are, when's the next connection if I miss it, etc) than with the web journey planner, which only presents a number of possible complete journeys and - most importantly - doesn't allow for trains being late and missed connections. Not that such things ever happen in Britain, oh no.

The ultimate armchair traveller's timetable might be Thomas Cook's European Timetable and its counterpart the Overseas Timetable, but I find it hard to justify buying them for myself if I'm unlikely to ever actually, well, use them for any real travelling.

A banner repeater, yesterday.

Jargon and more jargon

A plug for my own pages here - I've slightly updated (and more updates are on the way) my page of British railway jargon. If you're wondering what the difference between the four foot and the six foot is (apart from two feet), what a plunger is for other than unblocking the lavatory, or why guards so often get a tip at a station stop, this is probably the place to look - at least before you look in a better and more accurate lexicon.

I'm interested in suggestions for extra entries - what's there at the moment is just what came to mind over a couple of thinking sessions, and there's tons of stuff that isn't there yet.

Communicate, guys!

Living in London and spending a large proportion of my life commuting (and even for a train nerd like me it gets kind of wearing sometimes) there's one thing that helps more than anything else to keep people happy when things aren't going completely according to plan. If the train's running a bit late, if it's stopped between stations for a couple of minutes, if it's going to sit at a station for a couple of minutes without going anywhere, the one thing that keeps people happy - or at least as happy as is possible under the circumstances - is communication.

I don't know of any trains currently in service which aren't fitted with PA systems, and once the passenger's on the train that PA system is the link between the railway (South West Trains or London Underground or whoever) and the passenger. When anything goes wrong between stations (and "anything" in this context includes things like being held at a signal for more than a minute or two) it's possible to feel the tension and stress rising among the passengers. A PA announcement about what's going on and why we've stopped, especially one that is given by a human rather than what sounds like someone reading a random excuse from a list, makes people instantly happier and more sympathetic.

A fine example of how a little thought on the part of drivers and guards about the unwashed masses can change a lot of angry people into reasonably sympathetic people is something that happened to me on the Northern Line a couple of months back during some major signalling problems. It was pretty awful, with long waits at stations and packed, stuffy trains, but the driver skilfully kept tempers from fraying too much with a fairly good-natured (but not flippant) series of announcements updating us on conditions ahead and reminding us to open the end windows and air vents to maximise airflow and keep people cool. They weren't obsequious (as people are used to being apologised to for even the faintest inconvenience these days, apologies only go so far) but they were useful and informative and, above all, gave the passengers on that stuffy and mostly stationary train reassurance that someone actually cared about what was happening. In the end it took a lot longer than normal, but a trainload of tired commuters finally got to Morden and I saw something you rarely see - people on their way to the exit actually thanking the driver as she walked down the train to change ends.

It is of course true that even while waiting at red signals drivers and guards have tasks to take care of, but when there's an idle moment and it's safe to do so it makes an enormous amount of difference to simply take a few seconds to turn on the PA and make a quick announcement updating the hundreds of people on board with what's up and - most importantly - a rough estimate of when things will hopefully get moving again. I'd personally guess that once a train's been held at a station or at a signal for more than about 90 seconds it's time to think about doing a PA.

It doesn't have to be a fancy scripted announcement, and in my experience off-the-cuff unscripted announcements generally work better as they actually sound personal rather than just repeating the same bland "we apologise for any inconvenience caused" platitudes, which for most people will just go in one ear and out the other as we've heard them so many times already! Be human, and don't forget that there are a lot of other humans back there, and driver, you have it in your power to make a lot of people much happier.

I really don't understand why train operating companies don't emphasise this more in training. It seems depressingly likely that they're so concerned about Corporate Identity Management that they frown heavily on any announcements which aren't pre-scripted and made in accordance with the Announcing Manual, and prefer people to say nothing at all rather than saying something for which there isn't an officially scripted announcement.