From telegraphs to telephones, cables to Connect, over its 150-year history the London Underground has remained at the forefront of communications technology. We look at the journey from a single telegram line to an integrated radio system that connects over 12,000 people making upwards of 11m calls a year, and ask what happens next.
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The train, however, didn’t move.
Realising that something must be wrong, Wright began hurrying towards the signal box to find out what was up. As he approached it though he suddenly realised, with a sinking dread, that he could hear another train approaching. He broke into a run and began waving his arms.
“I began to shout to draw the driver’s attention.” He later told the accident investigation. “I had no lamp in my hand. I cannot say whether the driver’s attention was attracted.”
As Wright watched, the second train slammed into the rear of the 09:07 with a howl of brakes and a sickening crunch, crumpling up the final carriage of the first train and driving the whole thing forward about twenty yards.
As the noise and dust began to settle Wright rushed to the signal box, where he found signalman Frank Crocker standing at the top of the stairs.
“What have you been and done?!” Shouted Wright.
“I know it, but couldn’t stop it,” Replied Crocker, in shock. “What’s the extent of the damage?”
Miraculously, it soon became clear that there were no fatalities. Harry Tinney, the driver of the second train, had been alert enough to spot Wright’s attempt at a warning. He’d already begun to apply the brakes gently but instead immediately slammed them on full. This instinctive reaction shed enough speed to ensure that a full-on disaster was avoided. In the end 19 people were injured, but it could have been much worse.
As work began to treat the wounded and clear the line, a number of other railway workers arrived to inspect the signal box and discover what had gone wrong. Two of the first on the scene were assistant linesman Hayward Alder and linesman Albert Swift. They asked Crocker what had happened.
“The down disc has sold me.” Crocker replied, referring to the telegraph and signalling warning system ostensibly meant to prevent him from setting the signal to release trains into the platform whilst one was already there. The system was there for Crocker to use when visibility was too low for him to physically see the platform and he had relied on it for dispatch that day.
Crocker then told both men that, if accidentally operated a certain way in this particular signal box, the disc wouldn’t lock like it should and the signal would open. He claimed he had reported this before and then proceeded to demonstrate the behaviour, twice, to Albert Swift.
Swift failed to mention this demonstration in his own testimony to the official accident investigators later on, nor was an increasingly desperate Crocker able to replicate the problem on a later occasion to Swift’s boss Mr Buck, the telegraph inspector, and other senior railwaymen. For a while, it looked like Crocker would get the full blame for what happened. Luckily for the signalman, however, even in 1901 rail accident investigations were incredibly thorough.
In the end, it became clear that whilst some of the blame was Crocker’s, not only was the disc system at Baker Street genuinely faulty, but the telegraph company tasked with maintaining it had indeed failed to fix it when asked. Worse, under pressure Buck admitted in later testimony that after Albert Swift had told him Crocker’s account of events, the telegraph inspector had quietly ordered that the problem be fixed. This was the reason the signalman’s later attempts to replicate the issue had failed.
The result of the investigation was clear: good platform-to-train communication (between Wright and Tinney) had helped prevent a major disaster. Bad communications equipment, however, had caused it in the first place. In the aftermath, the Metropolitan Railway brought maintenance of its communications systems in-house. Things would stay that way on the Underground for almost one hundred years to come.
A vital function
Operational communications play a huge part in the safe running of a metro system and it is crucial that the network and secure circuits link users with each other and central core information systems.
On the surface this may seem simply a reflection of the fact that effective communication lies at the heart of every modern city and every modern journey. Most of us will use some form of communication whilst travelling; a mobile phone to check in with a partner, a smart phone to check work emails, play a game, or possibly use an application to check the arrival time of the next train.
For London Underground though, communication means far more than just making a telephone call. Each time you commute you will see platform staff talking on their handheld radios to station managers, they will be minimising any issues and ensuring that your journey is safe to make; drivers and engineers need to communicate with control rooms, all underneath metres of concrete. Today, the systems required to seamlessly manage all these interactions are complex. They are the result of the 20-year Connect contract for which, as part of the Citylink Consortium, Thales was responsible for the design, build and installation of the transmission network, a highly resilient secure fibre and cable transmission system. What’s equally remarkable, however, is the technological heritage on which Connect is built. What is true now was true in 1901 and before – the Underground has a history of pioneering communications systems as old as the network itself, and they have always been critical to its operation.
Telegraphs and tracks
That history dates right back to the birth of the telegraph. It is perhaps not surprising that railway companies were early adopters of this new technology as soon as reliable equipment began to appear in the 1850s and beyond. It is easy to forget that many of the challenges that railway companies face have existed since the very beginning – not least the need to communicate delays or breakdowns to stations and staff further up the line. The telegraph offered the first, fast, practical way to do this. Indeed by 1854 the London & North Western had not one, but two, parallel systems in place – one for general messages, one for information about train workings. Britain’s railway companies also suddenly found themselves in possession of a valuable asset to telegraph companies – vast stretches of long, straight land over which they had the rights (and space) to lay cables.
As telegraph companies throughout the country battled to secure air and subsurface rights from landowners in order to connect up their networks of wires, the railways simply laid their own cables alongside track. Alternatively, they offered the right to do so to private telegraph firms in return for access to the network. It was a mutually beneficial relationship.
By the 1870s it was unusual to find a railway company that didn’t have access to a telegraph system at all. This was certainly the case for both the Metropolitan and District Railways in London. Indeed the Metropolitan had an extensive telegraph system in place right from its opening in 1863. Two-position instruments (where current changes were used to flip a needle between two positions on a dial to indicate dots or dashes) were put in place at stations and signal boxes right from the start. They were relied on heavily to help regulate the service and safely dispatch trains in gloomy, smoke-filled atmosphere of the line.
A Spagnoletti block disc signal. Courtesy Bluffalobrill
As can be seen from the accident account with which this article opened, this telegraph system was still in place (with modification) by 1901. Perhaps more remarkably – and certainly to the surprise of some of the Metropolitan’s board members – so was the man who had created it. Charles Spagnoletti and company had been hired by the Metropolitan in 1863 on £250 per annum to build and maintain the telegraph system. 38 years later the 70-year-old Spagnoletti and his company were still doing just that.
After the 1901 accident the Metropolitan quickly brought maintenance and development of the telegraph system (along with most of Spagnoletti’s staff) in-house. In recognition of his long-service, Spagnoletti himself was granted the title of Consulting Engineer for Signalling and Telegraphs and given a generous retainer of 100 guineas a year. Given his advanced age the Metropolitan board perhaps felt they could afford to be generous with their compensation, as it was likely only a short-term obligation. Just like the original telegraph contract, however, Spagnoletti proved remarkably durable. He finally passed away in 1915.1
1. Incredibly, Spagnoletti’s signals would survive on Britain’s railways for 100 years after this – the last one was finally decommissioned at 0200 on 30 July 2016 at Banbury South signal box.
Like the Metropolitan, the District too used the telegraph for communications from practically the beginning. Indeed initially their network was actually managed by the Metropolitan, and the two systems remained linked thereafter. The District also realised that having a robust and (to all intents and purposes) instant form of communication could help solve one of the railway’s other problems – synchronised timekeeping. Having time standardised across all stations and signal boxes was a critical railway function, but something tricky to do before master/slave clocks became an option. The District, however, solved the problem in a novel way. At 07:58 every morning the telegraph operator at Westminster station took possession of one of the company’s telegraph lines and ‘held over’ the signal – that is, sent a single, long pulse without releasing it.
As stations and signal boxes listened in to this single, long signal would radiate out from Westminster, lighting up other networks along the way as it was picked by operators at Earl’s Court and Mill Hill Park and echoed out onto their own independent telegraph systems. Then, as soon as Big Ben sounded the hour, the operator would release the line. At this signal railwaymen across the Underground would synchronise their clocks and watches, setting railway time for another day.
Voice communications arrive
Again, easy voice communication on the Underground is something that today we take for granted. To provide an indication of the scale, on the Connect network alone 11.4m radio calls were made over the last twelve months, an average of 210,000 each week. These are all made possible due to over 11,000 circuits industriously carrying communications and CCTV images across the capital.
In 1878 such scale was all in the future. Britain’s first telephone company (called, rather unimaginatively, the Telephone Company) was founded in that year, although only point-to-point private lines were possible until the opening of London’s first exchange on Coleman Street in 1879. Again though, London’s railways were quick to adopt the technology as soon as it became practical.
The first documented installation of a phone line on what is now the Underground seems to have been at Earl’s Court in 1881, where it was used to connect the westbound platform with the eastern signal cabin. This was actually a mechanical line (relying on taut wires and speaking diaphragms) rather than the electric system that Alexander Graham Bell had patented and pioneered, as this was not yet entirely reliable or cost-effective. The first electric telephone on the network, however, wasn’t far behind.
That first electric phone system seems to have been installed in 1885 on the District. It was an eight-line system which connected the General Manager’s office on Victoria Street to the workshops at Lillie Bridge depot, three other internal departments and to the Chairman’s office at Victoria station.
This connection to the Chairman’s office perhaps provides a hint as to why the District was quick to put an exchange in place. James Staats Forbes, Chairman of the District (as well as the London, Chatham & Dover) was the kind of person who would now be referred to as a bleeding-edge consumer. He was one of the first people to secure a personal line in 1879 after the opening of the Coleman Street exchange – the nineteenth-century equivalent of queueing up in Covent Garden for the latest iPhone. By 1880 he’d also become Chairman of a telephone company himself.
James Staats Forbes, painted by William Orpen in 1900
The first electric telephone installed to help the operation of services seems to have followed some time after, once the technology was fully reliable. As London’s veteran pub quizzers know, “Earl’s Court” is your best-guess answer to any question that begins “Which station was first to..?” So it is again here. That first operational installation was at Earl’s Court in 1896.2. The Metropolitan resisted such installations a little longer, fearing that the presence of telephones in signal boxes would be more of a distraction than an aid. It soon became clear, however, that the opposite was true.
2. The first operational escalator was also at Earl’s Court, for example.
As with the telegraph, the railway’s possession of long stretches of track (and in London tunnels) along which cables could be laid worked to its advantage. This helped the spread of telephone systems throughout the network.
Fireworks
As those cables spread throughout the Underground though it is perhaps no surprise that began to occasionally cause issues and fireworks – sometimes literally.
In 1904, the Board of Trade (responsible, at the time, for railway regulation) expressed concern about cables at stations obstructing safety overhangs on platforms on the District. The District largely denied responsibility for dealing with the situation, saying that the cables were the property of the National Telephone Company (NTC). Then in 1905, during electrification works, some lead-lined NTC cables were lowered to trackside in tunnels near Victoria overnight. Whilst there, a piece of protective iron trough somehow ended up lying across these cables and the not-yet-active live rail.
This remained un-noticed until a few nights later, when the District turned on the live rail ahead of a test train run. The heavy current coursed through the live rail and transferred over to the phone cables via the trough and the lead lining. Witnesses later reported that overhead telephone gantries on Queen Victoria Street erupted into an impressive firework display. Meanwhile major fires broke out at two of NTC’s exchanges, cutting off 2,000 subscribers across London.3
3. This actually triggered a brief public panic at the time as to whether telephones could electrocute people via the telephone system. Ultimately the investigation into the incident helped dispel that myth.
Fear of incidents like this, along with general concern about the presence of ‘foreign cables’ in the Underground’s tunnels, would remain a physical barrier to the spread of telephony on the Underground. The takeover of the phone system by the Post Office starting in 1912 helped alleviate the clutter, as this marked the point at which separate, dedicated tunnels for telecoms started to be dug. Nonetheless, voice communications on the Underground remained a balancing act and both telegraph and hand-delivered messages remained a regular feature on the Underground as late as the 1970s.
Tunnel talk
This isn’t to say that significant efforts weren’t made to tackle the problem of better communications underground. Both between and after the World Wars more installations and improvements were made.4 Extending general telephone capacity on the Underground was largely just a case of waiting for phones and switches to get smaller and then finding space to put them in.
4. Indeed some of those installations weren’t even their own. During the Second World War, all of the telephone lines into the temporary Cabinet War Room at Down Street station were actually provided by the London, Midland & Scottish Railway. The cables and exchange equipment remained in place there long after the war. You can find more on Down Street here.
Tunnels, however, were an altogether different challenge.
Again, this is something we largely take for granted thanks to Connect (and the general availability of radio) now. The base challenge for a railway before such technology existed, however was far harder – involving, as it did, the challenge of trying to connect moving assets (trains) and tight spaces (tunnels) with key people (signallers and line controllers) in an emergency.
A description of the first tunnel telephones on the three Underground lines built by Charles Tyson Yerkes (broadly, the Piccadilly, Bakerloo and half of the modern Northern line) probably provides a good overview of early attempts to tackle this problem.
Here, a pair of bare phosphor bronze telephone cables ran between each station through the tunnels. This allowed staff on one platform to (depending on which end of the platform they were at) call up the previous or next station along the line.
Leaving the cables bare in the tunnels was an ingenious way of allowing emergency communications in the tunnel. All trains were equipped with a basic speaker and microphone combination in the cab, which was connected to a small magneto battery. In the event of a breakdown or other stoppage a driver would dismount and use a pair of fly leads to connect this to the cables, allowing the driver to talk to the platform staff at the previous station.
Yerkes’ lines weren’t the first to use this method, which had appeared on what is now the Central line when it opened. In 1904 the Board of Trade had also made it compulsory for all new railways to have some kind of telephone setup to enable drivers to raise issues with local stations. Nonetheless its implementation on Yerkes’ Tubes from 1906 onwards marked the point at which this, and other Underground communication systems, started to become relatively standardised across the network, even if they didn’t interconnect.
A driver using an early tunnel telephone, taken from a Metropolitan line manual published in 1926.
By 1915 work had begun to take tunnel telephones one step further and separate them entirely from the regular telephone system within stations, at the same time converting them to run off of central batteries rather than portable ones that drivers and night workers had to carry themselves. This brought with it two major advantages. Firstly, it effectively doubled the communications capacity in an emergency (as station-to-station communications would now no longer prevent driver-to-station communications). It also allowed the tunnel telephones to instead put drivers in touch with the people they really needed to talk to in an emergency – their controllers.
Very quickly, it was also realised that there was a third advantage as well. For if drivers were to only use the tunnel telephone in an emergency, then any call that arrived over this system could be treated as such. This, combined with an incident in 1920 where a dropped tunnel telephone in thick smoke prevented the driver from contacting control, resulted in the system being altered so that any voltage change on the tunnel lines – whether triggered by a telephone being plugged in by a driver, or by a driver or line worker simply pinching the wires together and short circuiting them, would automatically cut off the current on that section of line.
A photo demonstrating to drivers how to correctly pinch the wires.
Talking on the train
Whilst isolating the tunnel telephones for driver use in an emergency had its advantages, it also meant that in the long term a better system for train-to-train, and train-to-controller communication was soon needed.
The first attempt to do the former was the ‘Drico’ (short for ‘Driver to Controller’) system launched shortly after the Second World War. This essentially piggybacked onto the standard tunnel telephone system, but crucially didn’t result in a voltage change on the phone lines. This meant that, if stopped at a signal, a driver could now contact the controller by Drico without the tunnel telephone automatically discharging the current on the line. By 1952 Drico was running on the Northern line. By 1959 it had been extended across the entire network, including the East London Line.
As a system, Drico was a big step forward but the technical limitations imposed by the need not to change the cable voltage meant audio quality was far from perfect. Nonetheless, with modification Drico would remain in place and in use (as a system of last resort) across the whole network right up until radio finally arrived in force and beyond.
Radio arrives
Above ground, the Underground adopted radio just as swiftly as it had jumped on other improvements in communication systems. Development of a radio system started almost immediately after the war, and by 1950 a radio control tower had been erected on the top of 55 Broadway, the Underground’s headquarters building.
The main beneficiaries of this were signals and engineering staff – the system having been specifically put in place to give them mobile communications during incidents. To begin with, the size of the equipment required meant the use of radio-equipped breakdown vans. As the technology improved though engineers began to be issued with handheld systems.
As can likely be imagined, these were hardly the small handsets in use over Connect today. Instead they were closer in appearance to early mobile phones – telephone handsets on top of a briefcase full of wires and battery. Over time these gradually became more pocket-sized devices. This culminated, in the early nineties, with London Underground’s Emergency Response Unit (ERU) being equipped with control vehicles filled with an array of radios, fax machines and TV units.
Radio goes underground
By 1966, a method had also finally been found to bring radio (of sorts) to trains. Pioneered on the Victoria line, it was known as Carrier Wave and – rather ingeniously – used the conductor rail to transmit radio. Something similar had been pioneered in Toronto, but this had only allowed driver-to-controller conversations to be initiated, not the reverse. Tested on the Hainault Loop (along with the Victoria line trains themselves) Carrier Wave was more advanced, allowing both driver and controller to contact each other. This was considered vital in light of the gradual shift to Driver Only Operation (DOO) on the Underground. Combined with the move to Automatic Train Operation (ATO), this increased the need for a driver to be onboard their own train – and ideally in the cab – at all times, lest something happen whilst it was unattended. Carrier Wave helped ensure that was possible.
DOO also brought with it another need that (at least to begin with) Carrier Wave was unable to address: train-to-train communication. With no guards on board, Victoria line trains were equipped with a powerful rear light which could be used to signal to a driver behind that they should pull up close and render assistance. Without train-to-train communication, however, it was impossible for the lead driver to talk to the following driver before they boarded and thus left them blindly walking into a potential emergency situation.
Several different options were trialled as a way of delivering train-to-train communications without much success. These ranged from VHF sets on the Victoria line (which doubled up as the loudspeaker system) to a far more complex (and expensive) system relying on small train-based aerials and tunnel base stations across almost the entire Underground. In 1976 a ‘leaky-feeder’ method (which relied on co-ax cables with their outer condutors cut at intervals to allow radio waves through) was also trialled at the top end of the Bakerloo line, based on a system first used by the National Coal Board, who had faced a similar challenge in Britain’s mines.
Getting leaky
This leaky feeder method would ultimately prove to be the best option and by 1984 it had been deployed across the entire network. It was far from perfect, as it required base stations every 1.4km and was limited to only four radio bands. It was also, essentially, an ‘open’ system – meaning that any driver who happened to be listening could hear the current conversation happening on the line. This led to some creative solutions to prevent confusion for drivers – such as unheard (by the driver) five-digit codes which were transmitted at the beginning of any call and ensured that only the receiver in the relevant train rang. Nonetheless these would remain problems throughout the lifespan of the system.
Tunnel telephone cables at Waterloo
The darkest day: King’s Cross
The tragic events of the 1987 King’s Cross fire would serve to highlight many organisational and technical failings within London Underground. Communications were no exception. The overall decline of the network, both in terms of passenger numbers and funding, had meant that the investment and leadership required to create a modern, safe and – most importantly – consistent communications network across all lines, trains and stations had not always been there.
This wasn’t to say that London Underground hadn’t continued to push the boundaries of technology. Outside of radio, the Underground could boast both the first ever pulse exchange for regular telecoms (surprisingly not at Earl’s Court), early adoption of push-button and tone phones (on the Victoria line) and one of the first ever uses of commercial fibre-optics at Hounslow Exchange.
On an operational level though, its day-to-day communications network remained fragmented. By 1987 radio may have been practically ever-present on Underground trains, for example, but station radio was still patchy. Not every station had been equipped, and even those that were often didn’t have it throughout. One consequence of the fire was a change in the rail regulations to require station radio throughout the entirety of a station. London Underground began to work out how to comply.
In the end, a system based on leaky feeders was once again used to put the new radio network in place, with over 150 stations fully equipped by the end of the decade. This also included work to make British Transport Police radios work underground, albeit by essentially picking up their calls and rerouting them to a control centre over landlines. This facility was, however, unique to the BTP and not extended to the wider Metropolitan Police – something that would become an issue later and which Connect would help correct.
Enter Connect
By the end of the nineties London Underground had succeeded in expanding radio coverage throughout the network, but at the same time there was little to no cross-linkage. Each London Underground line had its own network and standalone radio system and even within lines, direct radio communication between stations and drivers was rarely possible. Indeed over 130 separate communication systems existed across the network.5.
5. London Underground’s above ground telephone developments at this time are worth an entire article on their own, encompassing early use of IBM computers, several small-scale wars with the Post Office and a shock migration from British Telecom to Mercury.
The variety of telecommunications on the Underground is visible even at Edgware Road signal box today.
For London Underground, the price of consolidating and fixing these systems was seen as prohibitively costly. The then Labour Government’s promotion of Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) in the late nineties, however, suddenly opened up an opportunity for change. A £1.2bn project package was put together which called for the replacement and consolidation of the entire Underground radio network as part of a 20-year contract. Flawed as many PFI schemes were, Connect would prove eventually to be a success although, as with many schemes on the Underground at the time, the complexity of the task and time required would turn out to be greater than expected.
The Connect PFI contract was awarded to the CityLink Consortium – comprising Thales, Fluor, Motorola, HSBC and John Laing in November 1999. The goal was to provide a single Motorola Tetra radio network for London Underground, incorporating both the Motorola Tetra Radio and traditional phone, data and video services.
This was no small feat. By the time rollout was completed in 2009, over 400km of track and each of the 270 stations on the Underground had been fully connected. In total, Connect now comprises over 12,000 users, using 7,500 hand radios and over 1,400 train-based ones. Over 1,450km of optical fibre and conventional cabling was also required to complete coverage.
Airwave arrives
A significant point in Connect’s history occurred in the period following the London Bombings in 2005. In the aftermath of the attacks, it became clear that providing radio access only to the BTP was not enough. The network needed to be extended to enable London’s police and ambulance services to go underground at a station whilst continuing to communicate with their peers using their own emergency services-issued radio.
Luckily, the National Policing Improvement Agency already had a project underway to replace police radios throughout the UK. Equally luckily, the Airwave project had already opted to use a Tetra-based system.
As a result, Consortium members Thales and Motorola collaborated with London Underground and Airwave to bring about full integration between the two radio networks. With Connect by this point already a relatively stable installation, work proceeded quickly and by October 2008 final testing was underway. By the end of 2009 London, for the first time in its history, had a fully shared and integrated system of radio communication across the entire Underground and all of the emergency services (the Fire Brigade, whilst not an Airwave user, already had a below-ground radio solution).
Managing Connect
The view inside the control room.
From 2009 onwards, Thales has continued as the sole maintainer and service delivery supplier through the Citylink consortium, ensuring that both the Tetra radio and the transmission network systems are operated and maintained to provide the best service for London Underground. Given the scale of both the task and the amount of equipment deployed, it is not work that can be carried out in isolation. On the contractor side, Motorola continue to provide manufacturer support and close collaboration is also required with other leading communication manufacturers such as Ericsson.
We have written before about lessons learnt from the 2012 London Olympics on LR before, and both Thales and London Underground learnt valuable Connect lessons from the competition as well. The two organisations were forced to work closely to ensure preparations were in place for seamless service and the benefits to both organisations were noted. In 2013 the Thales Network Management Centre (NMC) became co-located with London Underground. This enabled the Connect duty team to work in much closer collaboration with London Underground’s operational staff on a daily basis and improved the ability of both teams to undertake joint analysis to fix issues.
Ensuring 24/7 coverage from the NMC is no small task. Within the centre there is a team of engineers who monitor the network for any alarm events. The same team also co-ordinates the activities of the field staff who are involved in maintenance, repairs out on the network or the replacement of any assets that cannot be repaired on site. Generally speaking, work takes place during normal operating hours but where this would pose an unacceptable risk to the operation of the network, it is postponed until engineering hours when trains are no longer running.
The NMC also includes both problem managers and field technical support engineers to provide an enhanced level of technical expertise for complex faults. Connect is also an evolving product, and when new aspects of technology are introduced, these act as integrators and implementers as well.
Managing the assets
With over 100,000 Connect assets in place on the Underground, it is perhaps no surprise that maintenance activities are extensive and include full servicing and checks on all assets within the system. This extends to staff patrols across the network throughout the year, checking for any signs of deterioration in radio communication quality so that this can be rectified before it becomes a problem.
For each asset, Thales considers the manufacturer’s mean time between failure rates, the asset life expectancy and the data collected surrounding faults and alarms. This data enables engineering teams to make design improvements or select the right replacement asset so that a renewal can take place prior to asset performance starting to degrade. Each year there is a programme of asset renewal activity to ensure that the network can continue to operate at its most resilient levels. This approach has enabled London Underground and Thales to safely introduce improvements, not least because technology has evolved so significantly since its introduction.
There is also now more emphasis on remote event notifications and diagnostics. This has resulted in much more centrally managed activity and less in the field. This is vital because field work still remains a specialised task. The very nature of the Underground – its age and the diversity of previous communications instalments covered earlier in this article – mean that field work on Connect is always likely to require topographical and environmental knowledge not just of the Underground but also sometimes of a specific line.
The control panel wall
Spreading the knowledge
Managing Connect has brought with it a whole-life approach to asset management that considers the design, installation, operation, and maintenance as a single cycle. The principles of this have been established and refined and are now an integral part of Thales’s service offering. The lessons that the team has learned from operating the Connect network and assessing asset conditions have gone on to inform activity elsewhere in the UK, such as on Manchester Metrolink.
Meanwhile ‘Obsolescence management’ is a phrase that might seem to owe more to management speak than practicality, but understanding how to plan, diagnose and proactively respond in a timely manner whilst not disrupting operations has proven vital. Recognising and assessing the impact, then implementing a solution on a network the scale of Connect with such a variety of assets is a challenge that has needed to be mastered.
Managing people
It is not just technology that has allowed successful delivery of the Connect project for almost two decades. It has been the people too. A team of men and women work around the clock on Connect and each one is highly trained, whether they are out in the field or working on projects to introduce a new technology. Processes are in place to make sure that there are acknowledged experts in place to validate innovation, design and then assure that each stage of the work has been completed to the right standard.
Each member of staff undertakes safety training as a prerequisite for their role, but health and wellbeing also underpin all activities. One of the lessons that has been learnt throughout the transport and telecoms industries is that it is important to ensure that everyone is not just fit, which goes without saying, but actually on top form as well. What applies to sportsmen applies to railway and telecoms workers too. A great diet, a good night’s sleep and drinking lots of water are all critical as they contribute to alertness and thus underpin the safety of both individuals and the system. In an industry where safety is of the utmost importance, these small things matter.
Behavioural safety is a concept that has also bled over from the wider Thales group to have a significant impact on Connect: Why do people make mistakes? What makes a bad, or good, habit?
Understanding the causes of complacency and understanding how or why we behave (or even don’t behave) in a certain way can either contribute to or adversely impact safe work and safe engineering practices. This is not just true on Connect but in wider transport work as well.
There are other things that positively affect the delivery of Connect. Over the years that it has been deployed, female role models have increasingly been employed to senior positions across both Thales and the rest of the transport industry where it was very rare before. It has been noticeable on the ground level that apprentices and graduates now join Thales and London Underground having seen both a bright future and real examples of women working at all levels within engineering, safety and operations. There are female Systems Engineers, Data Specialists, Software Engineers, Hardware Engineers and Network Specialists, all demonstrating that telecoms and engineering is a viable career.
In many ways the challenges faced on Connect are not dissimilar to the ones faced by those first telegraph engineers on the Metropolitan back in 1863. There is always a new challenge, a new innovation or a colleague who has succeeded in changing the way we work and behave. What Charles Spagnoletti would certainly not recognise, however, is the make-up of the teams that face those challenges. In Spagnoletti’s time women operated communications systems. In 2016 they make them.
Heading into the future
Which brings us, after 153 years of change, to the future. What next for Connect and for communications beyond it on the Underground?
In the near future, of course, lies the opening of Crossrail. Construction of the line has again seen Thales working with contractors while they undertake the tunnelling and building works. Connect assets have needed to be protected or moved during critical works, some even permanently, due to major changes to the station building schemes throughout the capital. All this has been done with negligible impact to the services provided to Connect’s end users.
Changing working methods to improve reliability further is also of particular interest to the Connect team. Elsewhere within Thales an Intelligent Asset Monitoring product (IAM) has been adopted – a decision support product that is in use with Network Rail.
Whether the team could introduce this to the Connect network, so that its predict and prevent capabilities could be adopted, is a current consideration. The network management platforms will be providing the events and alarms that give performance-related indicators. Having IAM in place as well would allow physical and mechanical data to be added to the mix. This would then highlight critical, but perhaps previously unforeseen, mitigating maintenance or even asset replacement that was required. In the harsh environment of the London Underground network, the ability to effectively analyse this type of data could have an enormous impact.
All aspects of security – be it physical, cyber or electronic – are another fast moving area of change. The Connect network and its assets have been evaluated and precautionary measures such as firewalls and gates are in place. But securing the network is not a one-off approach. The Connect system is re-evaluated and upgraded at regular intervals to ensure that the protection is up to date and robust. Like safety, improvements in security have led to an increased awareness and new behaviours for the NMC staff and for the end users of the system. There is the potential for more challenges to come.
Beyond security, it is highly likely that integration with other systems will be at the heart of Connect’s future. For example, the increased automation in station concourses has required additional telecoms capability. The Connect network now has much greater bandwidth than in 2009 and the IP capability will have an increased take-up by London Underground. This may seem slow compared to rollout in business environments, but public funding, priorities and technical assurance testing can take its toll on the speed of change. Connect is the backbone of the system, but the end equipment is varied with a wide range of uses. Each integration and interaction requires rigorous protection ensuring network resilience, reliability and security.
Looking to the long term
Finally, it is worth looking at what the future could hold for telecoms on the Underground in general. There are certainly lots of questions: How will the evolution of 4G and then eventually 5G pan out? What will that mean to London Underground and the wider travelling public? What will that mean to the next generation of the radio system and how will the industry respond to the safety assurance requirements of a system operating in a rail environment like Connect?
To a certain extent these are all questions that it is not yet possible to answer. Some trends and requirements, however, are increasingly becoming clear. One is that telecoms systems may need to change the way data is processed, but that there will still clearly be a requirement for a secure network like Connect to carry that data from A to B. The challenges of working with ‘big data’ will also inevitably see a requirement for data to move with increased speed, in turn calling for systems that can process more information faster at each end of the connection.
The Internet of Things (IOT) is also increasingly gaining both business and consumer attention. Would this have a future application in the rail industry, as mentioned above? Even if so, again there is still a need for a robust telecoms backbone such as the Connect network to carry the secure capability behind the scenes. Should asset conditions change or functionality be instigated based on an internet instruction, then it would be necessary to ensure safe operations are in place.
Indeed perhaps the more important question is how the cyber security industry will react to this change. These are just a well-known sample of important questions facing the industry.
In a way, many of these future questions are simply evolved versions of the same debates and demands that have always existed on the Underground – it is always about how fast people can safely travel, and how fast problems can be spotted, discussed and fixed. On a more specific level, for Thales as the Connect service provider and operator, the key questions and next steps are also about considering how innovation will assure sustained network performance into the next decade for both the Tetra radio system and the Transmission system, and how improving information management and decision-based support tools can enhance the capability of both systems.
Whatever is coming, it will only be the latest step in a very long journey from telegraph to Connect. For over 150 years the Underground has been at the forefront of telecoms technology. All that really remains is to see whether this is a position it manages to keep.
Should it do so, then exciting, but no doubt complex, times should lie ahead both for the industry and passengers. From the great exchange in the sky, Charles Spagnoletti and multiple generations of Underground telecoms engineers are looking down at that challenge and smiling.
Karen O’Neill is Connect O&M Manager at Thales. John Bull is Editor of London Reconnections. Those looking for more information on the history of telephones and telecoms on the Underground are highly recommended to take a look at the books of Mike Horne, whose work was invaluable during research for this article.
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Mill Hill Park,I suspect,rather than Mill Hill East.
But a good read,nevertheless!
Very interesting article. I particularly liked the simple but effective way timepieces were synchronised. But was that system really still in use in 1940, when Mill Hill East became part of the Underground?
Yup – well spotted. Should indeed be Mill Hill Park.
Will fix in a second.
There are some errors in this and I recommend a look at:
http://www.metadyne.co.uk/pdf_files/Telephones.pdf
It is a useful and well researched article.
Hello Piers,
That was one of several sources we used during writing (hence why Mike get’s a hat-tip at the end).
If you’ve spotted specific errors though, do please feel free to email us and we’ll happily correct.
Very interesting
All that Tfl need to do now is to spread this excellent communication to the whole of the “Overground” network & services, as their current state is all-too-obviously not up to the standards described here …
Interesting article, and some comments:
a) communications didn’t become electronic until the mid twentieth century, so any references to electronic equipment before then (eg Alexander Graham Bell’s telephones) are actually to electrical equipment;
b) a question of individual style and taste, but why write “first ever” (eg “first ever pulse exchange” when plain “first” will do?
c) “briefcass” is a typo;
d) the punctuation and capitalisation after the direct quotes re the Baker St incident are a bit strange, treating the quote as a stand-alone sentence rather then the first part of a continuing sentence, thus leaving the secondo part in sentence-less limbo;
e) it can’t have been “just after” nine at Baker St if the late-running 0907 from New Cross was there.
Sorry about the pedantry!
@Mike
I read it as being the 0907 arrival at Baker Street, which came from New Cross.
One minor point – it was the National Policing Improvement Agency as opposed to the National Police Improvement Agency. [Fixed now.]
I feel a slight concern that this (interesting) article/account strays rather too close to an ‘advertorial’ in places. This maybe due to the use of the names of Thales’ products and, especially in the “Managing People” section, reference to each man and woman being ‘highly trained’ (that’s good, then!) and having a good diet and drinking more water. To me, anyway, all this gives just a little less credence to the objectivity of the piece when it comes to the no doubt impressive achievements of Thales in implementing and maintain such a complex system.
@0775john
I had the same thought, I would imagine it comes from the co-writer of this piece working for Thales.
Totally valid concern – it’s why it’s clearly marked as a sponsored piece. Short version is essentially that Thales were keen to do something deep on the history of comms on the Underground and it’s a subject I’ve wanted us to cover for ages so was more than happy to do it as a joint effort.
As people who’ve chatted to me at the meetup will know – I’m actually quite keen to do more stuff like this, where the subject matter is right. Because partnering up uncovers stories that companies didn’t even realise should be told, but also brings different perspectives (and better access) to topics that just don’t get covered otherwise. And as long as the partner agrees to effectively behave by our editorial rules then I consider it a win all round. Indeed I take it as a bit of a point of pride when they do – as it shows they trust our methods.
What it does mean though is some interesting debates about authorial language. For example one thing I’ve noticed is that railway professionals are (generally justifiably) over-emphatic writers about things that they are personally involved in – particularly if it’s work done by their teams (there seems to be a strong praise culture within the industry which I’ve actually wondered occasionally about writing about as a topic in it’s own right).
That then reflects through (e.g. such as in the “highly trained”) when you ask them to write in detail / describe systems/teams.
With my editor’s hat on, that then leads to an interesting internal debate – how much of that language do you leave in, because ultimately it reflects the author’s voice and (to a certain extent) the tone their peers/readers likely expect, and how much do you filter out? Leave too much in, and you risk leaving the piece feeling too chatty or enthusiastic. Remove too much though and you essentially remove the author’s own voice.
Here, I opted to leave it in, because ultimately I felt it important that once we moved beyond the history and into the now, it was important to let Karen’s voice come through more than mine – as that was the area she was closer to than I was. Whereas on the earlier parts, we tended to default more to my voice where there was any kind of debate over it.
Which I guess is all just a very long way of saying that it turns out co-authoring with experts (rather than just interviewing them) is an interesting experience and one that’s certainly adding some rules to our styleguide!
Rest assured though that editorially this piece has had the same rigour as anything else we write. Not least because if it was a non-edited/non-co-produced piece then it wouldn’t be allowed on the site – only as a clearly marked mag insert. Them’s the rules!
Oh and final, final sidenote on nutrition and wellbeing in the railway industry: This is a massive topic in it’s own right. I kid ye not. I won’t write more about it here as I’ve derailed this enough, but it’s a massive rabbit hole of a topic that I fell down recently by accident (after chats with various infracos and suppliers). LU, Thales and (to a lesser extent) Bombardier seem to be doing some interesting things here related to using data to work out the root causes of site accidents rather than the practical cause, which is showing that things like addressing hydration and mental wellbeing have a noticeable impact on site safety.
It’s fascinating stuff and well within our “write about stuff other people don’t” remit, so expect a post on it at some point in the future.
Anyway, apologies for the derail. Let normal discussion resume.
There’s a detailed article, published by the LURS, on the tunnel telephone system, here. It provides more of the technical detail, for those who like that sort of thing!
As others have raised the subject I will just say it seemed a little bit too much like a Thales brochure than what I’ve come to expect. I accept the article is sponsored but so much of what was said towards the end could be summed up as “we do sensible things that are good practice because the contract with LU requires us to do this”. Of course there are challenges to installing a system like Connect but for those of us who sometimes glimpsed the other side of things it wasn’t all “sweetness and light”. Infrastructure failed, sometimes catastrophically, and the kit didn’t always work properly leading to non operation of trains.
I also thought the Connect PFI had been “put to sleep” by TfL as it has done with almost every other such contract it has inherited. Anyone know the status of this? Is it now a more conventional maintain and support arrangement with some element of “asset refresh” in it to ensure contracted performance levels are maintained? Understanding this would perhaps help everyone so we aren’t left thinking contractors do all this stuff because they’re “lovely” but more because they’re paid to do it or it is in their economic self interest to avoid other problems. By all means shout about achievements but a bit more grisly reality about how you got there makes it all a bit more real (IMO, of course).
@ Greg – I thought National Rail had its own radio / comms systems? The last thing you want to do is start breaking up or interfering with national systems that may need to be inherited by subsequent operators. It also just creates more interfaces, more confusion and more to break down. All of this is contrary to decades of learning on the railway and how to avoid incidents. Surely one of the points in the article is what people do with the systems they have rather than the system itself? If you are griping (again) about poor passenger information then don’t blame the systems. The issue is with how they are used by the human beings on the railway.
I assume Connect has to work on those bits of NR infrastructure where LU trains work but I don’t know if other measures are also in place. Ditto for the reverse situation where Chiltern run on LU metals. I’m sure there’s a solution but I don’t know what it is. I have vague memories of Connect assets being installed alongside NR metals but don’t know if the “captive” Chiltern trains for use on LU tracks are also Connect equipped.
It would be interesting to read some more details about the capabilities of Connect and how it is used — there is reference to a large number of point-to-point calls, and historical shortfalls in certain connection options, but nowhere does it really clarify whether a driver of a Victoria line train could (for example) choose from a list of thousands of terminals and place a ‘call’ to a Bakerloo line depot manager. How does Connect/Tetra actually work?
At least on my phone, the mobile version of the site doesn’t include the “sponsored by Thales” tagline
As a casual reader of the site, I have to say that the negative comments about Thales and the pedantry about some of the punctuation in this article (and previously on almost all other posts) tiresome.
Its an interesting read – take it for what it is – a bit of support and sponsorship should be cherished not derided.
Anon at 20:39 Thanks for your comment. We do not object to detail comments about wording and punctuation, in fact we welcome them; but could I remind everyone that a slightly better way to make such detailed comments (which might be seen as pedantry) is by eMail to [email protected] That way other readers will not be distracted by them.
There’s no indication on my Android-running tablet that the article is sponsored by Thales – would have been good to know!
And preferred path for pedantry duly noted, Malcolm – thanks.
WW @ 17.19
Yes they (NR) do have such systems, but it’s a sad state of affairs when I, sitting at home, can inform “the boss” trapped by a “one under” could get more information from me, by mobile phone than the staff on the various platforms & stations had …
Something is obviously wrong, somewhere, but untangling it could present slight problems?
I found the article interesting and informative until somewhere around the Managing the Assets section, at which point I switched off and skimmed through to the end. I understand it’s a sponsored piece, but once it started to feel like a Thales marketing case-study I lost all interest.
Looking to the future, I think there will be two main challenges in this field: Firstly installing full public mobile phone coverage (not that I’m demanding it, but it sometimes seems that we are not far off the day when internet/phone connectivity is seen more as a human right). Secondly, tweaking the control and communication systems for driverless operation. I will always hold that the deep small diameter tubes will need to be staffed, but foresee a decade hence a situation similar to today’s Southern guards dispute. In this case it will concern the role and working conditions for the ex-drivers-come-attendants. I understand (or assume) that Connect will already pick up a staff member’s handset anywhere in a train, but on-board PA announcements are still hard wired from the cab.
If the powers that be really think driverless will also mean unstaffed, then they will need to install PA, CCTV and possibly call points throughout the tunnels too, to have any chance of dealing quickly with detrainings or other emergencies. Such kit, however, will probably take an even more miniaturised and ubiquitous form by that time.
“One consequence of the fire was a change in the rail regulations to require station radio throughout the entirety of a station. London Underground began to work out how to comply.”
What was it about the 1987 fire which prompted this regulation change? Were there specific failings in communication which exacerbated the situation, or just a general “things must be better” after the event?
John Bull 14.39 and others.
As I think it was me that first raised the subject of the Thales “voice” in the LR series of objective articles can I just say that I am pleased to read JB’s detailed response and note and can accept the thought processes that led to the collaboration.
Modern Railways has pieces that are ‘sponsored’ that I sometimes read but they do not contain a history such as that included here. I feel I can accept that since MR is a commercial publication aiming to please shareholders it goes with their philosophy. But I was slightly taken aback by some of the phraseology used as it sounded less authoritative than in other articles.
My problem probably, wanting my cake and wanting to eat it as well, and I know that this is the way it is – I would much prefer to get an article in LR like this that makes clear the joint authorship than no article especially when it reveals lots of interesting detail.
The commercially focussed author is inevitably going to have a different style and no offence meant to them for that! I am fascinated by the diet/nutrition question, not having any knowledge of it, and an article one day would be fascinating – but the “highly trained” phrase I still regard as rather superfluous!
I recall that in a Parliamentary sketch in the Guardian the late Simon Hoggart was often asking us to test a politician’s sincerity and sense by reversing the adjectives used in a speech. If the result was ludicrous the politician was on shaky ground and blustering. Hence my “highly trained” concern since we all know Thales would be unlikely to place their “worst trained” technicians on the Connect contract…
@Anonymous
See Chapter 16 (particularly para 24-26) and recommendations 110-119 of the Fennel Report into the Kings Cross Fire (pages 133-138 and 173-174)
http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/DoT_KX1987.pdf
I like the Simon Hoggart test here, with regard to the “highly trained”. But on the matter of the general “Thales is good” content which does grate a little (to me), it occurs to me that even if Karen (or any author in that position) does happen to have some personal reservations about the company for which she works, or its policies, she would not be able to express them here. So it is up to the readers to remind themselves, from time to time, that “they would say that, wouldn’t they?”.
@ Timbeau – I’ve not read the Fennell Report in its entirety, just bits. The section on communications and the failings make rather terrifying reading but then that was what the Underground was like back then. I can still remember the trauma the day after when I eventually got into the (LU) office. I had no idea it had happened as I didn’t see or hear any news before heading to the station and seeing the front page of a newspaper. The day of the fire was also my graduation ceremony at the Barbican. It was a sheer fluke that I went home on the GN from Moorgate and not via KX as I’d quite possibly have got caught in the starting stages of the emergency. Furthermore my parents hadn’t been able to attend so that was one less reason not to be in the KX area that evening. Funny how “ordinary decisions” look after an event like this.
No mention of this being a sponsored post in iOS Safari. Like others, I felt a tonal shirt towards the end, and skimmed. Comments explained why. Makes me slightly more wary/less likely to read LR in future, which after many years is a shame. Maybe the print version could contain sponsored articles and the website could remain unsullied? (Or vice-versa?) Either way, better labelling would be fab. x
For future sponsored articles, the link between the co-author and the sponsoring company would be better placed at the beginning rather than at the end. In this case it would be ‘Karen O’Neill (Connect O&M Manager at Thales) & John Bull.
As others have remarked, I felt very uneasy about the shift in writing style towards the end.
@Malcolm 5th Oct 00.54 – the acronym for “they would say that, wouldn’t they?” is MRDA (Mandy Rice-Davies applies)
WW
Almost as terrifying was that my then wife wasn’t feeling well that day, & thus missed being squashed flat at Moorgate. Fortunately, she is still with us.
Another little communication network that the Underground kept running well into the 1990s was the teleprinters from the Network Control Centre to all the major office buildings (not sure if they went to stations as well ?), as an instant-ish of disseminating delay information around the network. I know the one outside Peter Longhurst’s office at Acton works always used to have a long scroll of paper hanging out of it, suggesting that the ish of instant-ish was dependant on his secretary (the fearsome Babs if I recall correctly) passing the machine
Interesting piece. It would however be better if the “sponsored by…..” notice was more prominent in any future such articles. I didn’t notice it until I went back and looked again.
One question that always bothered me. Did the driver get a jolt when pinching the tunnel phone wires together? What was the voltage?
[Finally, in the paragraph concerning underground radio, systems on trial in the 1960’s and 1970’s would have been tried out or tested, not trialled.]
I also fortuitously missed the KX fire, in my case by deciding that as it was late I would go straight home instead of walking down to Kings Cross to buy a ticket in advance for a journey to visit my parents as I had originally intended.
I had told my mother of my intention, but not that I had changed my mind. Like WW, I did not see the news that night, so I had no idea anything was amiss until the next day. Unfortunately my mother did see the news and, not hearing from me until the next day, feared the worst.
@Nameless
“Did the driver get a jolt when pinching the tunnel telephone wires together? What was the voltage?”
According to Tubeprune the voltage in the tunnel telephone wires is 5-10 Volts.
http://www.trainweb.org/tubeprune/tractioncurr.htm.
You’d get a bigger jolt from touching the rails on a Hornby set. (One layout I’ve seen had a sign saying “Caution, 12,000 mV”)
@timbeau: DCC controlled model railways can run at upto 32,000 mV!
Its interesting that few comments have referenced just how much better the LU system is than the national rail version, suggesting there is little knowledge amongst readers.
The mainline network has no joined up radio system at stations or trackside, instead the system is much closer to reception for a train mounted phone. The communications ability within LU ops is on a different scale, perhaps why they are able to get information around far faster than mainline.
WW is right, some of this is how we use it but some is system capability – and the tube is streets ahead. Perhaps a part two for the article?
Anonymous
All too true, as I found out recently.
There was “One Under” (or similar) at Bethnal Green.
“The Boss” was trying to get home & relying on me, relaying signalling information from OpenTrainTimes to her, as the ground staff (LO, remember, but dependant upon NR for info) hadn’t got a clue, because no-one was telling them anything.
Anonymous at 1935 05 10 16: yes, but isn’t it partly a cultural thing, as you hint with ‘the way you use it’? The “Underground” (with the possibly dishonourable exception of the Met) needed to ‘run a tighter ship’ both because of what happens in emergencies (KX, Moorgate…) & the high frequencies of trains, so using available technology thoughtfully & to the max, as the article notes, eg in relation to James Staats Forbes.
On the other hand, there’s the jolt you’d get from the original “Hornby Electric Trainset” which ran on unchanged 110V mains current (and in its original form had no cover at all for the contacts on the controller). Oh, those golden days before pettifogging health and safety…
@ Anonymous – as OB has already suggested there are multiple reasons why LU’s capability is different.
1. On a small network it carries broadly the same number of people on a working day as the entire NR network. The congestion / movement of people management issues are far greater and far more concentrated in particular places.
2. LU is heavily regulated on things like fire and safety compliance. It has to do things and in particular ways that the mainline really doesn’t have to contemplate in quite the same way or scale. Clearly National Rail has issues at some locations but not an entire network of them.
3. LU as an organisation has had to recover from the trauma of the Kings Cross fire and the inadequacies that highlighted. While there have been traumatic events on the national rail network I wonder if they had quite the same impact. (Happy to be corrected on this). It took many years to complete the Fennell recommendations – improving KX station with much more capacity was only completed a few years ago.
4. I’d also argue that the political pressure from an elected Mayor on TfL, and therefore LU, to raise the performance of the tube has helped improve information flows and engrained the need to tell passengers what is going on. It’s taken years to get there but there has been a distinct push. TfL was also happy to release a lot of its electronic data for use by app developers. This also creates a pressure for accurate reporting in the event of service failure. By contrast Network Rail actively tried to stop the release of its train running data didn’t it? It tried to kill off Realtimetrains and similar sites despite the great value that info can provide to people. Completely different organisational attitudes although I think NR changed its stance fairly quickly after “criticism”. I don’t see where a singular focus for improvement comes from in the main line railway. There is no “guiding mind” nor anyone demanding system wide improvement. DfT doesn’t do this and neither do any of the umbrella organisations despite their announcements and campaigns. Their interests are really those of the shareholders of the participating companies.
Yes some of the above drives different system capabilities (as explained in the article) but much is about what the organisation decides to do with that capability *and* its people to help passengers use the system effectively and safely.
WW, me again, I think you are right but it doesn’t get rid of the need to improve it we are to run tube like frequencies. How busy is the junction south of Blackfriars or Windmill Bridge, these are not that far off tube frequencies or passenger numbers at certain times.
The national network (wider than just NR) just is not as good at response as LU is. Trust me I have worked for both! And for me the major factor is communications. I don’t mean ‘info’ in a real tine trains sense, I mean the ability for those involved in the operation to have a common understanding.
I think there is some understanding this, but in many ways I am not sure the need is understood because ‘we have always done it this way’. I am not decrying the tube its system just lamenting that national rail hasn’t got something similar!
WW sorry, me once more, your final paragraph, the national rail system genuinely has substantially less functionality than the tube system, as well as how we use it.
In comparison to other Sponsored Pieces on most websites, I think LR have done well with this first article. I am confident the right balance will be found in future to attract sponsored articles whilst retaining the high LR standards we’ve all come to perhaps take for granted.
I would have liked to have heard more about the Safety-Critical nature of Connect, if Connect is down, do LU have to stop track operations?
Trackernet for example is not Safety-Critical, and the all-too-frequent outages do not halt train operations.
@Anonymous – whatever the initial cause of the differences between NR and LU, so long as the national rail sector is so structured that those who drive the trains, those who manage the traffic and (often) those who run the stations are in different hands, you will not get a seamless response to perturbations. Add to this the factor that LU is effectively concentrated within a few square kilometres, compared with the way in which the national network is spread over the face of the island, often with little or no human presence around for considerable distances, and response to handling the customer end of things becomes very difficult.
To take a typical example, between Guildford and Portsmouth, after about midday, there are just 6 staff on the ground, 4 of whom, being booking clerks, have no role in handling perturbations. The nearest “men in long macs” are anything up to 30 km away from any incident. And this in commuter land.
@ Anonymous – I can’t see where I was directly arguing that there is no need for improvement on NR. I was just offering a view as to why LU is rather different. I see Graham H has put forward the industry structure as a further factor as to why things are not so “smooth” on National Rail. I suspect that regularly retendering the operation of passenger rail services doesn’t help in developing longer term initiatives to drive improvement in communications (however they are used). The lack of a strategic push from Government (as paymaster) contributes to the lack of concerted effort. Every TOC promises “improved information for customers” which usually means fancy screens and I-Pads for staff which then turn out to be as useless as the old screens because there is no underpinning process and people improvement to deliver better and more accurate information faster.
Any good system depends on three dimensions. The equipment provided, the people who use it and the process/management of both. The various communication equipment provision on LU enables the success LU has enjoyed. However, it is people and management that utilises it effectively. Also significant attention has gone into making the system run more reliably. 10 years ago, people faced significant disruption quite frequently. The PPP, aftermath and run up to the Olympics put day to day operational performance as top priority and this has continued. I don’t go into London every day any more but I rate the service as amazing these days. It needs to be as it is also busier since I retired in 2014!
As others have intimated or said in words of one syllable, the main line railways have no choice but to emulate and, even, better the tube if they are to react to the increasing demand.
Fully agreed with Anon @ 4 October 2016 at 23:24. I can live with clearly-marked sponsored content if it provides interesting insights we wouldn’t otherwise get, but this started to read like generic marketing fluff towards the end and I completely tuned out.
Where is the marking that this was “sponsored”?
As I never allow javascript to roam of the leash except it has my specific permission, I am assuming that you have applied a .js tag somewhere in which case I will never see it.
Another Anon
HERE – at the bottom of the article, it said:
Karen O’Neill is Connect O&M Manager at Thales. John Bull is Editor of London Reconnections. Those looking for more information on the history of telephones and telecoms on the Underground are highly recommended to take a look at the books of Mike Horne, whose work was invaluable during research for this article.
And also just below the introductory paragraph and beside the second paragraph, at least when viewed on a PC, where this appears, in decorative form with a clickable link:
“An LR feature, sponsored by:
Thales”
GT: authorship and sponsorship are different things; GF: no such wording or link appears on my Android devices.
John Bull – We need you.
@Mike- JB has pointed out to me some significant differences between what I and many see on a traditional Windows PC screen and what those on mobile devices see. For example, I can see the latest comments, termed “Most Active Articles” covering eight of the various topics right near the top of the home page on the right-hand side of the screen. For those using other more compact machinery, it is apparent that you have to scroll with fingers right to the bottom of your screen to see what e.g. I have just said on the GTR timetable consultation article.
For the sake of it, clicking on the Thales link I mentioned takes you here:
https://www.thalesgroup.com/en
I definitely have nothing against the idea of a sponsored piece, but I was somewhat disappointed at the lack of technical detail on the current system. Besides being radio and knowing which proprietary system it was based upon, I really am left with no information about how the modern system actually works. Is it leaky feeder-based, but digital? Is it clever use of radio at the correct frequency to use the tunnel as a waveguide? What?
The unheard five digit codes sounds a bit like SELCAL, a way of communicating with individual aeroplanes using radio.