There was an interesting meeting in the Rocket pub in Acton last night between the local community, TfL, LOROL, Network Rail and, apparently:…two prospective parliamentary candidates, five councillors and one member of the London Assembly [anyone know who? Tony Arbour? Murad Qureshi? Caroline Pidgeon?].…and a partridge in a pear tree, no doubt. What’s *really* interesting is that this was a grassroots hyperlocal affair, conjured up by Sara Nathan of Acton, advertised by notes stuck up at the station and, indeed, tweeted by us. Now, normally one would expect this kind of affair to be one man in an anorak and a dog, but apparently seventy turned up, which you have to say is a bloody good effort. Now, why?Basically the North London Line is being shut down east of Gospel Oak for three months until May plus total closure every Sunday for an astonishing fifteen months, that’s why. It’s an Olympic project and the aim is to give the line the long-awaited four car capability (it’s been three car basically since electrification) and allow an eight trains per hour service east of Camden Road. For this to happen with the freight flows along there as well they need to replace some three track sections (put in to save money repairing a bridge near Caledonian Road, if memory serves) with four tracks. All jolly good, can’t break an omelette etc. What really caught my eye about the subsequent reports (and, obviously, the event was reported at length) was that someone else is watching TfL Board meetings and thereby ending up more clued-up than the professionals. See, we told you they need watching.Richard Jennings (who posts on transport issues on the west London Neighbournet forums and on uk.railway/uk.transport.london newsgroups where a thread is running on the subject) takes up the story:The real bombshell for me was the ex-London Travelwatch guy (Jerry someone?) who said that he’d heard on a webcast from last week’s TfL Board meeting that Ian Brown (MD, London Rail, TfL) had announced a decision to postpone the North London Line resignalling until after the Olympics. This obviously completely floored the Network Rail, TfL and LOROL people who had been claiming all evening that the resignalling project was the main reason for continued lack of trains on Sundays.I must admit I thought that Jerry had misheard what was said at the board meeting. But he was absolutely right. Ian Brown said that they would do all the “physical stuff” during the blockade (track, stations, drainage), but they would keep the old signalling going. Network Rail would return “later” to do the new signalling.Now, if Ian Brown is going round saying things on the TfL Board webcast that ‘completely floored’ NR, LOROL and indeed his own representatives something’s obviously gone adrift here somewhere. Hats off to Sara, Richard and Jerry Gold (the ex-Travelwatch gent who watches TfL Board meetings) – part of the puzzle of how to restore trust in British politics is having a well-informed public as well as well-informed politicians. Richard Jennings has been extremely useful and transcribed Brown’s words to the Board:“Bit of a dilemma on the North London Line infrastructure. I just want to be very clear on what we’ve done. This is a Network Rail 4-tracking scheme for our Overground, also for freight trains and for all the other stuff that runs on that line. Big scheme, £300+ million, and we’ve got all sorts of problems with signalling design with Network Rail. It’s a general problem with Network Rail, as people know round the table, and the dilemma for me is to have that service running, and to make sure they guarantee to have the service well in time for the Olympics, of 8 trains an hour. What we’re going ahead with [is] the blockade in February – 3 months’ blockade from Gospel Oak to Stratford. We’re going to do all the physical stuff, but we’re going to keep the old signalling going, so we’ve actually done the work, then Network Rail have got to come back and do the signalling later. So we have actually secured our frequency, we’ve secured the Olympic frequency, we’ve not secured the corporate railway, and there’s also some issues about freight trains, so the scheme’s got to be done, but we’ve secured our bit by that decision, which was quite a difficult one.”From which it’s fair to conclude that TfL’s top brass don’t trust NR to deliver the signalling upgrade on time for the Olympics, although what the ‘corporate railway’ is I have no idea, nor do I understand how you can four-track a three track railway without some signalling work or what went into the ‘difficult’ decision and whether Boris is sufficiently clued up to defend it if asked or why the official line is still that the resignalling is the reason for the closure. Given what we know of NR’s signalling resources elsewhere (Gospel Oak – Barking, for instance, or the eons it’s taking to get the old Moor Street station in Birmingham reconnected) delay is probably inevitable, but the NLL service is largely screwed at weekends already and having yet another round of closures after 2012 for the signalling work descoped before 2012 is just going to depress demand and annoy people still further, particularly if it’s unclear what the blockade this year is really for. Odd. Worth watching to see if the Assembly Member concerned pipes up at any point.
Sara Nathan ● 6065d