Episode 5 The Tube

Good morning. It's me again.

Below London's streets exists another world.

The madness is my swimming pool. I'm at home in that kind of water.

What can I say?

Every day, 20,000 workers struggle

to keep four million people on the move.

What, there's a customer asleep on the platform?

Yeah, get him on the train.

And it's not easy when the tube is undergoing

the biggest upgrade in its history.

You've got five minutes. I want this site cleared!

Now, cameras will reveal an underground world

we've never fully seen before.

10,421 mobiles since April.

Listen to what I'm saying - pay as you go.

-Yeah.

-Yeah? You just went.

Northern barrier, this guy running up the stairs.

You need to stop him.

BLOWS HORN

We're just the underground part of the city.

London comes down here every single day. It is part of their world.

It is part of everyone's world.

-Where'd you go?

-I love you.

TANNOY: 'This is Stratford.'

'This is Mile End.'

'This is Oxford Circus.'

Every weekday, the Underground takes on the job that defines it -

to get Londoners to work and back.

Rush hour is a misnomer.

50 years ago it might have been one hour, but nowadays it's about three.

Three hours of absolute mayhem.

Passengers think only of their individual struggle.

The staff have to deal with us as a crowd.

They're just people with different clothing and they do different jobs.

If you get them on their own, they're nice and polite.

In a crowd...

they'll hang you.

At the moment, we're totally overcrowded downstairs.

There are gaps of two minutes, three minutes, eight minutes

during rush hour. I mean, it's just a joke.

You just can't plan your life cos they can't provide a proper service.

I hate commuting. I hate London.

Look at this. It's crap.

There's never any seating. Never ever.

At this time of night, you've got no chance of getting a seat.

There's a lot of very angry people

on the Underground travelling around,

but every morning, every single day, they have to press all that down,

push it down and just try and remain composed and get to work.

They are right on the edge.

-You need to get in.

-Yeah, so you don't have to push me.

-No, you're trying to push me.

-No, you were pushing me.

You were behind me.

Boom.

The pressure on the system's enormous,

and there is no margin for error.

Got anything between a quarter

and a half a million people on the network at the moment.

That number of trains, of people, there is no room to breathe.

Anything going wrong has the potential to cause catastrophe.

Each morning, Bob Weedon braces himself for an onslaught.

He supervises a station that is at the heart of rush hour.

This is Bank station,

which is the biggest underground complex in Europe.

If you walked round every corridor on this station,

it would take you something, probably,

like about an hour and 15 minutes at brisk pace.

Not many people see it like this. It's nice and quiet,

you can...it's only your voice here. It's like an echo, isn't it?

It's like it's all your station, just yours.

Just us and the mice!

In the morning peak,

one million commuters pour into the Underground,

each hoping to get to work on time and unscathed.

You know, people come in, they've got their blinkers on,

off the train, up the escalator at the station.

But there's a lot work goes in for us

to ensure they get to their place of work safely and quickly.

I think sometimes,

you should almost...I'd almost say it should be

a bit of a forgettable experience.

If people have people have almost forgotten they've travelled

on the tube, in a way you've done a good job,

because it's not been any inconvenience, you know?

They've just...they're thinking about their work,

not always travelling, so if you can make it as painless

and as speedy as possible,

I think then you've probably done a good job.

Some commuters have their journeys down to a fine art.

I know I get in for eight.

I know how long it takes me to walk from my flat to the tube.

I know I've got to get the 14 minutes past,

which is actually getting a little bit tight,

and if I miss that train,

that means I'm late, 100%.

So...yeah.

Just might run a bit.

Getting London to work on time is

the responsibility of Howard Collins,

chief operating officer of the Tube.

It's like the race.

The other times of the day are like the practice runs

and, you know, the...it's an important time any time of the day.

But that 100 metre final is every day

at round about between eight o'clock and nine o'clock.

That is the test of our performance.

'Can I have the tube lines, please?'

Each morning, senior managers carry out

a postmortem of the previous day's service,

using reports from across the network.

'8:28, the Jubilee was suspended for track access.'

'A metal object on the track.'

'Traction current discharged...'

Today, the troublesome Jubilee line is high on their agenda.

Presumably, they're going to go through that Jubilee...

Blow by blow, George.

Early days to start pointing fingers,

but I think we'll find all this out in the investigation.

So that lost us about a third of the service

yesterday on the Jubilee line.

You know, you can't say, "Oh, well,

"we're all here together, it doesn't really matter."

People have got to know if it was a signal failure.

If someone did the wrong job, they have to be accountable for it.

The rank and file are also feeling the pressure.

Bank station is predicted to reach capacity within four years.

If nothing is done, passengers will have to queue

for an hour just to get into the station.

Rush hour starts from half six,

seven o'clock.

Seven o'clock till ten is busy.

-So the old notion of nine to five's a bit old-fashioned, then?

-Very true.

There's no nine to five.

John Hodges is the control room assistant at Bank.

It's just suits and boots going to work.

I'll go to work, they're going to work.

They're just rushing about from A to B.

John monitors every corner of the station.

As long as they're moving, it's OK.

It's when they stop moving, it's a problem.

I don't think they give themselves enough time to get from A to B.

They're just moving like sheep.

I'm an observer of people.

'I've got a lady here on the gate line'

'and she's dropped a glove on the track.'

'She's just wondering if someone can get it. Over.'

She's dropped her glove on the track,

and she wants us to stop trains and pick it up?

They're on drugs.

PHONE RINGS

-How long have you worked at Bank?

-Too long.

28 years.

Man and boy.

John is also a second pair of eyes for the supervisor

working down at the coalface.

All right, Barnet service. This train is about to depart. Stand clear.

Bob came here as a new supervisor, he didn't have a number.

I said, "What do you want to do?" He said, "well, I'm going out mobile."

I said, "OK, Bob. You're Mobile Bob."

He's been Mobile Bob for three years.

Yeah, Mobile Bob to SCP.

'Yeah, go ahead, Mobile Bob.'

The other supervisors have got numbers. He's Mobile Bob.

He likes it.

'Highly delayed down towards city...'

'Severe on the District...'

..and still part-suspended on the Jubilee.

Good on the rest of the lines.

We've got problems on a few lines,

but it's not been too bad at the moment.

This is flowing quite well.

Fingers crossed. So far, we're having a good morning.

Each line lays on up to 20 extra trains during peak hours,

but it's a delicate balance.

Too few won't cope with the crowds. Too many will cause a jam.

I'm at control. Train operators approaching Edgware Road,

particularly on the eastbound,

may be a tiny bit of congestion there for five minutes.

We've got an additional train in the area.

Metropolitan line controller Simon Flatto

must keep 100 trains running

through 54 stations to a strict timetable.

Hello, it's Simon at Met control.

Stick off platform 3, all the 4s, no movement...he's just gone. OK.

'I'm a juggler.'

I've got hot potatoes, and I don't want to burn my hands,

so I've got to keep them moving and oh, OK,

you can have that one...

Oh, and you can have that one.

Oh! In comes another couple. Oh, right. Keep them going.

Basically you don't want it to stop.

I don't want the wheels to stop turning.

We influence half a million people's lives every day, you know,

and we're almost like the silent force.

My best explanation is you remind them of Thomas The Tank Engine

and the Fat Controller,

because people can get their heads round that.

Thank you, driver. Out.

The yellow boxes, they're the stations.

The smaller boxes in multi-colours,

they are representative of a train,

so you could be looking at anything from 500

to 750 people on any one of those trains out there.

In the central section,

you basically want a train in every single platform.

If you've got a train in a platform and another in the tunnel behind it,

something's gone wrong, because in a tunnel, creates frustration,

you've effectively created an additional stop for the train,

and to stop a train and start it up again takes two minutes.

Every second counts on a journey.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

Welcome to Canary Wharf station. Please change here for the DLR.

If you look at a tube map, it's veins.

It's the veins through the heart of London.

So if one of them gets broke or clogged up,

not only do us staff have heart attacks,

but the rest of the system has a heart attack.

You've just got to look, the Underground's like a massive heart

with all these veins going into it,

and if it gets clogged up, it causes a problem.

This morning, not all the veins are pumping normally.

Was there no announcement on the train?

The tube itself has taken the unprecedented step

of deliberately severing a section of the Circle line

for a whole month.

Go to South Kensington on that one,

-and then the Piccadilly line up.

-OK.

OK?

Commuters are usually spared the pain of engineering work.

But without weekday closure, this part of the upgrade

would take six months to complete.

Yeah? Come on, crack on.

All the track between High Street Kensington

and Edgware Road is being dug up and replaced.

Let's go, then, lads.

This part of the line has some of the oldest stations and tunnels

on the network, dating back to the 1860s.

One of the problems we have round this stretch is,

we have a lot of flooding.

That's caused by poor track form, poor drainage.

What that gives us is constant signal failures,

what that does is grinds down the reliability of the Circle line

and the District line.

This job is going to fix that.

Replacing two roads of track

along a one-mile section is costing £10 million.

Ahead of the tracklayers, teams are working to improve drainage

by digging a complex system of pipes into the earth.

But London's clay can conceal surprises.

-How we doing, lads? All right?

-Yeah.

What's the hold-up?

It's a sewer.

-That's one of the problems, isn't it?

-Yeah.

That drains into...

-Into the main sewer, which is in the middle.

-Yeah.

One of the problems we've got here is,

that's a sewer.

As we go through here,

we keep finding these.

We knew a lot of them were there, and some we just come across,

because they're not on any drawings

and they've been lost in the mists of time.

What they do is they hold us up.

With Victorian sewer pipes blocking the planned trench for new pipes,

the team is forced to improvise.

We have to now dig this whole thing out by hand,

and there's probably about 100-odd metres of it.

Behind this, of course, then we've got sand coming,

we've got ballast coming,

so these guys are running ahead of that programme,

and if they slow up, then what they can do is,

they can cause that programme to slow down behind them.

Back to the old days with navvies and shovels, isn't it?

With the dig, drainage and installation of track

happening simultaneously,

there are up to 150 people working on the site at any one time.

This is the bit in the railway industry people don't realise.

Everything's got to be done by hand.

All these rails, they're 90 meters long,

they've got to be lifted up by hand.

Machines designed to lay track on open sections of railway

can't fit into the tight, curving tunnels of the underground.

Each 90-metre rail weighs five and a half tonnes.

Imagine the rail like an elastic band.

If you bend an elastic band, at the centre point, if the whole thing doesn't come over together,

the rails will start whipping around.

That's why we've got to do it together.

You watch the end of the rail... Easy, lads!

Easy!

Watch your hands in there, mate!

Go on, lads, bring it over.

Steady!

Go on, lads. Nice and easy.

There you go. One rail in. Next rail to go.

I think it's pressure all round.

A lot of pressure comes all the way down from the Mayor's office, all the way down to us.

They want to see results. Everybody wants to see results.

And it's a challenging project.

We need to do this stuff. Some of this rail was put in before you and I were born

and probably before our dads were born.

We've got to bring this stuff up to modern-day standards and make sure that it's fit

for a 21st century railway.

TANNOY: Ladies and gentlemen.

Service update from the Liverpool Street control room.

On the Bakerloo line, there are severe delays due to a signal failure at Queen's Park.

Control room assistant Mark Davies has worked on the tube for 14 years.

From his lookout, he's learned what to expect from the 50,000 passengers

who pass through his station during the peaks.

It's quite a short window between somewhere around quarter past, twenty past eight

to about twenty past nine.

That's when everyone really is rammed in.

I don't even know what everybody does in the City.

I don't even know what all their jobs are.

It's not like they sell something. You can't go to the Gherkin and say, "Give us a dozen of them, please."

What do they do?!

HE LAUGHS

I don't... I don't know what people do!

Check out the amount of customers now.

I said 8.30 and you'll see a difference in customer flow.

If you look at them customers, maybe all them three won't get on this train.

It always baffles me why they don't make their way to the middle of the platform

cos they could have got on this train, if they did.

Customer information. Please use all available space on the platform.

Move towards the centre of the platform, where you'll find there is plenty of room to stand

and board your train safely.

-Are they listening?

-No, they don't listen, really.

They can't. They have to stand there every morning.

That guy there, he's been doing that for 30 years.

They have to go to THAT carriage, to THAT door so that when they arrive at their station,

they are closest to the escalator or the first one out of the station.

It is a rat race.

-TANNOY:

-Please use the alternative routes available. King's Cross...

But in the rat race, every small advantage helps.

-TANNOY:

-We are not moving at present...

Why did you choose this seat?

This seat? It's nice and out of the way.

Also, I've got the heater under here.

It's one of the warmest places.

And it's close to the door so when I go to Baker Street, I get a quick exit.

So, have to plan these things properly, you know.

-RECORDED MESSAGE:

-..change for the Central line.

Get ready to run!

You can see why I get on to this carriage.

I was good at the 100 metres at school. If you're good at sport, you can do the tube!

Seat.

If we'd got on more up the train, we wouldn't have got a seat. It's kind of your strategy...

-RECORDED MESSAGE:

-This is Marble Arch.

..getting a seat. Wow!

If you look at it like that, it's sad!

SHE LAUGHS

I think it's today's society, isn't it?

Everywhere, you've got to be somewhere, you got to do this,

you've got to cram as much into a day as you possibly can.

Everyone's just got it in their head that they need to make that train.

They need to get on that train because there's not gonna be another train following in a minute.

That minute is just going to be the world of difference for some people.

This is it. We've got the and the tunnel now

so this is Baker Street.

Here we go. Get in position now.

Fighting for position on the stairs.

And some people will actually run round the back just to get a few yards

but...when it's like this, I like to do things properly.

One commuter has taken the desire to be in poll position a step further.

I was finding myself travelling from the office to various places or from home to various other places

and I noticed that

if I got on the right door of the right carriage,

it would place me adjacent to the exit that I needed. I thought, when that happened,

it was generally by coincidence.

It made me feel, strangely, really good.

I thought, "Maybe I don't need to put it down to chance any longer.

"What about if I started recording which door of which carriage to get off

"so I'll always be the first one off? and adjacent to the exit that I need?"

I got on the tube every morning and rode the whole London Underground

and marked out which door of which carriage to board for all of the stations

all 700 platforms

and all, must be, 4,000 interchanges.

I've still got some of the original records.

You can see that there's lots of them.

I'd literally have it pre-planned and printed out in terms of which of the stations

in sequential order and where there would be a transfer.

I just have to then mark which direction that the train entered the platform

and the appropriate door of each carriage.

Hands up, I'm definitely a tube geek at least!

Maybe a geek in other ways.

There is an element of obsessiveness to get the whole network but then I don't think there's any point

just doing it for the busy stations.

People need it, even here out at Cockfosters.

To know that you can get off the front door of the first carriage

just saves that walking, which can be late at night. Just that little bit of timesaving

more than trying to beat the crowds.

Lance has now sold a phone application based on his research to more than 100,000 other

time-conscious commuters.

TANNOY: ..the Hammersmith and City line.

226, platform 2. Reform to 261 for the Hammersmith westbound 8.47.

It's the peak of the peak.

Even a minor incident can now escalate into major delays.

We've had a train sitting down at King's Cross for 15 to an additional 30 seconds.

Now you can see the trains are bunched up in the tunnels.

The knock-on impact of 15 seconds of someone holding the doors

so there mate can grab the train and not spill their coffee

is, basically, one, two, three, four, five trains have all had an additional stop.

That's ten minutes of extra railway time lost because

we can't gain that time back.

The immediate train behind will be two minutes late. Four trains back, it'll be ten minutes late.

All because one person wanted to hold the doors just so they could say, "See you Saturday to their late.

That's why it says please don't obstruct the doors, it'll cause delays.

The knock-on effect is 1,000 people behind have been delayed by somewhere in the region of

about ten minutes each. That's massive.

PHONE RINGS

Stand back against the walls, please, as the train comes in. Stand away from the platform edge.

Train is approaching.

"Stand behind the yellow line, please. Stand behind the white line."

Why are they standing so close to the edge?

The train is moving out. They're still standing there. Look.

See that guy at the end? He's over the yellow line.

He's obviously oblivious to it all.

Now he's stepped back.

I wouldn't stand at the front if I was a passenger.

It only takes one little nudge...

It could be fatal, really.

Essential gate line. Take out another gate, please.

Take out another gate.

At Bank Station, the number of people moving from one line to another has grown by 40%

in the last ten years.

It's stacking up, one after the other now.

See how you've got this knot of people all trying to squeeze onto that escalator.

Staff have worked out a system to deal with bottlenecks.

A science of people movement that buys valuable seconds.

We're trying to slow people down, make them walk an extra ten paces round to an exit - slows them down.

If you want the Central line, down this corridor and turn left for the Central line.

Down this corridor and turn left for the Central line.

Pull it across. Yeah, pull it across.

If you try and spread the crowd out because they're getting congested at the bottom of this escalator,

what you try and do is thin the crowd out, make them walk a bit longer round this block to thin it out.

Also, there's another exit to the Central line along there.

If they walk along there, it's quicker to walk along there than it is to get up this escalator.

It's about trying to manage the crowds.

We're trying to make it quicker for people to get off the stations and safer.

But people don't always appreciate that.

Central line and exit down this way, turn left.

Down this corridor, turn left.

That way. Way out? Yeah.

Down there and turn left, my love.

He's closing the gate again now so the people coming up will see a closed gate,

and they'll think, "Why is he making me walk all the way around, when all I have to do is go straight across?"

They have no understanding, when we do something like that, it is for a reason.

It's not just to have a go at them.

"Let's pay back.

"For all those times that somebody swore at me. Let's close a gate and make them walk a bit further."

It's not like that.

Anyone for the Central line, it would be quicker going down that corridor, up the stairs for the Central line.

Some of the things people do, if they saw themselves on camera, they wouldn't believe it.

Some people will try and dive in a closing door. It's dangerous.

If they watch themselves do it, they'll think, "What am I doing?"

You look at the board and the next train is in a minute. It's unbelievable.

They'll push and jostle each other. There's no manners. Ask anyone here,

you know, is it any fun travelling to and from work?

Nine out of ten are going to say, "No, it's horrendous."

For the Central line and exit down this corridor and turn left. For the Central line and exit

down this corridor, turn left.

A station supervisor shepherding crowds is one way to keep people moving.

But there are more subtle methods at play. Paul Marchant is part of a design team

that uses signage to speed up the flow.

As you come in, you use the gate line

and then you enter into the decision point.

The idea is that all the information you need to make a decision, once you enter the system,

is here and readily available.

You look up, you have a colour-coded Central line, the Northern line, the Waterloo line,

the Docklands Light Railway.

It's called phased disclosure.

What we do is we give people enough information to make decisions at that particular point.

But we're not giving them too much information to overload them.

The point size that we use, the size of the lettering

has to be a certain point size. They are called x heights. In other words,

if you're ten yards away the size of the lettering has to be so high,

if you're 15 yards away, it has to be so high and so on.

It's all about your sight lines or your sight distances.

As we're moving along the interconnecting passageway, we're coming to the escalator.

This is a decision-making point.

We have a suspended signage, reassuring us

that we are going in the right direction.

As we get down to the bottom of the escalator,

there will be a decision-making point again.

A decision-making point here. We have a piece of suspended signage

and again a split.

The Northern line splits, either southbound or northbound.

You're aiding the flow because you don't want people to dwell here.

As you move on to the platform, as a point of reassurance,

you have a repetition of that signage as a large-scale.

Without the signage, people wouldn't be able to make decisions at particular points

and then things would start backing up.

People would back onto the platforms,

people wouldn't be able to get on the trains, get off the trains so the system would slow down.

That's what design does. It enables a system to work more efficiently.

There is an enormous pleasure in doing that, but when you talk about it,

people are puzzled at what I do for a living.

They think it happens by itself.

But it doesn't. It's a very considered way that things are done on the underground.

It's not just people that clog up the system.

Rubbish and litter is a big problem here. The newspapers

that are given away freely are thrown about the station...freely.

We have to deal with two tonnes of newspapers at this station.

Leave them on the trains, platforms, anywhere.

Throw them on the seats, on the top of the escalators, bottom of the escalators.

They just cause hassle.

This is the busy part of the station, paperwise.

Sometimes, you get people just throw it on the floor.

It does get on your nerves.

I have worked here five years.

When I first started, the free papers were not here. But since the Metro's come in,

it's definitely increased our workload.

If one puts one on the bottom of the escalator then...

everyone else thinks it's all right for them to put it there, so...

I just got a call to say someone's not well up at exit number six.

All I know is that it's a female who's not well and can't move, so...

That's as much as I know.

More than 300 passengers a year faint on the underground.

A young woman at Bank needs help after falling ill on her journey.

Code one on the spiral stairs going down.

While staff tend to the passenger at street level,

mobile Bob is alerted to a second incident down in the station.

Yeah, I'm going to go down here, there's another one - someone's

fallen down the stairs going down to the Northern line from the Central.

-I need some details.

-OK.

RADIO: 59 you're...

It's so busy now, there's a lot of congestion.

We're going to try and get them

moved to an area out the way of all the crowds.

She's cut her nose and everything else, she's aged 23.

Let's have another look now, love. Think you might need a stitching.

-You feel OK?

-Yeah.

-But shaken?

-Yeah.

-Course, yeah. Course.

Yeah, we've got an ambulance or paramedic coming at exit six,

staff are at exit six.

All right, for them to come and treat you down here, it's going

to cause chaos and it's not a very good area to treat you in anyway.

Right.

RADIO: You're going to get a few more people going round...

BLEEP so obviously they can't get down the BLEEP spirals so just let them through, please?

Shut it! Right, an ambulance crew is on their way down to you.

The ambulance crew is on its way to you, do not pass each other!

Yeah, mobile to Gate line, hold the ambulance on the Gate line

please, hold the ambulance on the Gate line, we're coming up.

Yeah, the other side there, the other side now.

They're just coming on the west.

-All right?

-Yeah.

She's fell on the stairs, split her nose as you can see.

-Lot of blood and that.

-How many stairs did you fall down, my love?

Barely has the second casualty been seen to than another is reported.

Yeah, go ahead 35.

Yeah, I need a first aid team at platform four...

This is mobile, first aider required down on four.

Before you go, we've got another woman downstairs who's fallen

and bashed her head. I know.

That's not the one that the paramedics came, I've got a third one.

Going down the stairs, hit her head on the floor.

-What's going on down there?

-I don't know, listen, it's one of them mornings.

What are you doing to me today, John,

with people collapsing everywhere?

We now have three casualties, the third one which is the one on platform four,

I'm going to make my way down now with a member of the ambulance crew.

We've got paramedics on site

and an ambulance crew is coming down to you, Imran.

See, wish you hadn't come now. It don't rain, it pours! Honestly.

You get mornings when nothing happens

and now this is the third one within ten minutes, it's just...

You just can't tell what's going to happen.

They're like flies, ain't they, this morning? Flipping heck.

-You're not wrong.

-Keep left, keep left! Keep left. Keep left, please.

-What's your name?

-Carly.

-Carly, OK. I'm Simon. What happened?

-Just fainted.

-We're you on the train at the time?

-Yeah.

Do you want to move along, my love, do you want to move along?

You're blocking up the platform there a bit.

-Are female passengers common fainters?

-Yes.

Why do you think that is?

Cos they're female and they don't listen. They don't have breakfast.

They don't eat in the morning.

Did you say you didn't have any breakfast this morning?

-Yeah, no I didn't. Never have breakfast.

-Oh really?

Cos we get a lot of people faint cos they haven't had breakfast.

-She's been standing up for 25 minutes. That's why, I'd imagine.

-Yeah.

-Yeah, 50 to, uh... Yeah, you receiving, over?

-Go ahead, Paul.

Yeah, are you on your way down to platform four with some water?

-Want any soda in this? Lime?

-You took your time, bro!

He's got you a martini, I don't know if that's any good.

Thank you very much.

-We've got another one, Dan.

-What is going on today?! Fourth one!

It's a busy day.

Platform four again.

You're not going to believe this,

I think we've got another one up the platform.

Yeah, there's another one up the end of the platform, over.

-Right.

-No, sir, I got two... I got many things going off.

-Yeah, it happens quite a lot to me.

-Does it?

-Yeah.

-We've got an ambulance, paramedic here.

-No, no. I'm fine!

-You're fine?

-I'm sure you are. What's your name?

-Mel.

-Mel, I'm Simon. Right.

-Bit of a busy morning this morning.

-I'm sorry.

-It's all right.

Have you been standing up on the train?

Yeah, just come from Stockwell. Yeah.

And you've been standing? How long?

Yeah, both the mobile.

Yeah, 50 receiving, state your message.

Well, I may need your medical assistance

on platform ten in a minute.

-Yeah, can I have details please, John. Over.

-Yeah, I'm awaiting them.

Don't move. Don't move, that man.

I should keep my mouth shut.

That's been my record now, five in a row.

-Where's this lady who fainted?

-Platform ten.

-Platform ten.

-How long have you been standing up on the train for?

-Uh, I don't know.

50 receiving, state your message.

Right, platform four, shoe has now fallen onto the track,

obviously you'll need to contact the controller.

Arrange protection to retrieve, over.

Yeah, received.

I think that's going to have to wait a minute, Phil, we're still dealing

with this lady on platform ten who's going to require medical assistance.

Um, soon as I get a chance I'll pop up and see the person on four but it might have to wait a bit.

This happens a lot - they're running for the train, specially with their

flat shoes, the shoe goes like that, under the train and onto the track.

Ordinarily, if I wasn't so busy, what I'd do was hold a train,

discharge the traction current

so there's no electricity running through the rail, get down, pick

up the shoe, give it back, traction current on, train's on the way.

That can all be done in less than a minute.

If I wasn't dealing with all this as well.

But really, that's going to have to wait.

If she wants to hang about and wait ten minutes till we get this lady sorted.

Good fun. To me it's fun.

And I don't mind ducking and diving, I think, "Yeah, that's the game."

East end boy. East end boy, I love it. Good game, good game.

With five potential delays averted,

mobile Bob has one remaining obstacle to clear.

So, we're holding the train in protection.

Because the shoe is not near the live rail,

Bob can reach is safely without switching off the power.

Yeah, 50 to SCP.

Retrieved the shoe from the track, just going to bring

the line controller, thank you for his assistance.

It don't rain it pours. Anyone else? Is there anyone else, any more?

Yeah, I was going to push someone under a train right now.

I can open a vein for you or something. Anything? Take me wallet.

There's a lot of unspoken understanding between the staff,

it's a really good team there.

You can imagine if we were dealing with that

sort of level of incidents in the Olympics, everyone's going to

be stretched, everyone's got to be on their game, but they are.

Really good staff.

Really good staff.

Base to all staff, all staff, thank you, got rid of a nice morning now.

Well done.

Cheers.

Terminates here.

All change!

Between the peaks, the underground can afford to slow down a little,

but behind the scenes work steps up as line controllers release

up to a fifth of their trains for much-needed maintenance.

Central line trains are serviced at Hainault depot at the eastern

end of the line.

Rush hour is just tailing off at the moment.

We've got roughly round about five hours to

do all the tasks that we need to do.

The Central line stock is twenty years old

and the trains have up to a million and a half miles on the clock.

One of the jobs today is to replace a worn set of wheels.

We test it, make sure all the

breaks work, we've got traction forward and reverse movement

then it'll be back on the track.

Is that the way they like it?

Well yeah, they like having trains on the track!

Keeps London moving, doesn't it?

If you do a good job they do appreciate it,

the bosses will thank you.

Doesn't happen often though.

-How about the passengers?

-We never see the passengers, there's no...

We're stuck in the depot. All we see are the trains. That's all we see.

Which is fine with us, really.

Central line trains are also being refurbished in preparation

for the Olympics.

After two decades of pummelling during the rush hour,

all 23,000 seats are being ripped out and replaced.

Oh, my word!

Paul Marchant was behind the commission

for the new seat cover design.

This is the new London Underground moquette,

and the moquette is a woollen tufted fabric.

If you get on a tube train in Stockholm or Sydney or Adelaide

or Montreal, you get a bucket seat or a plastic seat or a metal seat.

Well in London you get moquette and if you close your eyes and turned up in the city

and sat on the tube you'd know it was a London Underground train.

The colours that we chose were all the colours that you see on the tube map

and the idea that it should reflect a modern London.

There's about four London landmarks on there.

The London Eye is kind of there, you might have, maybe a famous place

where Royal weddings happen,

and you might have a clock, kind of here.

I think the important thing is that the design works well close up

but as you pull back it creates a kind of abstract repeat that's

pleasing to the eye too.

WHISTLE BLOWS

Anything that slows down work in the depot can slow down service.

WHISTLE BLOWS

So the underground's most unlikely employee has been called to Hainault.

The problem with the pigeons in the depots is this -

you've got droppings all over the floor.

If you've got chaps that are working on the trains,

they don't particularly want to get covered in pigeon...crap.

A load of pigeon have settled on the roof as we've been speaking now.

Yeah, it's just really a health hazard.

WHISTLE BLOWS

We're not really here to catch the pigeons as such,

we're here to deter them from coming in here in the first place

cos what you want to get into the pigeons' minds is that the hawk

has taken up residence here so it's not a safe place for them to be.

So they move on somewhere else.

Six odd years ago when I started here,

we went in and we had to do a cull. There was no other way for it

and we actually shot 40 birds in one evening.

It was absolutely rife, there was pigeon mess everywhere - so much

so that they had to close part of the depot, it was just unworkable.

But now, the hawk just keeps in down to an acceptable level.

Maybe two or three pigeons and that's it.

-Why did you name her Toyah?

-Oh, Toyah!

That's going back to my youth!

About 16 years ago you had Toyah Wilcox and, oh,

I just fell in love with her.

Do you think she's better to work with that another person.

Oh yeah, definitely.

We're going long in the van and I don't get her going,

"Oh, you should have turned left there," Or, "Turn right!" Or whatever. None of that!

Even the quieter times of day can spring nasty surprises.

What's happened to the Jubilee line?

Is it not working? Oh, no!

It's two o'clock in the afternoon.

Part of the Jubilee line

has been suspended for over an hour due to a power failure.

More than 700 people have been stuck on two stalled trains

just outside Bond Street.

The passengers have finally been led along the track and up to

the platform under the supervision of tube chief Howard Collins.

There must have been about how many people on that first train? 300?

Easy, I think the original estimate was 350 and about 400 on train two.

-One pregnant lady.

-Two pregnant.

Two pregnant ladies, several young children...

The trouble started when old communication wires

running along the tunnel wall fell across the track,

short-circuiting the power supply.

When the tunnel was built in the mid-'70s

it's bore through very wet ground which actually leaks

and the water drips through the tunnel.

And that water gets on the cables and is a very corrosive substance.

We clean it very regularly

but somehow one of the brackets holding these two wires to the wall has broken.

My concern is it's quarter past two.

We've got to get that service back up and running for the evening peak.

-PA SYSTEM:

-Ladies and gentlemen, the Jubilee line is part suspended.

Waterloo to Finchley Road - there is no westbound service from this platform.

We do apologise for any delay or inconvenience to your journey today.

This is all due to a power failure within the Bond Street area.

With part of the line down,

trains coming from East London now have to terminate at Waterloo.

-Hello, sir, you OK?

-There's no westbound service?

Not at the moment. Where are you travelling to?

I'm going... I want to get on to the District line

so presumably I've got to go Bakerloo.

If you take the Northern Line, it's the better interchange for you.

The suspension is an inconvenience for the afternoon crowd

but in two hours time London's busiest tube station

will be inundated by 60,000 commuters heading home.

I presume they haven't given any prognosis about the Jubilee line?

They'll run a special service, will they?

In the Network Operation Centre,

Andy Hogg is coping with the Jubilee line failure.

The question now is what to tell the public.

Every piece of real-time passenger travel information people receive,

it comes from here, from that desk there.

It all originates here.

So we've got to think of a way of telling people what's going on

by putting out a delay message.

And what we've got to tell people is either,

"You're going to be delayed but stick with us, we'll get you there as quick as we can,"

or in this case, "You're going to be severely delayed.

"If there's an alternative route available, take it.

"Try going another route because it'll probably be quicker."

Silver Control, over.

Oh!

That's definitely current on.

With power restored to the track at Bond Street,

engineers can now move the two stuck trains out of the tunnel

to asses the damage.

So that's what caused the problem.

This got wrapped round both trains.

You can see it's all bits of copper cable.

This is the emergency way of taking power off

and thus the emergency communication of the radio systems.

So this is an important piece of kit for us.

It's been around as a design for 100 years.

It's a very safe system but it can be problematic in certain conditions.

The Jubilee line must remain suspended

until all the damaged wire has been cleared from the track

and fixed to the tunnel wall.

In this case, there's a bit of acid coming through corroding tunnel wires

but which bit of tunnel wire do you check

because there's hundreds of miles of it?

There are hundreds of millions,

if not billions, of pieces of kit out there.

Absolutely countless amounts of kit.

And how do you proactively check every single one

to make sure it's not going to break?

Cody, it's Howard Collins here.

Can you get hold of the station supervisor upstairs and ask him

if he's got staff to assist on the lower circulating area

for the Jubilee line, OK?

I'm on my own. Everyone is looking confused.

-We're going to Westminster.

-Westminster?

Go to Oxford Circus, change on the Bakerloo line, to Embankment.

-Oh! Why is this?

-It's broken.

-It's broken.

-Kaput. Not working, unfortunately.

-Is it not better to go...

No, it'll take longer. Believe me, I've been here 34 years.

I know what I'm doing.

I've got 12,000 staff. I just need one or two of them down here.

What are those guys doing sitting over there? Relaxing.

Probably having a break.

Well, there's a lot of clearing up to do so it's all hands to the pump.

The closed section of the Circle line is due to open tomorrow morning in time for rush hour.

So all of this rail is all pinned properly, is it?

Yeah, it's held in with two pins there holding it together

to stop it moving around.

First signal failure we get because any rail down here shifts,

you get shot.

That's right, that's why it's pinned.

I'll take a photograph of every one, George, if you want.

Yeah, all right.

It's going all right. It's going all right.

What we're picking up, really,

is the little kind of house-keeping bits.

Leaving clamps and bits and pieces round the side of the track

is fundamentally unhealthy for our railway.

These rails actually form the signalling system.

If that signalling system is compromised by a piece of metal,

we have a signal failure.

And I think everyone in London and the country knows what happens

if we have a signal failure.

It grinds the railway down and somebody has to come along a fix it.

So what we've got to make sure is that we sweep through and hoover all this stuff up

and make sure there's no possibility for that to happen.

Keep going.

You're never complacent. You can't afford to be

otherwise something will come out of leftfield and bite you.

But I think, so far, we've got it all under control.

He says.

Good luck and I'll be back, as they say.

-PA SYSTEM:

-Once again, stand clear, please.

Allow passengers off this train first.

The Jubilee line is finally up and running again...

Please move right down inside the cars.

..but it's now the evening rush hour and there's still a problem.

Every train is not where it's supposed to be.

The wrong crew is driving the wrong trains

in the wrong direction at the wrong time.

You have to put in a special service.

Just keep the trains a certain amount of space apart.

Keep them all running to all destinations as best you can.

Get everyone home and then when we've got a little breathing space later,

then we can start chopping and changing and reversing trains

and getting everything back to how it should be.

Thank you very much.

Right.

Yeah, well, don't waste too much time trying to get signals on site.

If they're saying it's glowing then it's glowing so let's not fanny around.

To make matters worse for Howard and his team,

reports are coming in of a new electrical fault.

Jubilee line. There's now a separate problem.

There is a glowing chair earthing every time a train goes through

in the Swiss Cottage area.

A rail chair is the running rails,

ie the rails that the wheels of the trains go on.

You can tell, they're the shinny ones, smaller ones.

Every few yards or so

they sit in a metal clasp that fixes to the sleeper.

And that's called a rail chair.

It's basically a holder, a vice, that the rail sits in.

They're saying there's a problem with the rail chair and that might be where the earth is

but that's not the rail that holds the traction current which is what is earthing out

so I can't... We'll look more into this and find out what's going on.

They want traction off to go under.

They want it off, so there's the change then.

Yeah, using a dual span.

No, they want it off.

Now commuters face even more delays while traction, or power,

is switched off to allow engineers to investigate.

It is an important line,

not only because it carries 500,000 people every day

but it is the line which serves City Hall, Canary Wharf,

with some really important people.

From the commissioner downwards,

if something goes wrong with the Jubilee line,

even if it has a little cough,

everyone asks us what's going on and when it'll be fixed.

-PA SYSTEM:

-Ladies and gentlemen,

there are currently severe delays on the Jubilee line.

With one line delayed,

displaced passengers trying their luck elsewhere,

which means more customers changing at Bank.

It's manic.

It's organised chaos, I suppose, is the best term to call it.

Down this way and turn left, please.

Central line, Waterloo And City line.

Central line, Waterloo And City line, down this way and turn left, please.

When the Jubilee line has a problem, a lot of Jubilee customers

will divert through Bank, usually on the Docklands Light Railway.

There are more people than normal here tonight

because Jubilee's had a problem all afternoon.

People have to have to get through the system somehow.

One part's blocked, people go another way.

This is the other way.

Do not stop halfway, please. Do not stop halfway.

It's ridiculous that they can't control the undergrounds really.

And you the number of people on the platforms like this

and they don't have the infrastructure in place

to support to number of people around this area.

It's just unacceptable.

I mean, it's outrageous that the taxpayer's being pressurised

or being forced into paying additional fare increases, right,

for a service that is inefficient, doesn't actually work.

There's been a multi-billion pound investment into the tube system

for the last two years and it still doesn't work.

-PA SYSTEM:

-Your next train will be with us in about four minutes.

Every peak, I am judged, not just by the politicians or the boss,

but by every single customer who travels round the network.

My feedback is instantaneous.

I've only got to walk around the system and I can feel how people feel.

Everyone's off the track now.

Can they call the controller, tell him that?

Yeah, and if you can call the line controller straightaway,

tell him you're all clear.

OK, mate. Cheers, John. Bye.

Finally, after six hours of disruption

and too late for all but the last commuters,

normal service is resumed on the Jubilee line.

Technicians have discovered what was behind the day's second electrical problem.

You know how they say you learn something new every day?

When you get an incident, the first thing that you're told is wrong,

it invariably turns out that it's actually something else that's gone wrong.

It was fuse. Just a little fuse. Probably a little circuit breaker.

But it's the circuit that actually tells us there's a fault...was faulty.

Now you know what we have to deal with on a daily basis.

Seven o'clock, everybody. Well done out there.

Well done. We got through a heavy peak tonight. Well done. Thank you.

Game's up.

Dinner time.

It's home-time for some but for engineers on the Circle line,

work is continuing.

It must be ready to re-open in the morning.

The final countdown.

So there's a load of people running around doing a load of last-minute stuff.

We've go the last 15 metre section of rail that's got to go in.

That provides the traction current, the current that powers the trains.

So we've got to connect up that last bit.

Now this is the last bit of the puzzle.

So the sooner we get this finished,

the sooner we can turn power on to the whole lot

and then we can get our trains

that are waiting down at Earl's Court triangle.

We can get them out and run them up and down

and test their systems to make sure everything's OK.

Just everywhere you look, there's another bit of work to do isn't there?

It's the first time that we've had significant investment in the Underground

for generations.

And putting all this stuff right. It's just such a massive task.

With all the work successfully completed,

George McInulty can catch the first test train

before giving the go-ahead for the line to re-open.

You know, people go onto a platform and they look at the DMI -

the Dot Matrix Indicator -

and if it says more than three minutes, they feel hard done by.

And that is...

That is testament to the service that London Underground provides.

First one's coming.

HE CHUCKLES

I told you there'd be a few people on the front.

Mind the doors!

-HE LAUGHS:

-You love it, don't you?

I haven't said that for a while.

So far...I'm as pleased as punch.

Here we are. It is 04:05 and it looks to me

like we'll be opening bang on time for start of passenger service.

Fantastic.

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