Upgrades Report

Owing to the amount of upgrades with stock and signalling, LU last year allowed the RMT to appoint a dedicated Safety Rep solely to deal with new Upgrade issues. This Rep is Gwyn Pugh from Acton Town Depot.

He has supplied us an update of the burning issues that we will be facing soon.

Code Red: there are plans afoot for Controller to have the ability to stop trains immediately without having to call a „code red‟. The Controller will have a button on his desk that we only have to push for all trains to grind to a halt.

We obviously have problems with this as the fact trains are not fitted with air bags seems to have escaped them. Drivers will be crashing against the wind screen with no warning being given. This matter will be discussed at the next Tier 2 meeting.

Auto Door Opening: this is where trains will arrive in the platform and the doors will open automatically.

This is just one step away from automatic trains completely. We would be voting ourselves out of a job if we agreed to this. The driver should be in charge of train and that's the way we want it to stay. This matter will also be heading to Tier 2.

Blue lights for auto running under normally signalled areas: This would add a blue which meant no reduced speed when we would normally be shunting round depots. The arguments against are straight forward really, we do not need several differing signalling systems. The ATO system on all lines should be clever enough to work with existing signalling thereby preventing the need for another colour light. we cannot allow this dangerous manoeuvre to happen on our watch, it will be the precursor to the next item.

Again, this item will be sent to Tier 2 for discussion.

NOPO: (No Person Operation) into sidings and depots. (If the above item is allowed to happen, this will be the next stage in the reduction of the train operators roles and responsibilities) This facility will allow trains to automatically, with no driver, to enter depots or sidings. We cannot allow this.

Platform Emergency Stop Plungers: (PESP coming to a place near you soon)

The Jubilee line want train ops to “reset” any activated PESPs where (and this is the crux of the matter) no station staff are available! We cannot agree to stations being unmanned even for S/S meal relief‟s and we cannot agree to train ops resetting PESP‟s on that basis.

Maintaining train op skills: (On its way shortly)

When ATO does eventually arrive, the basics of how to operate trains and the skills learnt over decades of intense training could be lost if we do not have at least 1 program per line defining and insisting on manual train operation during the course of the train ops working week. I have and will again be putting forward the line in the sand argument on this which will then work its way on to you.