More reversing adventures

This weekend the Circle line is part closed, with no service between Gloucester Road and Aldgate (via Victoria). As a result, Circle line trains are shuttling between Edgware Road and Gloucester Road (via High Street Kensington, of course) and are also running Hammersmith to Aldgate and back. The District line also has no service Aldgate East to Embankment and the Olympia shuttle isn't running. Judging by what I saw at HSK (High Street Ken), the Olympia service isn't running so that trains can reverse in the bay roads. This allows a decent frequency to be kept up west of Earl's Court. Obviously, there is limited capacity for reversing at Embankment, so only so many trains can head up there - even with the Circle line reversing at Gloucester Road. Therefore, trains are also being reversed at HSK and turned back to Richmond and EAB to keep up a decent service. The Wimbleware is essentially unaffected. Anyway, because the platform space is needed at HSK, the Olympia shuttle isn't running.

So anyway, I thought it might be nice to travel down to Gloucester Road, because I've never reversed there and wanted to experience it. I suppose I could also have done Aldgate East as well, but in the end I thought there was really too much I wanted to get done today.

So, out I went and arrived at ROV with only about five mins to go until the WOO train arrived. For some reason many youths seem to like hanging around the station at weekends and during school holidays. I, of course, have been a youth myself and still regularly sport the garb, so I, of course, have nothing against this - although I do wish they wouldn't chuck their empty bottles onto the floor. But, y'know, I'm only little and any large group of strangers hanging around an otherwise wholly deserted station (apart from one quite elderly woman) unnerves me a tad.

But there were, of course, no problems and I took the WOO train and was able to change for a WER service which I took down to NHG. Apart from heavy stops at CHL and HOL after which the doors took some time in opening, there was nothing much to report. I did, however, quite enjoy the journey and made sure to get a look at all of the sidings, crossovers and other sights along the way, as I do.

After arriving at NHG I obviously made my way up to those glorious sub-surface line platforms, where I had a little bit of a wait (no bad thing at NHG). The first train through was a C stock (long time no C - I'm so sorry for that :P) for Wimbledon and actually another one heading to Edgware Road was approaching when my Circle line S7 arrived for Gloucester Road.

Nice, short trip down there, where relative pandemonium reigned as London's brightest (in fairness to them, I'm sure many were tourists and you've gotta sympathise, especially if they don't have any English) tried to make sense of some simple instructions. In spite of regular and perfectly informative PAs, the all singing, all dancing information displays on the S stock, the maps, the signs and everything else - I'm sure none of you will be surprised to hear they struggled.

Now, Gloucester Road. Some of you may remember this diagram from before:

A diagram showing the track layout at Gloucester Road and the complex triangle it forms with HSK and Earl's Court. To the west of the station, outside platform 2, there is what looks like a siding between the District line and Circle line. I think I have previously referred to it as such on this blog. I put the diagram together from maps and, having been down there, I'm pretty sure that it is not, in fact, a siding at all, but simply a trap road - it looks much too short to be a siding. Trap roads and catch points are used to divert trains from dangerous paths, often actually derailing them, and are designed to prevent runaway trains from ending up in dangerous places where they could cause a collision. A trap road is particularly a road leading to some buffer stops or such like, as opposed to catch points, which are two short stumps of track which merely derail a train

A train reversing at Gloucester Road, such as ours, arrives from HSK in eastbound platform 3. It is then reversed out of platform 3 and heads into platform 2 at HSK using that crossover on the Circle line tracks, shown in my diagram just to the right of the triangle sidings. Anyway, I've never been over that and as it can be traversed in passenger service I fancied a go. It was well worth it, too, it may not sound like much, but it was nice to do something new and unusual.

And that was really that, to be honest. I hopped out at NHG, partly 'cause I needed a drink and partly 'cause one has to touch out and start a new journey, otherwise one will end up touching out where one started. This would be dishonest anyway - you'd be stealing two trips if you could get away with it. You can't get away with it though and will end up with a maximum oyster fare, so this is not good.

As I returned to the station, I saw that the next train was a WOO via HAI, which was 4 minutes away. So I hurried down to the platform as that would have been ideal. When I arrived, I saw a train pulling out and thought I'd missed the WOO, but this was actually a LOU - presumably not shown on the screens in the ticket hall as it was too close for people to be able to make it reliably. I should stress I did not hare and tear round the station like a lunatic, I merely walked purposefully and walked on the escalators. Don't run round the stations unless you have very good reason, you'll do yourself an injury and probably others too.

So yeah, the WOO took me round to ROV - beautiful, beautiful journey it was too - and here I am back home. Well it was more fun than trying to get some work done amid the cacophony that was going on here.