Not Happy

If you don't want to read a rant, I suggest you look away now, as this post is pure vitriol!

As you're probably aware, I'm currently temping as a Ticket Office Clerk as needed, and have spent most of the past year working at one particular TOC.

This notwithstanding, my Agency can still ask me to go elsewhere if needed. Given that their idea of "fun" is to try and get me to go right over the other side of town for stupid o'clock in the morning, sometimes even when I'm due to be doing a shift with my usual TOC, I generally say No.

Last week, however, they offered me 8 hours "babysitting" a couple of staff for their first shift on a new Ticket Issuing System (TIS). This was to be at a pair of stations that were adjacent on the map, from around 6:30am to 2pm, or something like that. I have to admit that my acceptance of this rôle was mostly because they were effectively offering me time and a third to do it, but still...

As such, when the Roster Clerk for my usual TOC rang me the following day to check my availability, I said that I was unavailable one day this week at my Agency's request, but was available the rest of the week.

Yesterday afternoon (Tuesday), I got a phone call from the Agency to confirm times for the shift in question. There were two major changes to the original plan:

1. It was no longer the originally proposed pair of stations, but two in completely different parts of town.
2. Instead of being 6:30am to 2pm, it was now 6:30am to 8:30pm or thereabouts.

Obviously, having already agreed to do it, I could hardly refuse, but I'm not exactly happy given that I won't get home from work 'til at least 10:45pm tonight, then need to leave again at 5am on Thursday for the first part of the shift, and won't be back home again 'til around 10:30pm.

Happy New Year

I'd just like to wish my reader (all one of you) a happy and prosperous 2007.

"But what's been happening in the wonderful world of the privatised railway since your last post?", I hear you cry!

Well let's see. Here's a quick summary:

In November 2006, Transport for London introduced the long-threatened policy of deducting the maximum fare from Oyster cards when touching in on the DLR, London Underground and selected National Rail routes. The concept being that you get charged £4 when you touch in at a Tube/DLR station and £5 when you touch in at selected NR stations, then have the difference credited back when you touch out on exit.

Only touch in, or only touch out, and the charge stays at £4 or £5 and doesn't count towards your daily cap...And you also run the risk of being charged a Penalty Fare or reported for Fare Evasion.

In addition, Cubic have finally sorted out the new version of FasTIS, which now handles Oyster. At present, however, it can't do Bus Passes on Oyster, but I believe they're working on that.

It works in much the same way as an APTIS ANT Unit does, in that presenting an Oyster card switches the machine over to Oyster mode. Unlike the AAU, however, you can take the card off once it's read the data and don't need to put it back on until you want to update the card.

And I'm now officially multi-skilled, having done a few shifts (or part-shifts) announcing, which makes a change from dealing with the public face to face.

And one of my colleagues and I are currently trying to get our Train Planning team to enter details of replacement buses into the timetabling system, as the specification does allow them to be shown, as that would mean they're automatically displayed on the departure summary monitors, even if they're not on the platforms.

The main reason for this is that it would save time in getting the details into the Customer Information System as, at present, we have to manually add the details multiple times:

• Into the Central CIS Server individually, so they appear on Summary screens
• Against the connecting trains on the Central CIS Server, so that they appear on the platform screens along the line for that train as "[Terminating Station], BUS TO: [Bus calling points]"
• On the Local CIS Server at our London terminus, so they appear on the boards there. This is generally also combined with a "Train to: [Wherever]" after the bus calling points.

One thing that surprised me last week and the week before was the number of people asking what timetable we were running on Boxing Day (26th December), to which the short answer is, "None", as it has been for at least the past 20 years or so, yet this surprises people every year.

Or the people who haven't read the timetable properly and think we're running a full weekday service in the week between Christmas and New Year. Plus the Manager who asked for a Special Stop Order on a train for someone who hadn't read the timetable properly, and it was refused as there was a train stopping there all of ten minutes later.