Transport Editor Ross Lydall visits the Hainault depot to see what TfL is doing to try to fix the problems on the Central line. Old motors are being taken out and being replaced with reconditioned ones. Lydall speaks to TfL chief operating officer Glynn Barton and TfL head of fleet Paul Downham.
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00:00 I'm at the Central Lane depot in Hinold to find out what's been causing chaos on the lane over the last couple of months.
00:09 So at the moment we're working around the clock to make sure that we can get as many trains out into the network to serve our customers with the service that they would expect.
00:18 I'd like to obviously apologise to customers for the service that they're getting at the moment and just assure them that we are doing everything we can to get trains out there.
00:26 We are facing quite a difficult set of problems. We have a really ageing fleet here. The fleet is 30 years old.
00:33 We have a big investment programme into that fleet which will see it completely refreshed.
00:38 Unfortunately that's been pushed to the right in terms of time because we've had uncertainty around government funding for that refresh of the fleet.
00:47 So over the next few minutes we're doing a lot. So we've significantly increased our customer information so people know what's happening when they turn up to the Central Line.
00:55 We've put on extra bus services alongside the Central Line. We're putting a bus shuttle out on the fringes as well to make sure that customers have options as well.
01:04 But what we're crucially doing is we're looking at some innovation around what we do with the fleet which should see us increase the number of trains on the network.
01:11 As well as looking at a new timetable which should hopefully see a better frequency, a better service interval for customers so they know when to expect the train to come in a more regular fashion.
01:23 Since the start of November, delays and cancellations on the Central Line have become commonplace. Why is that happening?
01:30 Well in short, the fleet or the trains are getting very old. They're more than 30 years old and most of the motors have begun to fail.
01:39 It's 30 year old technology. It's technology that isn't used anymore. We are dealing with obsolete motors here.
01:46 We're trying to work through what the problem is and how we can solve it alongside trying to get as many trains out on the network as possible at the moment.
01:54 We have independent experts in working with us to make sure that we can get these motors sorted out on the network quickly.
02:01 I think it's no secret that the fleet of trains in London is ageing. We know that the Bakerloo Line is an old fleet.
02:08 We know that we've got new trains coming on the Piccadilly Line. We've got to refresh the Central Line. The Northern Line is an ageing fleet as well.
02:15 So what's that we need to do? It's really, really important that we get certainty around capital funding.
02:20 Not just for TfL, not just for customers and people travelling in London, those coming to London to visit, but also for those in the manufacturing business that are so crucial to the UK's economy.
02:29 We would love to buy new trains. We are doing it on the Piccadilly Line and the Piccadilly Line fleet is fantastic.
02:35 This is one of the reasons we really need certainty about our capital future. We need investment from central government to make sure that London has the trains that it deserves.
02:42 How long will these problems last? Well, the TfL Commissioner, Andy Lord, has pledged that things should be better in the massive weeks when a new timetable will be introduced.
02:52 Essentially an emergency timetable that should look to sort of smooth out the gaps between trains.
02:58 I think, or what I can assure you is we're working round the clock to get as many trains out there.
03:02 And what we will be doing is making sure that we have a regular service for customers, a service that they can know what to expect when they turn up.
03:09 What's happening behind me is that the motors are being taken off the trains and sent over to another depot in Acton where they're being completely refurbished, brought back here, put back on the trains,
03:19 and they're trying to get as many of these trains back in service as quickly as possible.
03:24 The problem is it can take almost a week to do 30 refurbished motors. There are 32 motors on a train, so it's almost like one train a week is going back into service.
03:36 So what we've got here is one of the defective traction motors that the team have taken off the train.
03:41 You can see inside some of the damage that the motors suffered as a result of what we call a flashover.
03:46 So this has been taken off. This is ready to go to our workshops to be stripped, repaired and rebuilt.
03:52 And then on the opposite end we've got a new motor that's come back from the workshops, fully repaired, fully restored, ready to be fitted to the bogie and put back underneath the train.
04:01 This traction motor has undergone a full repair, a full overhaul. It's been restored to an as-new condition.
04:09 You can see the damage that we saw and the defective one isn't present in this repaired motor, and it's ready to be fitted back up into a train.
04:16 There is no precise end date in sight for this problem. It means it could go on for months, well into the summer.
04:22 TfL is offering to lay on extra buses, especially on the eastern end of the line, but for the foreseeable future, travelling on the central line will not be much fun.
04:32 [BLANK_AUDIO]