London Underground suffers water torture

It looks like something from the Titanic movie and certainly no place for trains.

I am told two million litres of water flooded in.

The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers want a full investigation.

London Underground will be frustrated as it had a pretty good Jubilee weekend.

I was in the resulting queues at Stratford where there were a lot of angry people.

You can see my report here.

Lack of information

Whoever you spoke to reverted straight away to talking about the Olympics.

Now this incident is not the fault of London Underground - it is the fault of Thames Water.

LU said it was pressing Thames Water to resolve the problem quickly.

The water firm apologised for the problems caused by the burst pipe.

However, to commuters stuck in the queue it didn't matter.

Many were critical of the replacement bus service and the lack of information.

What this reflects more is the state of some of our infrastructure.

Yes, the pipes and the tubes are being upgraded but not in the next five weeks before the Games.

Failures like this are inevitable - the issue is that in the capital much of this rather old, out of date infrastructure which is liable to fail is interlinked, and that has consequences.

Disruption and delays

Below is an anonymous account of someone stuck on board one of the trains stuck in the flooded tunnels.

"As we left Mile End station the train was going a lot slower than it would of been. It kept jolting forwards then backwards - like the electricity was cutting out. I could then hear the sound of running water - it didn't seem out of the ordinary at all at first because there are a lot of leakages on the Tube.

"Anyway, we got about 30 seconds further and the train came to a very abrupt halt - one older lady fell to the floor as the train jolted forwards then backwards.

"There was then no information for about a minute, before the driver came back over, his message was something similar to this - 'We are just waiting here before entering Stratford due to a line problem. Please bear with me, we will be on the move again shortly'. Because of this message I thought it was just a train late leaving Stratford as at that time of the day the system is really busy.

"About two minutes after - everyone was starting to get really annoyed, another message from the driver said something along the lines of - 'I apologise for the continued delay to our journey - we may need to terminate the train at the next station'.

"In the background you could hear the drivers radio system where a message could be heard saying something like 'Central suspended Leytonstone - Liverpool Street - trains should terminate where possible - this is going to cause some big delays'.

Travellers waiting for buses at Stratford

"About five minutes passed when the next message came through and that was that we needed to leave the train while the train was not in a station.

"The driver said that all passengers should travel to the rear of the train and walk the short distance along to Mile End - there were station staff from Mile End helping us along, of course the electric was off - but it was a train full of people.

"We then climbed some wooden steps at the end of the platform onto Mile End and simply forgotten about. We were all given compensation forms but we were then told to find alternative means of reaching your destination - lots of people were starting to get quite angry and one person got very annoyed with the station supervisor.

"Upon leaving the station I took the bus into Stratford Tube station (as I needed to change for Jubilee), where I saw about 10 police cars, an ambulance, the Tube' s Emergency Response Unit and loads of people with megaphones. I was amazed at how much disruption this had caused.

"The emergency team entered the track through Stratford with lots of machinery - they had to use another London Underground train for 'protection' - this explains the train half way into the platform at Stratford!

"All in all quite a dramatic journey!"

It makes interesting reading - any thoughts?