Tube Life (Part 2) 1977- 1990

More spoddy train stuff...................
In ’77, I transferred to the District line, out of choice, as I was getting sick of the tunnel work on the Northern line.
The District line is devided into two parts. The Edgware Road – Wimbledon service and the ‘Main’ as we called it, which was the Upminster/Wimbledon/Ealing Broadway/Richmond services.
My new depot was Parson’s Green, which some of you may remember from one of my previous posts ’TALES FROM THE TUBE’, was full of ‘nice boys’, effete gentlemen, handbag Nigels, limp-wristed mincing queens, and the odd outrageous lavatory cowboy, gay-lording it all day long. Great stuff….or should that be puff?
Anyway, the trains on the District Line, were old 1930’s rolling stock called CP, CO and R respectively.
CP stood for converted ‘P’ Stock, CO for converted ‘O’ stock and ‘R’ was for the fact, that most of them were Rebuilt Q stock.
CO/CP stock were painted red, and the ‘R’ stock were unpainted aluminium for the new ‘R’ cars, and painted in aluminium paint on the rebuilt Q {which were steel) cars to match.
CO’s & CP’s were usually coupled together to form a 7 car CO/CP train, but there were some pure CO’s that were only 6 cars long. The six car CO’s were usually used on the Edgware Road – Wimbledon route, as Bayswater and Notting Hill Gate stations had short platforms. Sometimes though, a 6 car CO would be used on the District line main to Upminster etc. To have a 6 car CO in the rush hour, on the ‘main’ section of the line, was great fun, because the passengers spread themselves along the length of the (7 car) platform. Then along you come on a CO, and stop on the 6 car stopping mark. The look on their faces was a picture, and you could lip read some of the comments. One has to be a little evil on my job sometimes, or you’d go bloody mad.
The other difference, was that on CO’s, the guard was in the rear driving cab, as that was were the door operating equipment was. On CP’s the guard was in the normal ‘guard’s gangway’ position in the last car with the passengers. Needless to say, most guards preferred the CO trains for that reason.
The ‘R’ stock were crap basically, as although they had a traction motor on every car, they were under-powered and over weight. If you got one up to 35mph, you were lucky.