There’s passive-aggressive, and then there’s writing “Network Rail is fixing a signal failure” on a public notice board at your station while an entire station down the line sits closed.
Transport for London did exactly that yesterday afternoon at East Putney, explicitly naming Network Rail on a service notice for delays and reduced services to Wimbledon. Southfields station was closed for several hours due to the signal problems.
The notice specified that Network Rail was fixing a signal failure in the Wimbledon Park area. Not just “signal failure” – Network Rail‘s signal failure.
We’ve reached the point where the Wimbledon Park signal dispute has broken through into public view, right there on the whiteboard next to the ticket barriers.
The notice stated that “minor delays between Parsons Green and Wimbledon while Network rail fix a signal failure in the Wimbledon Park area.” Separately it noted “50% reduced service to Wimbledon.”
The “minor delays” language was doing some heavy lifting. But the key detail is the explicit naming: TfL specified that Network Rail was fixing the signal failure.
A long standing – and ridiculous – problem
This is the same infrastructure dispute we exposed in September: TfL and Network Rail have spent five years failing to fix Signal W361 at East Putney while commuters endure repeated disruptions. TfL operates the trains but says it has “no direct influence” on Network Rail’s signals. Network Rail treats the problem as low priority because they think the signal is “only used for shunting and a couple of trains a day” – fundamentally misunderstanding that their Victorian relic is choking one of London’s busiest commuter routes.
But those exchanges were behind-the-scenes – TfL’s consistent pattern of blame-shifting buried in their responses to queries and MPs.
Not anymore, apparently.
Now TfL is writing “Network Rail is fixing” on notice boards for daily commuters – the people actually suffering through station closures and 50% service reductions – to see which agency TfL thinks is responsible.
An escalation. Agencies so deep in conflict they’ve stopped pretending everything’s fine in front of the customers.
For commuters, it’s small comfort that TfL is now transparent about who’s responsible. The 50% service reduction is just as frustrating whether it’s diplomatically described or explicitly attributed. But it does tell you how bad things have gotten when they’re willing to write it where you can see it.
The affected stretch between Parsons Green and Wimbledon has experienced repeated signal-related delays in the past few weeks as the underlying infrastructure dispute remains unresolved. Yesterday’s notice suggests the situation isn’t improving – if anything, it’s deteriorating from institutional dysfunction to open conflict.
At least they’ve written who’s responsible where you can read it.
This isn’t new. Tfl will always say who is responsible for the delay. I worked for them for many years. Agree though that the two agencies need to get together and resolve this issue right across the network
The track between Putney Bridge and Wimbledon is owned by National Rail, not TFL. Therefore, any signal failure on that stretch is their responsibility.
There’s nothing passive-agressive about the statement.
There was talk a few years ago of transferring the track between Putney Bridge and Wimbledon to TfL, but that came to nothing. The repeated breakdowns on the DL Wimbledon branch during Wimbledon Fortnight this year was a national humiliation. Someone at Dept of Transport, preferably at Ministerial level, should be banging heads together to get this issue resolved.