Noisy Tube causes station closure

Forget about the noisy doors on the Central Line (see random graffiti below), on Tuesday night, the Central Line platforms at Bank London Underground station were closed because the decibel levels from screeching rails were too high.


TfL said "Central Line trains did not stop at Bank station for around an hour-and-a-half on Tuesday evening.

"The Central Line platforms were closed following customer complaints about a very loud screeching noise coming from rails as trains passed through the station.

"This problem happens on very rare occasions and our engineers worked to resolve the issue as quickly as possible."

Jo deBank, from the consumer group London TravelWatch, told the Evening Standard: "I've never heard of anything like this happening before. The noise must have been bad. However, it is certainly problematic to have such a busy station close during rush hour for something that sounds like it could have been easily avoided. It was incredibly disruptive for passengers during an extremely busy time in the evening."

However, Earls Court Tube station was served a noise abatement order because its public address announcements were too loud.

Although TfL say the platforms were closed because of customer complaints, the Standard say that staff had refused to work there because of the noise.

It does seem a bit extreme to close busy platforms in the rush hour, just because of noise. Decibel levels on quite a lot of Tube lines are high (Victoria Line is 118 decibels, louder than a pneumatic drill) and I would have agreed with commuter Steve Cooper who was trying to get home and said:

"How bad can it possibly be to disrupt thousands of people on their way home during rush hour? The noise is noticeable at Bank, but you couldn't call it unbearable. It's more of an irritant, really.

"Why didn't they just leave it another hour or so and avoid all that chaos? After a hard day at work all you want to do is get home."