Mod Note: Posts #1 - #27 originally in this thread.
How long were those trains? AIUI part of the reason for the automation is so that the driver can change ends?I remember seeing the JLE trial running north of Canning Town; at first it only ran from Stratford to North Greenwich, unconnected to the rest. Couple of weeks test I think.
One really does wonder what is the point of all this high-tech if it takes so much effort to test. Why not choose something known to work out of the box instead. As I understand it a key sticking point is "auto reverse" at Westbourne Park to handle 24tph, apparently it must be auto because nothing else would do ... for information, this is just what was achieved by Westinghouse in 1903 at Liverpool Central with the Mersey railway electrification, which coincidentally was also 24tph (every 5 minutes to Rock Ferry, every 5 minutes to the northern branch), and which equipment was STILL functioning over 70 years later. All automatic signals and point changing, single headshunt, compressed air points changed 5 seconds after the train cleared into the headshunt, and of course quite simply manually driven. Same frequency, same manoeuvre. Cost a bit less though, and doubtless will have lasted quite a bit longer.