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Post by sid on Jul 8, 2015 5:57:09 GMT
A friend of mine lost his battle with cancer that day and so the events in Central London largely passed me by.
It was only the next day the magnitude of it all dawned on me. I had to go into Central London and it was very much business as usual with people going about their business with remarkable stoicism just as they had done after IRA outrages in the past.
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Post by ServerKing on Jul 8, 2015 6:27:03 GMT
I was working for TfL in their IMAC (installs moves and changes) IT Team at the time in Victoria Station House when we saw all these power outages appear on the train system... my Mrs worked in Kings Cross at the time so it was worrying, but her Piccadilly Line train had been terminated at Caledonian Road and she had to walk back home to Tottenham as there were no buses (as they had been scrambled from Central London). I had to set up a Conference room for Ken Livingstone and the rest of TfL top brass at 55 Broadway and it was just chaotic with all the police and ambulance sirens and helicopters everywhere. Then at one point it just went eerily quiet as nearly every vehicle left the area. After I'd set everything up around 11 am, I had a long, quiet walk from Victoria to Manor House where I managed to force my way onto a 279 and get home. Next few days were scary as I still had to use the buses and trains to do my job of delivering IT kit to bus and train stations (and carried a large rucksack with wires in it - network cables) I saw the wrecked bus at Tavistock Square before police covered it with a large sheet. There were a couple more attempts by people leaving devices on the 26 IIRC and people were on edge until early August until things kinda went back to normal. August brought it's own troubles of dealing with an extremely premature son born at 24 weeks (the stress caused my wife to go into early labour)
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Post by snoggle on Jul 8, 2015 7:34:22 GMT
I was working for TfL in their IMAC (installs moves and changes) IT Team at the time in Victoria Station House when we saw all these power outages appear on the train system... my Mrs worked in Kings Cross at the time so it was worrying, but her Piccadilly Line train had been terminated at Caledonian Road and she had to walk back home to Tottenham as there were no buses (as they had been scrambled from Central London). I had to set up a Conference room for Ken Livingstone and the rest of TfL top brass at 55 Broadway and it was just chaotic with all the police and ambulance sirens and helicopters everywhere. Then at one point it just went eerily quiet as nearly every vehicle left the area. After I'd set everything up around 11 am, I had a long, quiet walk from Victoria to Manor House where I managed to force my way onto a 279 and get home. Next few days were scary as I still had to use the buses and trains to do my job of delivering IT kit to bus and train stations (and carried a large rucksack with wires in it - network cables) I saw the wrecked bus at Tavistock Square before police covered it with a large sheet. There were a couple more attempts by people leaving devices on the 26 IIRC and people were on edge until early August until things kinda went back to normal. August brought it's own troubles of dealing with an extremely premature son born at 24 weeks (the stress caused my wife to go into early labour) Oh the IMAC team makes me wonder if you ever turned up at our offices. The next attempt at blowing up the Tube was a fortnight after 7/7 - Warren Street station was one of the targets IIRC. That attack was thwarted.
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Post by vjaska on Jul 8, 2015 12:14:23 GMT
I was working for TfL in their IMAC (installs moves and changes) IT Team at the time in Victoria Station House when we saw all these power outages appear on the train system... my Mrs worked in Kings Cross at the time so it was worrying, but her Piccadilly Line train had been terminated at Caledonian Road and she had to walk back home to Tottenham as there were no buses (as they had been scrambled from Central London). I had to set up a Conference room for Ken Livingstone and the rest of TfL top brass at 55 Broadway and it was just chaotic with all the police and ambulance sirens and helicopters everywhere. Then at one point it just went eerily quiet as nearly every vehicle left the area. After I'd set everything up around 11 am, I had a long, quiet walk from Victoria to Manor House where I managed to force my way onto a 279 and get home. Next few days were scary as I still had to use the buses and trains to do my job of delivering IT kit to bus and train stations (and carried a large rucksack with wires in it - network cables) I saw the wrecked bus at Tavistock Square before police covered it with a large sheet. There were a couple more attempts by people leaving devices on the 26 IIRC and people were on edge until early August until things kinda went back to normal. August brought it's own troubles of dealing with an extremely premature son born at 24 weeks (the stress caused my wife to go into early labour) Oh the IMAC team makes me wonder if you ever turned up at our offices. The next attempt at blowing up the Tube was a fortnight after 7/7 - Warren Street station was one of the targets IIRC. That attack was thwarted. Was that the same day when a package was discovered on the 26 and man wrongly shot at Stockwell Station?
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Post by ServerKing on Jul 8, 2015 13:30:21 GMT
Oh the IMAC team makes me wonder if you ever turned up at our offices. The next attempt at blowing up the Tube was a fortnight after 7/7 - Warren Street station was one of the targets IIRC. That attack was thwarted. Was that the same day when a package was discovered on the 26 and man wrongly shot at Stockwell Station? That same day as the shooting of De Meneses, I went to Brixton on the Victoria Line to deliver a keyboard and mouse and to re-patch a printer... with a rucksack, containing cables. I was naturally nervous, even though I had my TfL badge snoggle I could have turned up to your office had you lost your laptop charger - we would have given you a free laptop with your replacement charger TfL was worse than Greece when it came to IT spending in 2k5
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Post by snoggle on Jul 8, 2015 13:49:39 GMT
Was that the same day when a package was discovered on the 26 and man wrongly shot at Stockwell Station? That same day as the shooting of De Meneses, I went to Brixton on the Victoria Line to deliver a keyboard and mouse and to re-patch a printer... with a rucksack, containing cables. I was naturally nervous, even though I had my TfL badge snoggle I could have turned up to your office had you lost your laptop charger - we would have given you a free laptop with your replacement charger TfL was worse than Greece when it came to IT spending in 2k5 I never had a company laptop or a company mobile phone. Refused to have them as work stops when you walk out the office door. Pretty sure we had IMAC people visit - my colleague Steve was forever having IT and laptop issues. I think he was "blacklisted" on the IT Unhelpful Desk - alarm bells went off when he rang or his auto number showed up on the help desk screen. The chaos he caused is worth 4 ROFLs
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Post by ServerKing on Jul 8, 2015 15:23:58 GMT
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Post by Hassaan on Jul 8, 2015 20:41:01 GMT
I was 10 years old and in school that morning (Year 5). Did have my teacher mention something about bombs going off on the Underground (he knew I was quite a London Underground enthusiast ), but I didn't understand what he was talking about until I got home later and saw the news. I do remember my dad saying to me that we would not be going sightseeing anywhere in London that summer (or going anywhere on the Underground) because of the risk of more attacks, which I was most annoyed about as we didn't go the previous year either after my dad broke his foot!
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Post by moz on Jul 8, 2015 21:01:02 GMT
I was out on the 19s that morning. I'd been turned at Highbury Corner and was squatting on the 277 stand when a cops in civvies came over and asked if I was going Moorgate way. Said no, then he told me that "S*@t's going down (qv), you'd better get moving" and ran off to hail a cab, so I did! Centrecomm were putting calls out every minute, first it was a tube shutdown due to a power surge, then it was due to a fatality, then just as I left Angel there was another call and in the background I (and other drivers mentioned this) could hear someone shout "God, there's a bus been blown up" or similar. This was pre iBus but Arriva had their own independent tannoy system fitted to buses via a microphone, I bent this up to the radio speaker (the bus was heaving by now) so passengers could hear all the calls coming through and hopefully stop asking me what was going on. Just as I got to Mount Pleasant they sent out the "We want no further buses in Central London" message so I dumped out, along with the 19 behind, and after a quick check of the bus we headed back to Battersea shed. When we got back we were told that the route was suspended for the foreseeable and that I should take my bus back to Norwood, who promptly said I could go home - at 11am. Not much else to say really - I wasn't exactly worried as I'd spent long enough driving round London with the IRA blowing stuff up, or in Budapest while the Russian and Turkish mafias duked it out in broad daylight (AK47s, car bombs etc) that I think I've become rather immune to the whole threat thing.
Moz
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Post by Nathan on Jul 9, 2015 6:37:41 GMT
I wasn't exactly worried as I'd spent long enough driving round London with the IRA blowing stuff up, or in Budapest while the Russian and Turkish mafias duked it out in broad daylight (AK47s, car bombs etc) that I think I've become rather immune to the whole threat thing. Moz Sorry but this came to mind when I read the above. From Goldeneye. Is that really appropriate, Snoggle?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 9, 2015 15:52:10 GMT
I was on my way to an office in Kings Cross that morning. When my bus was diverted through Tavistock Square I got off and crossed the road. I began walking on the opposite direction of the bus a few metres away and saw it blow up. All you could hear were screams and people were running around everywhere screaming and crying. The footage from inside the BMA office which is available on youtube shows a security guard in the bottom right corner. He spoke to me and said they (bombers) will probably try to do something else in the next few weeks. He was right. Afterwards I took the long walk home to Hammersmith. Nobody spoke and many streets were filled up with commuters. I will never forget seeing that bus blow up with people lying all over the road, many of them dead.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 10, 2015 19:31:37 GMT
I was on night shift and was asleep in bed at the time. I can remember the phone vibrating and the house phone ringing and my Dad talking to my partner on the phone as we had a trial separation on at the time. I fell back to sleep and don't remember anything until about 2 or 3 in the afternoon when I got up to go to the loo. Dad pinned a note on the door telling me what had gone on and I saw the missed calls on my phone. I rang my partner and told him I was OK and then phoned work i'm a civil servant they said can you come in early I said yes somehow and one of my shift colleagues phoned me and said can you get to North Woolwich? I lived at Plumstead Common at the time. So I got ready and walked down to Woolwich and met my brother coming home early. I crossed on the Ferry it all seemed surreal really I took ages to get to work about 2 hours through heavy traffic. when I arrived I relieved the early shift because late shift had not turned up. A night or 2 later I saw a low loader under Police escort with something under a tarpaulin on the back I believed it to be part of the Tridents top deck from Tavistock square.
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