Afternoon:
10°c
Tube service is suspended
Benedict Moore-Bridger13 Mar 2009
Swinging up to 12 metres above the floor of Westminster Tube station, here are some of London's most adventurous cleaners in action.
The team of abseiling workers will be spending 10 weeks suspended from the ceiling, or clambering high up in the station's superstructure, for one of the capital's hardest hygiene jobs.
They will be secured by ropes and harnesses as they clean pipes, polish the sides of escalators and dust off the nets that hang between staircases.
The abseilers will also replace light bulbs as well as clearing out and cleaning “voids” in the concrete structures.
The annual work is carried out between 1am and 5am to minimise disruption to commuters, and is organised by Tube Lines, the company that maintains the stations.
A spokesman for the firm said: “They clean all the steel and concrete in the inaccessible parts of the station.
“It would be dangerous for you or I to attempt it, but the team are all qualified and work to the highest safety standards.” The abseilers work in all 11 stations on the 10-year-old Jubilee line extension, from Westminster to Stratford, because of their awkward design. The team are from Jeweltone, whose previous projects include cleaning the outside of Barclays Bank's 156m-tall Canary Wharf headquarters, and the outside of Canary Wharf station.
John Purrot, finance director of Jeweltone, said the abseilers are trained by the Industrial Rope Access Trade Association.
He added: “Sometimes we get cleaners who want to do abseiling so we send them away for training, or we get people who love abseiling calling us up looking for work and we show them what they need to do.”
Senior technician Brian Titman, 41, started out as a window cleaner but trained in “abseil-cleaning” 21 years ago. It now pays up to £36,000 a year.
He said the “extreme” nature of the job kept him feeling young. “I've never been afraid of heights, just falling from great heights,” he said. “A lot of days I go home and my whole body is aching, and in Westminster it gets very hot, so I'm sure I've lost a few pounds.”
Mr Titman, from Ipswich, has cleaned numerous tall buildings in the capital including the Gherkin. “Because our job starts at the top of buildings and works down, the aerial views you get over London are absolutely breathtaking,” he said.
Reader views (6)
You would think he would stop hanging around and get on with the job!
Any chance inviting Boris to come and see how its done!
- Melvyn Windebank, Canvey Island, Essex, 16/03/2009 15:02
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Nigel its me on that picture there and there is no way you would get the tubes clean with long pipes!!. trust me and the tubes need to be cleaned how would you do that?.
- Lee, Ipswich, 13/03/2009 18:25
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Not to take anything away from the abseillers, who get to do the hardest bits, but ...
Why can't they give the ordinary cleaning staff at Westminster some ten-foot extension tubes for their vacuum cleaners, with which to dust the tops of those horizontal tubular things every month or two? You could easily do it that way, just standing on the (stopped) escalators.
- Nigel, London, 13/03/2009 17:04
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i work in a office and i certainly couldnt do a job like this, Full credit to you guys! Keep up the good work lads
- Jeremy, Maidstone, 13/03/2009 16:24
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You have to admire the job these abseilers do....brave guys!!
- Michelle, Essex, UK, 13/03/2009 16:21
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Well done guys! It's a dark and hot job but someone has to do it. Rope Access is a very rewarding career.
- Tom, Northumberland, UK, 13/03/2009 11:19
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