The railway is becoming more and more fragile as technology makes trains ever more delicate, and railway and non-railway infrastructure which should be robust appears not to be. As a crude comparison, in the steam age, mechanical signalling was more or less immune to the weather and trains which did not rely on any external power source (and which were simple to operate and repair) pushed through almost anything, but that resilience to external factors has steadily ebbed away. On top of all that, there is now the corporate risk-aversion that sees whole routes closed as a precaution against possible severe weather, whether that materialises or not. The net effect is a railway that now probably has the lowest resilience in its history.
And also a railway where a lot less people are being killed every year by trains running into the back of eachother.
Risk aversion is good when it comes to avoiding incidents like Stonehaven from happening again. That's no good for anyone.
I understand when the network has to close sections of track for repair, or reduce speeds due to flooding (essentially proceed at caution), but outright telling people not to travel is probably not going to do anything. Especially given the backdrop of regular strikes and the fact they do these "do not travel" warnings multiple times across the year (or twice in a month in this case)!
Isn’t the heart of this the ongoing removal of backup and isolation systems and locations ? For example Glasgow is in some ways luckier in there being 2 major unconnected terminus stations, so when there is a failure at one there is the possibility of going somewhere from another. Much discussion in this thread of the various options for northbound travellers from other London termini.
However, as “Joe Public” it is hard to understand why there isn’t the possibility of for example passing control of a single locked section - for example into Edinburgh Park or even Platform 0 at Haymarket - to another control location to allow shuttle working or some form of service resilience (given the interaction with the trams at both of those places).
Obviously the answer is all in one way or another “money” - but as others have said, the language used in the “Do not travel” warnings sometimes seems to suggest lots of holidaymakers who will simply lay down their suitcases and pop back when the railway is ready for them, rather than for the vast majority who find themselves living and working routinely long distances from their home, and who really need a solution as to what they will do that night. Even cities such as Edinburgh cannot possibly absorb all the passengers on all routes from 4.30pm onwards in hotels etc. I wonder whether citylink had resource to double up any of the journeys on the 900 …
It also begs the question when all those nasty dirty diesel trains are removed from the network …. What then for those poor folks at Huntingdon ?
This lastest trip I made during a "do not travel" was discretionary, but I decided to check the trains were running and take the risk. It wasn't great, but I got where I needed to go. The trip prior, I was on business in London and there was no warning when I left in the morning (around 6am), but when I was returning at around 7/8pm, there were warnings not to travel! I'd had a busy day, so the first I knew of it was the huge crowd of people at St Pancras.
So, I could:
A)Try and continue and take the risk of being stranded partway, but potentially get home.
or
B) Choose to remain stranded in London, with the potential of still being unable to travel on Saturday either.
London hotels aren't particularly cheap, so I decided to proceed with my journey regardless.