ECML Disruption - Saturday 27th December

[Qwerty133]

Why has no ticket acceptance been reached with the other operators? Squeeze of few more on to the London Euston to Edinburgh Waverley services for instance.

What Euston to Waverly services (Euston is also shut*)
*except for 1 Birmingham service per hour, taking hours on a diversion.

 

[griffin]

At what point should EC and network rail begin preparing for much of the same tomorrow? I haven't seen or heard anything new to say the overrun won't stretch that far yet.

I'm assuming a meeting between the contractors, NR and EC would have taken place by now if not right now on that very point??

 

[21C101]

So that's who's blocking up Finsbury Park station...

In seriousness, to those above who have asked, there are certain points where you simply can't allow trains to access stations in accordance with the station policies (etc.). For example, the target evacuation time could run the risk of being grossly breached, or there may be the very real risk that any movement in the crowd could lead to people coming too close to falling on the line. I have been on major stations where the latter actually happened at nearby locations during disruption, which is extremely nerve-wracking and dangerous, especially where a further line block may result in even more overcrowding in the whole area, and a vicious circle, etc. And there's no easy way to allow a controlled but unplanned evacuation of a service onto the nearest fast line platforms of another small, random station on a busy mainline, and then find a way to move all those hundreds of passengers from around the packed train, who are now wandering around close to 125mph linespeeds and with nowhere to shelter from the sleet, who refuse to pay for their own buses (rightly so) and may include vulnerable adults and children...

And in case anyone wonders, thats not some modern elfansafety speak, it's to stop something like this happening

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/09/a795909.shtml

 

[thealexweb]

There were no services out of Euston for much of the day. Or was that Paddington? Been such a confusing day.

Oh right. I thought London Euston was operating a normal timetable today.

 

[TUC]

So that's who's blocking up Finsbury Park station...

In seriousness, to those above who have asked, there are certain points where you simply can't allow trains to access stations in accordance with the station policies (etc.). For example, the target evacuation time could run the risk of being grossly breached, or there may be the very real risk that any movement in the crowd could lead to people coming too close to falling on the line. I have been on major stations where the latter actually happened at nearby locations during disruption, which is extremely nerve-wracking and dangerous, especially where a further line block may result in even more overcrowding in the whole area, and a vicious circle, etc. And there's no easy way to allow a controlled but unplanned evacuation of a service onto the nearest fast line platforms of another small, random station on a busy mainline, and then find a way to move all those hundreds of passengers from around the packed train, who are now wandering around close to 125mph linespeeds and with nowhere to shelter from the sleet, who refuse to pay for their own buses (rightly so) and may include vulnerable adults and children...

But all that should have been resolved by 12 midday by proper crowd control measures. Indeed it should have been planned for yesterday but there really was a limited amount of time today when that could have been used as an excuse.

 

[Warner31]

Oh right. I thought London Euston was operating a normal timetable today.

Both stations' services have suffered severe delays today.

 

[causton]

Oh right. I thought London Euston was operating a normal timetable today.

Nope, one service an hour to Birmingham via the Chiltern Main Line and all stations London Overground to Watford Junction and that's it... Everyone else already been told to go via St Pancras and East Midlands Trains, so it was heaving when I arrived there on the Hull Trains service!

 

[crewmeal]

I wonder what sun-drenched beaches lapped by azure seas the NR chiefs are enjoying this Xmas, paid for with their £50,000 bonuses ?

One manager Robin Gisby interviewed on ITN news said NR had run 10,000 yes 10,000 trains today!

 

[causton]

Both stations' services have suffered severe delays today.

No. Let's get it clear, Euston's closure was planned. King's Cross was also planned to have a severely reduced service anyway, but the complete closure has made it worse! And as for Paddington that was completely delayed, as the engineering work should have been finished by mid-morning I believe.

 

[21C101]

Network Rail are now repotted on BBC News as saying that the issue was a failure of heavy lifting equipment on Christmas Day, although why it's took until now for them to say that is another question.

Frankly it matters not a whit what caused the possession overrun.

It does matter that it does not seem to have occured to anyone in authority on the East Coast Main Line that, with six separate engineering posessions on the first few miles out of KX, one such posession might just significantly overrun and extensive mitigation - such as planning an emergency timetable and rostering extra staff to be in the right places for such an occurence (and paying them enough bonus pay to incentivise them to work) - ought to be put in place weeks before the day.

This is to my mind an almighty strategic failure by senior management.

 

[6Gman]

Patrick McLoughlin, Secretary of State for Transport, must be called to account

Hardly his fault!

 

[Qwerty133]

One manager Robin Gisby interviewed on ITN news said NR had run 10,000 yes 10,000 trains today!

Network rail have ran exactly 0 trains today...
And then we wonder why people get confused about who runs what.

 

[6Gman]

Much of this debacle was predicted on here yesterday evening. Draw your own conclusions from that.

That there is more railway know-how on here than in some sections of the current industry?

 

[amcluesent]

Robin Gisby on Sky News - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrUIClBovF8

 

[TUC]

Frankly it matters not a whit what caused the possession overrun.

It does matter that it does not seem to have occured to anyone in authority on the East Coast Main Line that, with six separate engineering posessions on the first few miles out of KX, one such posession might just significantly overrun and extensive mitigation - such as planning an emergency timetable and rostering extra staff to be in the right places for such an occurence (and paying them enough bonus pay to incentivise them to work) - ought to be put in place weeks before the day.

This is to my mind an almighty strategic failure by senior management.

Senior management clearly had a key role in planning what the response should have been but its not jsut at their level. Across the day there seems to have been a lack of communication or initiative. A fundamental question is why in situations like this the rail industry generally comes across as largely a set of plodders.

 

[najaB]

It does matter that it does not seem to have occured to anyone in authority on the East Coast Main Line that, with six separate engineering posessions on the first few miles out of KX, one such posession might just significantly overrun

I'm sure that the possibility of an overrun was very high on their list of things that kept them awake at night.

...and extensive mitigation - such as planning an emergency timetable and rostering extra staff to be in the right places for such an occurence (and paying them enough bonus pay to incentivise them to work) - ought to be put in place weeks before the day.

With six different work sites, and the different permutations of what services could be run, and not know ing where the 'right place' would be I think it would have been almost impossible to staff ahead of time.

I do agree that they could / should have arranged to have more staff on an on-call basis in case they were needed - maybe a small bonus for agreeing to be available to encourage take-up. For all I know, they may have done this.

This is to my mind an almighty strategic failure by senior management.

Without knowing the details of what had been planned for, it's equally possible that it may be a tactical failure, rather than strategic. They had a plan, but it was overtaken by events.

 

[Julia]

Manor House or Arsenal are about 10 minutes walk from Finsbury Park. The Piccadilly Line is running fine in itself.

And for all those stuck at Potters Bar, Cockfosters is a short hop on the 298 bus. Shame these links aren't better publicised in times of crisis...

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

You could argue that Network Rail tried to do too much this Christmas.
But the work out of King's Cross/Euston/Paddington is critical to a big chunk of NR's plans for CP5, things like Crossrail, Thameslink 2000, IEP etc.
Putting off the work screws the timescales for those projects.
But it can't be right to have both main lines north knackered at the same time.
I thought we had a "big plan" to prevent this, but apparently not.

 

[DarloRich]

najab - you are wasting your time trying to explain things. The wibblers and arm chair generals have decided what happened and why. Heads must roll and the rolled heads must pay out of their own wallet.

Odd that they never want to let you know where they work so that their failures can be publically castigated. Sorry they don’t make mistakes do they! It is like they were waiting for this kind of problem so they could roll out their expertise and the I told you so lines!

To me working out what went wrong and why and then making sure it doesn’t happen again are most important to me. That and getting the trains moving!

 

[causton]

And for all those stuck at Potters Bar, Cockfosters is a short hop on the 298 bus. Shame these links aren't better publicised in times of crisis...

All GN stations should have one of these posters up and leaflets to give out/take during disruption IIRC!

http://www.thameslinkrailway.com/download/273/alt-map-pot-bar/

 

[14xxDave]

Without knowing the details of what had been planned for, it's equally possible that it may be a tactical failure, rather than strategic. They had a plan, but it was overtaken by events.

That's very possible but the cynic in me thinks that the 'senior' management in this game thought that they had so many time penalties in force that nothing would go wrong. A simple money type person mistake....they really don't think in the real world.......

 

[White Ant]

Having travelled on local trains on the East Coast route today it was also surprising to see how badly the electronic information systems broke down. The departure boards had a message saying they would only show trains that were running - but couldn't even do that, so it was down to asking station staff at Welwyn GC where the trains that were on the platforms were heading.

Stevenage seemed to be used as a holding point for trains that were in the log-jam trying to get into Finsbury Park, but at least the passengers were allowed to get off - and some tried their luck on local trains to Welwyn GC where there were trains into Moorgate.

At Hitchin it was even worse, with the station staff having to go and ask the driver of the train that arrived heading north where he was headed!

The various smartphone apps were little use either - both of the trains I used this afternoon were ghost trains according to the app I was using.

 

[jagardner1984]

Clearly a bad day for the railways, and clearly we will now have to endure the deep irony of politicians of various parties on TV pontificating about the railways they have done nothing but screw up or "re-organise" over the last 25 years !

But somehow I feel we are all missing the point. Surely the real issue here is that there is no proper terminus station to run these trains into. When you look at the maps north of Gare du Nord, or various other European Termini, there are masses of lines running in and out of those stations.

I'm speaking not as an expert, clearly, but surely there is some argument for building the capacity to run these major termini in a sort of A/B format, so that if the A Lines are down for whatever reason, accident, engineering work, power failure, train failure, the B lines can still run and operate some level of service. By that I mean separate everything, Signalling, Power, the lot. Such systems are quite common in various industries where overall failure isn't an option. And clearly, you'd never attempt engineering work on both segments at the same time !

Or if not, building small links to at least allow a Southbound train or two to terminate in St Pancras, or Liverpool Street, (and the same links for the other main termini to deal with issues at any of the other lines.) A kind of Orbirail I guess, but with a North and South spur to each of the great main lines.

In other words, just shouting at a contractor and promising it's all fixed now doesn't do anything to improve the long term resilience of the overall system. That's what needs addressed.

 

[NSEFAN]

I went to Finsbury Park this morning before the first East Coast train arrived. The subway was already busy by this point, but after an hour it became impassible. What made problems particularly bad was a high volume of passengers trying to board and alight from the same train at once on platform 4. It was hence decided to have platform 4 for arrivals and 5 for departures, with trains reversing ECS north of the station.

Some passengers were clearly very distressed by the disruption, but staff were extremely helpful and police officers were there too to keep the peace. Things were better inside the station by about 1pm when I left by train, although from pictures on the web it appears that it was quite shambolic outside the station!

 

[Starmill]

The solution for some of the complaining that's taking place is unfortunately very simple - fewer trains and longer closures. The service that has been in operation today has been admirable. Is there usually an 8 car train from Moor St to Marylebone twice an hour on a Saturday?

 

[30907]

Using FPK was bound to cause problems of crowd control, but there is no realistic alternative, as the next station out of London capable of handling EC sets is Stevenage

It could have been mitigated by GN running extra 2x313s to clear the Up side arriving passengers down to Highbury (and Moorgate) but this doesn't seem to have happened.
Not a perfect solution, and it might have caused LU problems, but I can't see a better one.

Not sure it would have been effective in the Northbound direction, though advising people against using FPK tube might have been wise.

 

[merlodlliw]

That's very possible but the cynic in me thinks that the 'senior' management in this game thought that they had so many time penalties in force that nothing would go wrong. A simple money type person mistake....they really don't think in the real world.......

NR a not for profit Company,same thinking as as state owned,so long as the fat cats get a bonus for failure, we passengers suffer but pay for failure.
NR needs sorting out,too many comfort zones,the NR Manager telling the media we ran 10K trains today says it all.
Little wonder if NR cocks up the Wrexham redouble,what chance elsewhere.
No wonder Welsh Government,want control of infrastructure from 2018.Problem is NR dont suffer penalty clauses like real industry,just pay the not for profit fine out of reserves, sorry I do feel sorry for the passenger, the important element after all.
Politicians will ask questions,ORR will fine, status que remains.

 

[21C101]

najab - you are wasting your time trying to explain things. The wibblers and arm chair generals have decided what happened and why. Heads must roll and the rolled heads must pay out of their own wallet.

Odd that they never want to let you know where they work so that their failures can be publically castigated. Sorry they don’t make mistakes do they! It is like they were waiting for this kind of problem so they could roll out their expertise and the I told you so lines!

To me working out what went wrong and why and then making sure it doesn’t happen again are most important to me. That and getting the trains moving!

I was actually making the point that the fault in this case lies with the generals (the executive level senior management on six figure salaries), not the poor bloody infantry on the ground trying to fight fires in all directions and make the best of an awful situation they've been left with.

Why did the senior management not ensure that there were plenty of extra staff rostered (and paid them bonus of up to £500 to ensure sufficient volunteers) so that the stations affected would have many extra staff on hand?

Why did no one in senior management get GTR to run an intensive 8 train per hour service from Bowes Park to Moorgate using 6 car 313s (and enabling cross platform interchange with Vic line at Highbury & Islington) - again paying the staff a large bonus to ensure sufficient volunteers - and enabling pax on terminating trains to go cross platform at Finsbury onto Moorgate while the IC train then goes to Canonbury spur, reverses and picks up northbound pax (again arriving cross platform from Moorgate direction)?

 

[amcluesent]

Why is there never a viable 'Plan B' on the railways? Every time there's a breakdown, person under of over-running engineering everyone's running about like a headless chicken.

 

[bluenoxid]

najab - you are wasting your time trying to explain things. The wibblers and arm chair generals have decided what happened and why. Heads must roll and the rolled heads must pay out of their own wallet.

Odd that they never want to let you know where they work so that their failures can be publically castigated. Sorry they don’t make mistakes do they! It is like they were waiting for this kind of problem so they could roll out their expertise and the I told you so lines!

To me working out what went wrong and why and then making sure it doesn’t happen again are most important to me. That and getting the trains moving!

Many people don't have projects where failure can be so publicly disruptive and scrutinised. Many of the projects that fail just never get discovered, buried in the back of reports and statistics.

I expect that something has knocked the Critical Path for this project. It's not easy to get spare parts and a redundancy plan in play on Christmas Day and insurance costs money. Projects can quickly become an ACE and a reason why not to do things. Network Rail needs to take risks to get these projects done. Whilst they deserve scrutiny for the amount of public money involved, I think the best thing they need is that they need support.

I assume that there will be vacancies shortly at Network Rail and its subcontractors for those of you looking for a challenge