Also issues on the ClC between Manchester and Liverpool via Warrington. The 0635 Nottingham - Liverpool is also stuck at Grindleford due to closed signal boxes. Odd as the first train an hour earlier got through with delay, although think it is now stuck at Oxford Road
The image below shows the signalling map for south of Leicester, with four trains stuck behind each other at red signals.
The 0635 Nottingham - Liverpool got cancelled at Grindleford after about an hour with the train to return to Nottingham after completing a shiny move requiring everyone to get off onto a snowy/icy platform and head over the bridge to the other platform. Passengers anxious to get to Manchester told by the very apologetic guard and driver that as far as they know there’s no trains to Manchester and control gave told them to bring everyone back to Chesterfield. The train performs its shunt, everyone onboard off we go back through Totley Tunnel for a few minutes until we get to a red signal. Turns out we had to wait for the next Liverpool bound train to clear the single line section that is Dore West Curve. You can imagine the looks on some of the passengers faces rubber necking to watch that 170 fly past! Turns out the lines open again! If only we’d been told that before re boarding at Grindleford. Especially as the following following Liverpool train is cancelledAlso issues on the ClC between Manchester and Liverpool via Warrington. The 0635 Nottingham - Liverpool is also stuck at Grindleford due to closed signal boxes. Odd as the first train an hour earlier got through with delay, although think it is now stuck at Oxford Road
It looks like the first Nottingham to Norwich via Oakham got through before that line shut!
You couldn’t make it up really!
I’m sorry, disappointingly that was as close to the station as it got and I couldn’t ID it.
What is the logic of making people detrain? This seems a classic case of risks not being fully assessed against each other.The 0635 Nottingham - Liverpool got cancelled at Grindleford after about an hour with the train to return to Nottingham after completing a shiny move requiring everyone to get off onto a snowy/icy platform and head over the bridge to the other platform. Passengers anxious to get to Manchester told by the very apologetic guard and driver that as far as they know there’s no trains to Manchester and control gave told them to bring everyone back to Chesterfield. The train performs its shunt, everyone onboard off we go back through Totley Tunnel for a few minutes until we get to a red signal. Turns out we had to wait for the next Liverpool bound train to clear the single line section that is Dore West Curve. You can imagine the looks on some of the passengers faces rubber necking to watch that 170 fly past! Turns out the lines open again! If only we’d been told that before re boarding at Grindleford. Especially as the following following Liverpool train is cancelled
It's a shunt signal to crossover in that direction, passengers aren't allowed on board. Maybe dispensation could have been granted in the circumstances, maybe not.
The question is what is the risk of remaining on board against the risk of detraining etc and was this considered?
Plenty of risk around slippery/icy surfaces when crossing over to the other platform. That feels like a far bigger risk than staying on board during a shunting manoeuvre. But I bet the railway doesn’t think like that.
If the crossover points are not fitted with facing point locks the passage of trains carrying passengers is absolutely forbidden without them being clipped and padlocked by an authorised person (Mobile Operations Manager, Permanent Way Supervisor, etc.) This is to prevent the possibility of the points moving under the train and causing a derailment which could kill or injure people. Unfortunately, in the current weather conditions it could take a suitable person hours to reach the site. In these circumstances I think the necessity to detrain and make their way over the footbridge was a comparatively minor inconvenience for the passengers.
Its highly unlikely a slow speed derailment will kill anyone. If the train derails then you have a platform full of people stuck in the cold in a relatively remote area waiting for rescue where access roads may also be difficult to traverse. It may be safer for them to be on a derailed train. There is then the risk of detraining people some of whom maybe relatively immobile and getting them across to the other platform.
Clipped and scotched for a facing move (not padlocked unless the rule has recently changed). A passenger train may not proceed on the authority of Shunt signal without signaller's permission- unless that's changed since I retired!
Surely those same people will have, indeed desire, to get off the train when they reach their destinations and thus be undertaking a similar risk?
Happy to bow to your superior knowledge. I retired - as a driver - nearly thirteen years ago and my memory is not what it once was.
....not to mention the line being blocked in both directions for the rest of the day - and quite possibly longer.
How snowy and icy does it have to be before the risks of people using a footbridge override the risks of a derailment? Do you have to consider the number and mobility of people on the train? And likewise those who might get stranded on other trains when a derailed train blocks the line.
The Rules are there, and no one will override them from a remote location, the Signaller if he made the move with passengers on, could well be drug screened, suspended (for months) pending investigation.
Looks like 4M29 was right time through Ipswich, as was 1P29.
In that case it would appear to be a planning error - a freight should not be let out 5 minutes before an express passenger train. I guess it’s because the freight was a VSTP. Of course, 1P29 would have to overtake 4M29 somewhere for the schedules to work, but was not booked to do so.
VSTP's never seem to work, however when I was in the box at Colchester, some of the WTT freights were at times just as bad anyway ! Planners seem to overlook the fact that freights are a lot longer and heavier now than even 6 or 7 years ago ! takes time to get up to 75mph, and from Ipswich its uphill to Bentley.
Maybe waiting an extra 5 minutes would have put it in more of a conflict with other services in other areas of the route. Maybe it would have knocked onto 4M88 which is booked to pass Ipswich at 1114.
Yes. I don't know the details unfortunately.
thanks - assume some kind of frozen equipment problem rather than snow drifts
Although it's easy to be irritated by the extent of risk averseness that exists today this point really does need to be made from time to time. Another way that this is expressed on the railway is to say that the Rule Book was/is written in blood.
Shut until about 1400ish, which makes me think it may of been signaller issue rather than snow (although maybe not as they ran an Ecs 5D06 1124 Bishop Auckland to Darlington which ran 23 late, I can’t see what that arrived in at Bishop unless was a route prover)
thanks - my mum reported the same the other side of Darlo.