Great Western Coffee Shop

According to Realtraintimes today's 11:00 from Penzance to London Paddington arrived in London nearly SIX hours late.

That's a mighty big delay. It seems the train came to grief after leaving Westbury and it obviously took a while to get things sorted.

Just got a mention on pirate fm radio 11pm news. (uses a national news source at this bulletin). Passenger interviewed was heavily critical of the way the incident was handled by staff. The report gave it as break failure just outside Pewsey.

From the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-23571002):

Once again, reports of a lack of communication when things go wrong. Not good.

Where is the plan that says, once a train has been delayed for X mins (60 or 90?) an incident is declared, and a team of senior people are deployed, regardless of day or time, to manage the situation. 

 I agree that should be the case, although I think you will find
 most FGW senior 'Managers' do not work week-ends.

I seem to remember looking at JourneyCheck some time yesterday afternoon. A later train was shown as being diverted via Swindon on account of "a broken-down train", but there was no mention of the broken-down one itself.

Meanwhile, this morning the first train out of Hereford has died at Shrub Hill, but, as of 07:33, the reason for this is still "a matter under investigation". Clearly a difficult problem.

BBC South West interviewed PAX off the delayed service who were very critical.  No FGW response in the piece I saw this morning.

Mark Hopwood on Today (monday) apologising.

Unfortuantely incidents like these are going to become more common so long a we run a shoestring railway particularly at weekend.

Once it became apparent that it was  as sever mechanical breakdown (split brake piep which would require a replacement part then steps should have bee taken to evacuate the train and load the passengers onto a another service. Either an Empty HST bought back wrong line or on the Down.

For safety reasons the replacemnt train should have been bought to a complete stand and protected with detenators. Then the transfer could take palce.

Unfortunately my plan falls down on several counts Networkrail would consider it unsafe to empty a train onto a mainline, secondly FGW probably wouldn't have had a spare driver or guard to man the empty train  even if they could find a spare servicable HST set.

Interesting there are no FGW Thunderbird locos unlike Virgin. I think with an increasing number of HST, which aren't getting any younger,  brake failures FGW will have to consider employing Thunderbirds

Also on BBC News Channel, but they're only featuring angry pax, so more bad publicity to be repeated through the day until something 'more important' happens. Perhaps something to do with cricket will push it out of the agenda.

This item was on the BBC Radio 4 News at 2200 last night, and again on this morning's News bulletins.  Also the Today programme carried interviews with irate passengers coming off the train at Padd at 2200 last night .

Broken air pipes are nothing new on HSTs, whether they be between the coaches or inside the power car. There are ways of dealing with failures like this, whether operationally (splitting/towing train away) or technically (repairs to broken item).   Westbury - Pewsey is hardly in the middle of nowhere. 

FGW's handling of this was completely unacceptable.  Excuses that it was the weekend, no money, no spare resources, no senior managers (although I'm not sure what use they would be except to authorise additional expenditure) etc., simply don't wash.

I'd expect there to be strict rules about who can authorise expensive interventions or trade off major disruptions to other services, and would not object. However, to run a railway that authority needs to be delegated to someone on duty, or else someone has to be on call (by phone should be adequate). Otherwise a decision has been made that Sunday passengers don't count - though that might be an unconscious decision. I've never worked anywhere that's customer facing or providing real-time services, but there has always such a system for taking urgent decisions. So as an excuse that does not work.

FGW do have a senior manager call-out roster.

The train was 30 minutes across fields from the nearest road, so it was considered that detraining 500+ pax & asking them to traipse that far with their luggage was unacceptable. I agree.

There's a longer piece with more detail on the Guardian website
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/05/first-great-western-train-delay

Lack of a rescue loco and on-train comms seem to be the real problems for me. Whether you could easily store & carry sufficient water for a this sort of problem (where delay exceeds say 90+ mins) needs exploring. The number of times it happens can be counted on one hand over the last couple of years (or longer?)

The train was attended to by a rescue loco, but it took a while to get there. A Class 59 ran up from Westbury, the rear power car was detached and the 59 hauled it back to Westbury. The front power car then continued with the train alone to Paddington. The other power car was then recovered today by a Class 57 and hauled to Laira. The delay in the 59 running to the train was probably because the first action taken by FGW is to attempt to rectify the fault, rather than dragging the train straight away.

the incident happened at the 73^ milepost between Pewsey and Savernake. A look on Google earth suggests the nearest road much close, and the River Avon also being very nearby, perhaps send in a boat?

First Great Western's spokesman on Westcountry News has just said on TV that it was incompetence by the on duty staff for such an incident to take so long and cause such a delay. For future reference for revisiting on on-demand TV it appeared at approx 1804 on ITV Westcountry News.

If that's the case then I agree, but another or faster solution should have been possible within the 5 1/2 hours that the train was sitting there, particularly given the conditions, lack of water and sanitation.

I'm curious about one thing. Did the rescue locomotive need to be there to uncouple the rear power car, or could it be uncoupled in situ, and then the front could just move clear.    

De-training passengers would only be considered in the event of a derailment, fire; the risks of of loading even able bodied passengers is high let alone anyone with mobility problems.
The issue in this case my well be a managerial one either solely on the part of FGW maybe some rests with NR. 

I would ask if it was the rear power car that had failed it could have been left in section with staff to protect it and the front section allowed to proceed, the failed unit could have been rescued later.

I am sure there will be a post mortem over this, which I am sure some will be invited to attend without coffee or biscuits

You don't need a loco to uncouple a Power Car, it can be done by the traincrew by uncoupling the jumpers, pulling the buckeye release lever and using the good Power Car to pull the train away from the Power Car with the brakes locked on.  I think they would have been trained to do this (I stand to be corrected), but I accept it may have been an unfamiliar and difficult task in the situation they found themselves in (eg was the train on a curve, or on canted or high ballasted track etc?).

But I do think that it should have been do-able in a lot less than 5 hours especially as there was a FGW engineering manager on board according to an earlier post, and a fitter turned up to help.

If you've got spokesmen coming out and calling the on-duty staff "incompetent" in an interview, then things are getting out of control.

To be fair the FGW chap interviewed do not use the phrase "incompetence", that was the question put to him by the interviewer which was correctly answered by FGW that they are investigating 

Linky http://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/story/2013-08-05/6-hour-train-delay/ (http://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/story/2013-08-05/6-hour-train-delay/) 

Interviewer "do you think the delay was bad luck or incompetence"
FGW "I think there was some serious issues last night, there is no way the maintanance issue should have led to a 5 1/2 hour delay"

The vast majority of the public will interpret this to him saying there was incompetence. This comment from the question asked to 95% of people will be interpreted as him answering as incompetence.
 


Edit note: Response to quoted text replaced in context, for clarity. CfN.

I've been a passenger - three times - on services that have suffered extreme delay.  Before you panic and vow never to travel with me, I'll tell you that I have travelled an awful lot in my time.

What do I note?  When the train comes to an unexpected halt the passengers don't know what's happened and what the delay and cure will be and neither, usually, do the crew. Hindsight is marvellous stuff, but it's never available until too late in the incident, and the crew have my hugest of sympathys.  On two out of the three incidents, the rail staff were excellent in keeping us informed ... in the final case, information was sporadic and we were left with an honest "it will be a while but we don't know how long" for two hours, by which time we were all getitng rather tetchy.  But in all three cases, there were seats for everyone and they were comfortable seats designed for long distance travel.

When we eventually reached the train's terminus  - 3 a.m. for a 10 p.m. arrival into London in one case,   taxis had been alerted ahead, lists of destinattions drawn up, and taxi shares in order to get everyone off as quickly as possible set up.   Incident ended in the best of humour al around, with no-one I saw saying "never again".

Now - all three incidents were on the West Coast line, and two of them were caused by the overhead wires coming down (in one case on top of the train I was in).  A diesel loco with a couple of coaches was backed up in front, and we all got down, walked past our "86" or whatever it was on the front, and climbed up.   And I do hope that whoever operated the London - Swindon - Bristol / Cardiff / Swansea services once their electirfied has some sort of plans in place that can work rather more quickly than happened yesterday, even with the extra "oops - the train's tied up in wires" issue!


I wonder if we'll hear any outcome from the investigations ...

I've gone back to find the RAIB report on the train that got stuck near Kentish Town two years ago. Their report and recommendations are at http://www.raib.gov.uk/cms_resources.cfm?file=/120523_R072012_Kentish_Town.pdf (http://www.raib.gov.uk/cms_resources.cfm?file=/120523_R072012_Kentish_Town.pdf).

It would appear that none of the lessons of that incident have been learned.

I have no idea (like the rest of us), the circumstances behind what happened yesterday. One thing I do know however is that very few drivers within FGW sign class 57s. This means finding a driver to even drive a class 57 at the drop of a hat can be difficult to begin with.

I believe the original intention was for the Class 59 to rescue the train, but it wasn't possible because the train could still not build air. The only way they could build air was removing the defective power car. Summoning a Class 57 would have made no difference. The Class 59 was AFAIK on the scene reasonably quickly anyway.

Having read the RAIB report posted by Worcester Passenger, I think the biggest problem with these incidents is 'hope' - the crew and staff all do their best, in what can quickly become very difficult circumstances, but by the time the operator realises it has a problem it is already too late to resolve it in an acceptable time. What seems to be lacking is a set of time-based triggers for escalation.

We should have the benefit of hindsight while these incidents are unfolding, because similar things have happened before and recommendations have been made.

As soon as a train has been standing for one hour, the operator should see getting the passengers off safely and quickly as their highest-priority task. It should be out of the question for passengers to be trapped on a train for more than 2 hours; five-and-a-half hours is close to criminal. They were in Wiltshire, for goodness sake, not the middle of the Nullarbor Plain.

It's an interesting one.  The staff might not do their best - it depends who is working the train as there are some poor members of staff out there.  The initial prognosis might indicate that the delay will not be as bad, so desperate measures (like de-training) are not chosen, but the problem then gets worse.  Or there can be an almighty cock-up as there was when a HST failed over Wharncliffe Viaduct a few months ago where a breakdown in fault finding communication between the driver and technical staff by phone led to the delay escalating far more than it needed to.

Anything that makes the press like this incident has will lead to some banging-of-heads though, which can only be a good thing if the lessons are learned.

I've just had a chance to watch the news item now, and we can see how misreporting can give the wrong impression. See - the original quote was that the FGW spokesman said it was incompetence, when he didn't. To be fair, that was a bit of a loaded question if responded to directly - if he replied that it wasn't incompetence, it would be "FGW says six-hour train hell was just bad luck". As Electric Train points out, he did reply to the question appropriately (which I probably would have messed up if it was me being interviewed).

When you calmly look at what's reported to have occurred, and take various things into consideration, you can see how this could add up to 6 hours delay. The key thing is to identify where the current processes failed in this situation, and what steps are necessary to prevent a similar occurrence.

Wow doesn't the situation look so perilous in first class!!!! God get a grip!!
Being delayed for 6 hours is very inconvenient but worse things could have happened.

FGW clearly didn't handle the situation the best they could but talk about slow news day!

Not taken long for Mr. Crow to jump on the bandwagon on this one:

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/136211 (http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/136211)

Despite the fact that it's not HSTs that are going in for refurbishment, which in any case doesn't include any changes to systems that might cause a train to fail.  Opportunistic nonsense from the RMT yet again.  Though that doesn't mean that I hope Railcare at Wolverton is saved given that I spent a few months working there in my very early railway career.

I agree that there are enough previous incidents for the lessons to all be there for the learning. What struck me about the RAIB report was that all they can recommend is more reviews. So this time we will presumably get yet more reviews of plans, practices, communications between the various bits of NR and the TOCs ... but will that prevent the same thing happening?

The details of faults, and the options for moving a failed train, vary a lot from case to case. One common point is that to evacuate passengers needs a lot of staff, and if they can't walk a short distance to a station is only half a solution - where else do they go? But to make sure passengers stay on a squalid overheated train also needs a lot of staff. Very good communications to the passengers might be a partial substitute, but if you can't even keep the PA working, how likely it that?

Some facts regarding this incident from a source in ICC Western.

15:26 Log Item created and control aware of 1A85 having suffered a loss of main res air

15:38 Both Driver & Train Manager have great difficulty with mobile phone reception. GSMR in both powercars is working perfectly and this being used as preferred method of communication,

Driver has made way to rear power car and isolated all normal things that cause problems, such as ATP, E70 brake control unit, driver returning to front power car to see if any effect. Walking route is along cess / ballast so this takes time.

A Riding Inspector (fitter) who is at Reading is requested to attend > further delayed as 1C86 14:57 Pad to Pnz which he was attempting to fix that failed at Reading. This was set swapped with an Up HST, thusly departed RDG 45 mins late without the fitter on board.....as he was still on failed train,making it fit to go ECS to Old Oak.

Fitter actually travelled on 1C88 15:57 Pad to PNZ and was logged as on site at 18:01.

16:26  DBS despatch resuce loco and TVSC will hold in Woodborough Loop pending events.

Meanwhile Driver reports still unable to maintain air and now continues to fault find (locate air leak), this entails putting parking brake on front engine revving the engine and finding the air leak, by walking down the train. This process takes time and it didn't find the fault.

Also in this process the driver injured his ankle on the ballast....but still continued and eventually drove the train!!!

17:15 Traincrew reported as finding a fractured pipe. In process of isolating. But needed block on the Down Line. Again this line was open to traffic and being in the middle of auto section, process of getting a block, doing the work, going back to powercar using GSMR was taking a long long time!!!

Train Manager goes to lay protection at rear for 1Z99 . However loco will not help if air leak not found / isolated!!!

17:41 Set sill loosing air with pipe isolated.

18:00 Fitter on site

18:20 FGW Manager on Site

18:42 1Z99 given permission to proceed to protecting signal

19:00 Fitter also unable to locate air leak...again all hampered with communication as only GSMR working.

19:49 After various fault finding and isolations fitters is confident faut is within rear powercar. Now isolating and detaching from formation.

20:09 1Z99 at protecting signal, permission given to proceed. 1Z99 moving towards the rear of the train and will couple up and push up to allow the buckeye to be unhooked between the coach and the powercar

21:06 1A85 on the move!!!

1Z99 will drag powercar to Westbury

Some questions I would like answered??

1) Why did it take 2 and half hours to get a fitter to site?

2) Why did it take so long even when rescue engine was on scene to detatch powercar and get moving (nearly an hour!)

3) At what point would they have evacuated?? 6 hours 7 hours......12 hours??

Insider - thank you for posting a factual log.

Though it does raise a lot of questions.

As ever, disasters involve a number of different events that all come together to make things worse : the lack of a mobile phone signal (did that also affect the passengers?), the duty fitter being busy on another train, the need for the rescue loco to uncouple the rear power car...

Pardon my ignorance, but trying to find a leaking air pipe by walking along outside the train sounds very nineteenth century - a bit like mending a puncture in a bicycle tyre. Presumably newer trains than the HSTs have all sorts of on-board diagnostic kit? Or am I hopelessly optimistic?

4) Why did the on-call Manager take over 3 hours to get on site? Where was he, PLY?

All staff will be on the same mobile provider - my bet is that FGW have one contract. Maybe there's reason to consider some being on a second different one?

It does sound as though limited cellphone coverage was a contributory factor.
Not being reliant on one network can help a bit.
I suspect though that no cellphone network would have worked well under the circumstances, in rural areas the network can only support a limited number of conversations or rate of data transfer. The operators try to provide a good service UNDER NORMAL CONDITIONS without spending too much on masts and towers (the erection of which is bitterly opposed)


I doubt that any mobile network would be able to cope with the extra traffic caused by this incident. About 500 persons on the train, and many of them useing cellphones or other mobile devices, on a network sized for the local population and the odd passer by.


For this reason I suggest that FGW should consider having satellite phones available in emergency, at least for senior management and perhaps for drivers and fitters.
These are totally immune to any congestion or overloading of cellphone networks, and are also immune to extreme weather that may topple cellphone masts or interupt the power to them.
Satelite phones are now available for about ^500, which would be money well spent considering the costs of delays.
The high cost of the calls is of little consequence in an emergency, IIRC it is about £1 a minute, so near continuall of a couple of sat phones for a couple of hours is only about £250.

http://evaq8.co.uk/Satellite-Phone-Emergency-Kit-Including-SIM-Card-And-Airtime.html (ftp://http://evaq8.co.uk/Satellite-Phone-Emergency-Kit-Including-SIM-Card-And-Airtime.html)

This is the sort of thing that I suggest, I have no connection with the supplier except as a customer.

If you were going to supply crew with another phone in the unlikely event of reception difficulties in such a situation, I'd have thought a portable GSM-R handset would be the best idea.  Perhaps to be stored in the emergency equipment cabinet from this supplier:  http://www.selex-comms.co.uk/selex/pdf/gsmr_handheld.pdf (http://www.selex-comms.co.uk/selex/pdf/gsmr_handheld.pdf)

With all due respect to insider, I think some of the "facts" in the log may have got a bit confused in the manner/order they are stated. For example,

1.  HST Power Cars don't need "revving" to get air pressure.  Driver or Control wouldn't have said that. The compressors are electrically powered, not mechanically driven off the engine like Turbos etc.

2.  The traincrew (entirely logically) initially thought someone had pulled an emergency handle.  So that is why the Driver walked down the outside of the train, as the released air is designed to "whistle" audibly below the solebar to help locate the coach in which the emergency handle has ben pulled.  This item is shown as after 1626, and after the report that the Driver did the isolations in the rear Power car.  I suspect that in fact the Driver did the emergency handle check BEFORE he went into the rear Power car.

3  As I said earlier, you don't need a loco to uncouple the rear Power Car, so the wording of the item at 2009 doesn't look right (and Control wouldn't use a phrase like "allow the buckeye to be unhooked").

Seems to me that Driver and traincrew did a pretty good job on the fault-finding front.  

The simple way of course to determine if there's an air leak in a Power car is to isolate the main and brake pipes by turning off the cocks on the jumpers between the Power Car and first Trailer and then see if the rest of the train holds air.  

To answer (1), the fitter was at Reading attending to another failure at the time.

A point on the mobile reception:  O2, Three & Vodafone have poor coverage in this area.  One is FGW's provider, one is my personal phone and third is my wife's personal phone, and pretty much from just past Westbury until Newbury (with the odd exception such as Hungerford), there is very little reception along that route, and certainly just short of Pewsey, it's practically "No Service" all round.

Saw the 57 hauling the power car nose first over the Exe bridge just south of Exeter St David's.

True, they are electrically powered, but revving the engine increases the voltage of the 3 phase supply off the auxiliary alternator so the compressor runs faster so you create more air to help find the pulled pass com or leak. HST compressors are quite poor and the air capacity quite low, so it entirely feasible that by the time you get down the train looking for your leak that the air has dropped enough to bring in the low main reservoir protection so the power car stops feeding the train.
Revving the engines gives you more time to find your leak.

1) As already mentioned - Reading

2) Surely an hour was quite good - considering "on scene" is where? Unless it's immediately behind the train close enough to be coupled although I suspect it was actually at the signal in rear which would then have to come in slowly, couple up, detach powercar, affix tail lamp, ensure all personnel are clear of the line as well as communicate updates to the Signaller and Control then an hour sounds rather good.

3) Where were the 500 passengers going to be evacuated to? The train is not on fire, they are perfectly safe onboard. Note that the Driver injured himself walking on the ballast with his safety shoes on. How many other injuries would you have if the passengers had to walk on the ballast with their inappropriate shoes on??

6 hours is a long time to be sat on a failed train but realistically what else could have been done?

The answer to that has to be 'a lot'.

Even if you accept (which I certainly do not) that it was necessary to keep people 'sat' on the train - I think 'trapped' is a more accurate word - it is clear to me that resources (staff, refreshments, facilities, entertainment even) should have been brought on site within two hours. There does not appear to be an adequate escalation plan; essentially it looks like no-one was empowered to 'own' the problem.