Great Western Coffee Shop

Thoughts with the driver/staff of the service involved, and with the family of the person involved. Not nice to hear of a fatality on a patch of network that is very familiar to me, although I'm glad to say I believe there aren't normally that many fatalities around the area.

Particularly sad when we are so close to Christmas.

Caused complete chaos. Passengers for London were being directed onto the 3 car 159s to Waterloo, lets just say no passengers will have been boarding the service after St Davids!

thats happened in the past quite alot just for the anouncement between st davids and central im sorry but your tickets are not valid on this route please get off at central!

don't worry : SWT gave their permission for FGW ticket acceptance right at the start. After the initial notification, AXC and ourselves jointly organised 42 buses to shuttle between Exeter and Taunton - all were in operation within 70 minutes and helped move an enormous amount of customers on the 'last Friday before Christmas' rush. By turning London bound trains at Exeter to form 1zxx to Cornwall and West-bound trains at Taunton to form 1zxx back to London, we managed a very good service under the circumstances, using the 42 buses to bridge the gap.
On behalf of Control, I would like to thank the two main stations involved for the way they handled the disruption - and the same to all front-line colleagues on trains affected.
Line was closed exactly 2 hours 13:46 - 15:46

This kind of customer service deserves wider praise. The dead tree press are very quick to castigate the rail network when problems outside its control (weather, fatalities etc) affect the travelling public. But then, I guess, bad news sells much better than good news.

Workington has shown what can be achieved by 'UK Rail' following a major disaster, and this rightly got widespread positive coverage. Come on journos; highlight the good work the rail industry and its employees do, day in and day out, when reacting to immediate, non infrastructure related, problems.

Witnessed the whole thing myself today at Exeter a very difficult situation well managed,congratulations to all concerned.

I rather suspect they regretted it, the 1423 Waterloo left full and rammed, the trolley was unable to travel (2 travelled on the also busy 1523)

The driver of the 1423 certainly wasn't very happy and I doubt the passengers greeting it along the whole of the WOE were either.

Ticket acceptance is a bit of a red herring, FGW price the most expensive route to London, therefore they are by default valid on SWT, as you can't issue a negative excess!!

The bus operation did seem to work well, the large crowds exiting the London trains were soon shifted.

Any idea why the 1702 London Paddington was caped Exeter? It loaded up lots of passengers, and was standing in the aisles, and then sat around for ages before being caped!

caped?

Cancelled, sorry  :D

Another one for the acronyms/abbreviations page?

Hmm.  I think 'caped' (or indeed 'canned') are railway slang expressions for 'cancelled', rather than acronyms or abbreviations?  ::)

No Crew  :(

I might add that from what I heard AXC did not exactly cover themselves in glory by terminating everything and not letting anything South of Bristol, allowing FGW to sort out XC customers from Taunton-Bristol.  Seems to be the trend for them unfortunately.

Things also were not helped at one point by the M5 being closed around Tiverton either!!

It actually makes me feel quite proud to work with the people I do when you have days like today, and you see everyone pull together to clear up the crisis.

Caped comes from CAPE which was BR telegraph code for "Cancelled At Point of Entry"....

Thanks slippy, you live and learn :D

Then if a service was terminating short 'pine' was used, eg 10:06 PAD to PNZ to pine at PLY. God knows where that came from though, don't think its used much nowadays...

Yes, thanks, slippy: I've added 'canned' and 'caped' to our list.  ;)

As to further telegraph codes: see http://www.rodge.force9.co.uk/faq/telegraph.html for an interesting (historical) list - and no, I'm not going to add them all to our list!  ;D

Many staff and 'rail enthusiasts' seem to refer to Cape[d] when they should be using Pine[d].

Many of the telegraph 'code words' are just that, they aren't necessarily based on initials of a sentence.

Paul

too late now but could they not have diverted via yeovil now that there is a shiny new passing loop at axminster

*If* the trains were all run by the same company  ;)

Surely you mean if the paths are workable?  I guess that comment was possibly tongue in cheek though.

Is it known if a diverted service can be superimposed on the SWT hourly service between Pinhoe and Yeovil Junction?  If it can be, I guess NR would just do it, it's not a decision that SWT would make surely?  I suppose we might see something different happen on the next Westbury -Taunton closure for engineering works. FGW have always taken over the service completely in recent years.

Paul

During flooding between Exeter and Tiverton a year ago, a couple of FGW HSTs ran in the path of SWTs Waterloo services, so yes with co-operation it's possible.

By superimposed I meant FGW running in addition to SWT. I can see from the timetable that a train can reach Axminster from Exeter and return ECS, between SWT's clockface hourly services, but does the signalling allow for an additional train to get through the Axminster - Yeovil single track section as well? 

Maybe it is possible if the up service is held at Chard for instance - problem is I can't find out if any of the single track sections have intermediate signals to allow trains to be flighted.

Paul

If memory serves me correctly, FGW have run the Southern Route as far as Yeovil Junction, and then diverted back up to Castle Cary to the Berk & Hants, whereas SWT have then run Yeovil Junction-Waterloo.  I believe that was the situation when the mainline was closed between Exeter & Taunton for engineering.

You are quite right - but that was before Axminster redoubling when the complete two hourly service was handed over to FGW.

But as of today it would be perfectly possible to run SWT and FGW in alternate hours, giving each route an hourly service.

What I'm wondering is if anything better than the hourly service can be run in the future?

Paul

A little more info on this incident from the local rag:

http://www.thisisexeter.co.uk/news/Man-killed-hit-train-near-level-crossing/article-1628516-detail/article.html

Interesting to note that the Voyager involved was not stopped by the incident, until it was taken out of service at Plymouth and further investigated by the BTP.

due to the fact that the driver was at the time not aware of any collision.

Indeed, presumably the consistent rattlings from the fixtures and fittings masked the sound!

inapropriate mate

I'd say not and more a light hearted reference to some threads recently

There is a reason why doctors and nurses in general are the best sources for the sickest jokes.......black humour at the coal face and all that

Moving on

Exactly...  :D

ENIP (think about it) was the code used for a service starting short (ie, PAD to PNZ ENIP at PLY)

No, one train at a time, no intermediate signals

is the older chard junction loop still servicable?

The Chard Junction loop is still operational.  The main constraints on capacity are now Pinhoe to Honiton and Chard Junction to Yeovil Junction.  I understand that any westbound service other than the regular hourly service will incur a long delay at Honiton and will also delay eastbound services at Chard Junction and Pinhoe.  I dont know the situation with eastbound extras but assume similar delays will occur.

I'm sure it [Chard Jn Loop] will be maintained - there's still a use for it if the timetable goes slightly pear shaped as far as I can see, same as Honiton - I don't think there will be so many passing moves there either.

But as confirmed earlier by 'S&T', as they can't flight trains through the single line sections, I doubt they'd give up any operational passing facilty now.

A further query though. Doesn't the Axminster loop itself have a number of intermediate signals? So can more than one train be queued up in the double track section? 

Paul

Yes! so there is some operational flexibilty there but, as mentioned by rogerw,  the single line sections either side are the constraints.  Cranbrook loop would solve the problem at one end if it ever gets built.  As for Chard-Yeovil, a long loop at Crewkerne perhaps?   :)