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According to National rail enquiries a operating incident has occurred at Liskeard.
Because of this, buses are replacing trains between Plymouth and Bodmin Parkway, with journey times extended by up to 60 minutes. This will continue until further notice.All Penzance services currently starting/stopping at Plymouth.Anyone know what the operating incident is.

Derailment I believe from another Forum.  150123 derailed on X-Over at Liskeard whilst crossing over to return to Gunnislake.
Network Rail vague terminologly again as anything that causes delays to trains could be termed an operating incident.   What is the secret as the reason will be splashed through the media anyway.
(But notjinh in the News of the World after this coming Sunday !!!)

Probably because of the tendency of the public to seize on the word 'derailment' and immediately assume some kind of serious accident, rather than (I'm guessing) a minor derailment of an axle or two at low speed.

I was on a service once that got stuck behind a failed train between Didcot and Swindon - the issue was all dealt with with commendable promptness and after a short delay we used a crossover somewhere or other to get around the obstruction. The train manager did a good job of keeping everyone abreast of the situation, and advised us with the best of intentions that we would be running "wrong line" for a short distance until clear of the failed train. Those of us who understood railway terminology were fine, but it spooked several passengers who thought that was utterly unsafe and no doubt had visions of piling head-on into a train coming the other way.

Apparently the 150123 has derailed whilst using one of the crossovers at Liskeard.

Important message
From FGW site  (anyone know why?)
 Thursday 07th July at 20:30

Train services between Plymouth and Penzance are being disrupted due to an operational incident involving an empty train service in the Liskeard area.

Disruption will continue for the rest of today and is likely to continue into tomorrow's service.

Replacement road transport has been ordered.

Any customers travelling on this route, who's journey is not essential is advised not to travel this evening.

For full details of how this may affect your journey, please visit the Live Updates page of this website.

The 150123 has derailed on one of the two crossovers.

Three different threads on the same topic all started within a few minutes of each other - to try and keep things tidy I've merged everything together here, but retaining the original subject headings. Apologies if this thread looks a little disjointed as a result, but hopefully you should be able to keep track of what was posted there originally...

Looks like things are on the move as several services are showing as reinstated on the website, but I dare say there will be ongoing delays etc. as stock will not be where it should be

from sw gen

Wonder what the sleepers are doing?

What I find interesting is that FGW are obviously so short of stock that the Looe branch train has to doulble back to Gunnislake.

Service was 5C51 1857 Liskeard - Plymouth ECS, this was the unit off the 1729 Gsl - Lsk service.


The unit on the looe branch remains on the looe branch all day, and does not go to Gunnislake, in the evenings it however does return in service as 2103 Lsk - Ply, instead of Empty Stock.

Why on earth shouldn't rolling stock covering other workings also fit in a trip to Gunnislake if that is efficient use of what stock is available and keeps it on the move rather than sitting in a bay at Plymouth?

Working back to Plymouth as passenger train seems good use of stock.

I agree that stock should be used to best advantage but there is an interesting mathematical trade off between hours in use/miles run and time between failures. When Hull trains had 5 Meridians and used 4 then their
 reliability as measure in miles per 5 minute failure was the best of the modern DEMU fleet Roger Ford Modern Railways annual survey). After they dropped one on the floor and wrote it off, and they were down for 4 for 4 the following year the relaibility plummeted.

That's why I'm not sure about about many of  what I call stock move diagrams like Great Malvern to Brighton which in my book is really two separate services. Which means if a unit is unavailable you lose two trains rather than one had there been two units on the diagram. One doing Great Malvern Bristol and one Bristol Brighton.

It would only require a few extra units which would have two benefits trains could be stengthened in the peak and a more frequent and reliable service could be run to many stations such a Melksham during the Off Peak.

... and I thought my puns were bad ...  :o ::) ;D

Swindon Control, AKA the "Black Hole"*

Taking in Mind that Thursday's derailment meant a lot of Stock shortage in Penzance, the lack of arranged 'bus on Friday Morning was Just POOR  sorry VERY POOR work by FGW.
Considering the amount of regular travellers effected it's a very poor show.

And if CONTROL were in CONTROL any controller with half an ounce of Brain would have used the Spare class 150 sitting on the blocks at Penzance (to strengthen the 08.57 to St Ives) on additional Penzance to Truro workings reunning in the path of the Canned HST services.
Lots of Train Crew sat in Penzance as there working were Cancelled.

* "the Black Hole as Lot's of GOOD Ideas are sent to Control by Train Crew & Station Staff effected when things go ***'s up, to be meet with "WE'RE CONTROL & we will tell you what to do"

smokey - on Thursday I was in control until about 22:15 observing, and I can assure you they did what they could to get road transport, I even witnessed the request for road transport the following morning.

However do take into account - Fridays are likely busy for coach/bus operators just like for the train. Friday mornings - well, lots will be out on school runs.

I suggest Smokey needs a visit to Control to see what goes on when it's busy!

So we should forget about having extra trains up the Cotswold Line between Oxford and Moreton-in-Marsh from September, should we? These will almost all be provided by rediagramming Turbos that would otherwise be sitting in the sidings at Oxford. I feel pretty confident their reliability will not plummet, despite putting another 60 miles each round trip.

Trying to draw comparisons between maintenance needs on a very small fleet of high-speed rolling stock and a rather large fleet of dmus that have a rather less stressful life is a pretty dubious exercise and I think the depot staff at Bristol might be surprised to learn that if a Malvern-Weymouth train hits trouble, you lose two workings, given the number of times it is obvious from posts on the website about trains being restarted at Bristol that a dmu has been mustered from St Philip's Marsh to pick up a duty when there are problems.


And when a few extra units finally do turn up from LM, they will be used to ease overcrowding around Bristol, not allow Cornish branch dmus a rest stop they really don't need.

London Midland's fleet introduction of 172's (further delays) begets:

LM 150s to FGW = FGW 142s to Northern + LM 150s to Northern = Northern 180s to FGW = who knows what!

I'm sure it gets busy at Control when the Brown stuff hits the Fan.

However as the 06:45 and 07:41 from Penzance were Both cancelled on the 8th July, and the first Road transport turned up at 08:20, a total waste of time with XC's 08:28 about to leave, why wasn't the Class 150 unit awaiting to strengthen the St Ives pushed into Service.

It could have left PNZ at 06:45 all stations to Truro & still been back in PNZ for the 08.57 working to St Ives.

Well Control !

Ummm smokey, where are most bus/coach operators using their busses in the morning peak? i'll give you a clue, SCHOOL and COLLEGE's, now with the best will in the world the bus companies aren't going to drop their school contracts in order to ferry a few rail passengers, as for not using the St Ives unit one assumes that the train crews who work from PNZ to EXD in the mornings still had to work their booked trains from Liskeard/Plymouth to the North so possibly no spare crew to work it.