Mass disruption due to flooding - December 2012

[whole diary]

[Tim]

If anyone reading this is out on site sorting this mess out in the coming days -  stay safe, try and stay warm and thanks for your hard work.

[6 OF 2 redundant adjunct of unimatrix 01]

I honestly can't believe people are still traveling and blaming the train operating company's on twitter and Facebook

[TonyK]

The same people would be complaining if they ran trains and something went wrong. Ridiculous.

[TonyK]

Yet another job on a list that must be very long by now.

[Tim]

I honestly can't believe people are still traveling and blaming the train operating company's on twitter and Facebook

Neither can I.  It is not like there hasn't been an expectation of travel difficulties for a few days now.  My experience of the journeys I have taken in the last couple of days (Bath-London, Cardiff-London, cardiff-Bath) was pretty good under the circumstances and infinately preferable to driving in these conditions.  The views of the surrounding countryside underwater have been rather shocking though.

[trainer]

The lack of imagination from those who complain about trains not running in these conditions is unbelievable.  One wonders whether they are the kind of driver that drives into flooding and needs to be rescued by the people who warned them not to.

After today, it must now be easier for FGW^▸ (First Great Western) to list the services that are running than those that aren't.

[thetrout]

I'm also surprised at the complete callous attitudes of the posters on Facebook and Twitter. Having seen the pictures and been to a flooded location myself. It is abundently clear that in some of the locations you cannot run trains as the tracks have been completely submerged or the trackbed has been washed away!

It's a shame that FGW^▸ (First Great Western) cannot say: "Would you drive a car through that on a road?!?!" I know what most people would say...

I guess it comes down to two things:

Destruction vs. Construction: The former taking anything from seconds to minutes. The latter taking Days, Weeks, Months or even Years!

Also the Legacy Brunel Great Western Railway. I guess that since then there has been a change in the weather condtions (Whether through Global Warming or Atmospheric Conditions etc) That where the tracks were run alongside rivers, seas or canals etc. The was never the need to plan then for the flooding we see today probably because it didn't happen so much in GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) days? the GMWL is very much built along the same or similar GWR routes. I recall watching a documentary about the difficulties that IKB^▸ (Isambard Kingdom Brunel) faced when running tracks into Cornwall. They chose the riskest (and quickest or easiest) option of the Dawlish Sea Wall. Good move then maybe, Not so much now. Alot has changed in the terms of weather and also the needs of passengers, expectations and probably tolerance/attitude since the days of GWR so maybe the comments (although I am not condoning them) are sadly to be expected in the 21st Centuary?

Also It's interesting though how one of my local bus routes (267) run by two seperate companies despite going through several "hotspots" for flooding (Midford being a prime example right at the bottom of a valley with a river) has been running in my experience very punctually and with minimal (and mostly the usual) delays. So is it perhaps partly down to the passenger for not checking (and I say this in terms of shorter journeys) whether other modes of transport are less affected or in my case above, running to full timetable as usual??

[Worcester_Passenger]

Also the Legacy Brunel Great Western Railway. I guess that since then there has been a change in the weather condtions (Whether through Global Warming or Atmospheric Conditions etc) That where the tracks were run alongside rivers, seas or canals etc. The was never the need to plan then for the flooding we see today probably because it didn't happen so much in GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) days? the GMWL is very much built along the same or similar GWR routes. I recall watching a documentary about the difficulties that IKB^▸ (Isambard Kingdom Brunel) faced when running tracks into Cornwall. They chose the riskest (and quickest or easiest) option of the Dawlish Sea Wall. Good move then maybe, Not so much now. Alot has changed in the terms of weather and also the needs of passengers, expectations and probably tolerance/attitude since the days of GWR so maybe the comments (although I am not condoning them) are sadly to be expected in the 21st Centuary?

I suspect that we have to say a big thank you to river transport. Before the London - Bristol line was built there was a lot of commercial traffic on the Thames and on the Bristol Avon. The bridges over these have some serious clearance, which means that the rest of the line here is up on embankments out of the reach of any floods.

But ... I can't imagine there was any such traffic above Exeter, which means that the line is much lower and so that much more vulnerable.

Doesn't explain what happens on Oxford - Worcester though. No commercial river traffic at the Oxford end, but the line is well out of the floods. Where it does flood is higher up, between Kingham and Moreton.

[Worcester_Passenger]

Meanwhile, I came back from London to Worcester on the 17:42 last night (Sun Nov 25). We set off 22 late on account of the driver being on a late-running inbound service (and a "fault on the front power car"). But we then lost time all the way, so perhaps we only had the back one working. Ended up 50 late into Foregate St.

But it's on the monitors at Foregate St as "delayed due to flooding".

Can anyone enlighten me?

[broadgage]

They might be blaming unrelated delays on the flooding, or it might be indirectly true.
Driver late because the drivers inward journey whether by a preceeding train, or by road from home, was delayed by flooding.

Power car drowned by floodwater, or possibly out of fuel, floods having prevented or delayed a trip to the fueling point.

[swrural]

The quality of news service on usual media is appalling and this may explain travellers ignorance of conditions.

The West  is completely cut off by rail.  Substitute buses are experiencing problems, such as the A358 being blocked between Axminster and Chard and also between Exeter and Crediton. The flooding at both Cowley and Broom is devastating and the gabions placed at the latter location (40 tons each !!) have been washed away.

I do not see that these issues will be resolved within days or even weeks as safety checks will be needed even after the waters have receded and the 'repairs' (more like a new railway) have been effected.

[JayMac]

Attached below is FGWs^▸ (First Great Western) train plan for today Monday 26th November 2012.

[paul7575]

One news item I read to a few days ago referred to similar floods in Devon during the 19th and 20th centuries, and a bit of Googling found this chronology:

http://www.middevon.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=11672&p=0

Autumn of 1960 seems to have been fairly bad - but is no longer in the collective memory I suppose.  It's too easy to attempt to hang all this on 'climate change', but how long back should comparisons be made?   NR^» (Network Rail - home page) probably have records of all this happening before somewhere, it ought not to have been a surprise to Brunel's people either...

Paul

[bobm]

Attached below is FGWs^▸ (First Great Western) train plan for today Monday 26th November 2012.

Interesting reading...and that's only half the story.  There must be an equivalent plan to cover services from Exeter down to Penzance picking up the paths left by trains unable to get past Tiverton Parkway.  I wonder how many HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) they have trapped west of Tiverton to run the service.  Laira could be either very busy or very empty!

While it is easy to criticise when sitting in the comfort of a chair in front of a PC, there are some problems with the Journeycheck pages which could catch the occasional traveller.  Take for instance the 07:30 from Paddington to Penzance this morning.  There is no mention on Journeycheck that it is being stopped at Tiverton Parkway and if you go into the individual details for that train it shows it as running all the way through to Penzance.  I suspect this may be in part a weakness of the system as I assume as in past days another train will pick up the journey at Exeter St Davids - but it won't be a through service.  Agreed most of us on here looking at the headline and seeing Exeter to Tiverton Parkway being reported as blocked would know that - but the proverbial granny won't necessarily.

All of that said having had two fairly trouble free journeys over the weekend through part of the area affected I have no complaint about the service I got and all staff without exception were cheery and helpful.

[CLPGMS]

Doesn't explain what happens on Oxford - Worcester though. No commercial river traffic at the Oxford end, but the line is well out of the floods. Where it does flood is higher up, between Kingham and Moreton.

The main problem between Oxford and Worcester is in the Evenlode Valley.  In the July 2007 floods, the most serious track wash-outs were between Kingham and Moreton-in-Marsh.  The River Evenlode rises in the Moreton-in-Marsh area and the line closely follows the river, largely on a low embankment.  Moreton-in-Marsh station is prone to flooding, as happened yesterday morning, but this time, it was not serious and trains started to operate again after a few hours.  In 2007, larger diameter pipes were installed beneath the track at Evenlode and the bank was strengthened with concrete at Adlestrop.

Less serious problems occurred in 2007 between Moreton-in-Marsh and Worcester, but these were mainly short sections of ballast being washed away on Campden bank and near Evesham.