London Waterloo - station, services, facilities, incidents - and some quirks / odd facts (merged posts)

[whole diary]

[SandTEngineer]

I trust he means rails, not track.  If the track had to be replaced it would have been very drastic and certainly taken more than a week.....

[TaplowGreen]

I trust he means rails, not track.  If the track had to be replaced it would have been very drastic and certainly taken more than a week.....

 

[Surrey 455]

Luckily, I had the day off yesterday so didn't have to cope with the SWR^» (South Western Railway - about) morning problems. Unfortunately I had already decided to go to Brighton from Dorking Deepdene. Multiple delays and cancellations on GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) North Downs line due to a broken down train. 

[stuving]

Sunday's main possession was all four lines from Waterloo to Hampton Court Junction, including a wide range of planned work. Whether the rail renewal that is reported to have gone wrong was part of that, or a short-notice addition, I don't know. It included some work inside Wimbledon Park Depot, though there were some movements in and out via the District Line. On paper, it ran 01:10 Sunday to 04:30 Monday.

On Sunday there was, as is now customary, a limited service with long-distance trains diverting at Weybridge via Virginia Water. The Weybridge service was removed to make room, with the long-distance trains calling instead at Addlestone and Chertsey, and Byfleet and New Haw standing in for Weybridge.

Clearly that service could be run without using any lines inside the possession. So why was no attempt made to do something similar on Monday? Well, one possible answer is a lack of drivers for those diverted routes - as many as possible being used on Sunday. Another issue is how to recover to a normal service once the possession does eventually end. An alternative of splitting the routes, probably at Woking, might be better. But "flexibility" seems to have vanished from corporate objectives across the whole rail industry, doesn't it?

The passengers with the biggest beef are those using (or who would have used) the Weybridge service - even with the line free of interlopers, that didn't run; at least, nothing (from Addlestone) between the 5:39 and the 10:02.

[Adelante_CCT]

but that was our old friend "signalling at Earley" having a bit of a strop.

More strops last night and again today

Due to a fault with the signalling system between Reading and Wokingham fewer trains are able to run on the line towards Wokingham

Last Updated:20/11/2018 15:00

[eightonedee]

Pleased to report signalling problem at Earley fixed in time for 18:26 ex Guildford (following two cancelled trains in the same direction) to gallop through from Wokingham to Reading without slowing, catching up from two minutes late from Guildford to 3 minutes 30 early at Reading - hopefully a sign of an end to recent travails on the North Downs Line.

[Western Pathfinder]

Meanwhile over on Twitter
https://mobile.twitter.com/PaulCliftonBBC/status/1067078401842954241

[stuving]

At the start of this work (and thread) the opening of the revamped international platforms was due this month (NR^» (Network Rail - home page)'s web site still says they all will). And yesterday P21-22 did in fact open, though 23-24 are now not due to do so until next May. Given that the extra trains that rely on the extra platforms aren't yet running (and the date of that timetable change, like all of them, has a credibility problem), I guess that rates a small cheroot. 

What can they be still be doing to P23-24, with hardly any possession time? Perhaps not much, but they just put highest priority on opening something on time so this bit is not quite there yet.

[Adelante_CCT]

As you say, they don't really need 23-24 yet, and would probably cost money to staff, clean and maintain those pair of platforms, probably easier to keep it under wraps until they plan on properly using them.

[paul7575]

As you say, they don't really need 23-24 yet, and would probably cost money to staff, clean and maintain those pair of platforms, probably easier to keep it under wraps until they plan on properly using them.

There are suggestions elsewhere that they may well be available in emergency.  They were used during the 2017 blockade, so presumably (hopefully?) the track work and signalling is still functional.

Paul

[Surrey 455]

From London Evening Standard

Up to 100,000 rail commuters suffered travel chaos today as overrunning night engineering work halted services into mainline Waterloo station.

A second set of Network Rail (NR^» (Network Rail - home page)) overrunning engineering works in the Dorking and Epsom area added to the disruption.

Cancellations and late running and changes to the timetable will last most of the day.

Problems in the Waterloo area meant trains were unable to leave a number of depots and enter service.

When they did start running there were delays of an hour with cancellations and revised short notice changes to service.
Operator South Western Railway (SWR^» (South Western Railway - about)) told commuters tickets were being accepted on Great Western Railway (GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)) services between Basingstoke, Reading and Paddington.

Tickets are also being accepted on Southern Railway and London Underground between Waterloo, Richmond/Wimbledon and Paddington.

An NR spokesperson said:  “We apologise to passengers for the disruption to services across the south western network this morning owing to a possession overrun. Disruption, including severe delays and cancellations, will last until the afternoon. Passengers should check with their train operator or visit www.nationalrail.co.uk before travelling.”

It came as it was revealed London commuters face the threat of more overruns and weekend closures over the next five years as NR spends a record £24 billion from April trying to sort out the daily chaos with track, signal and points faults a top priority.

But it means more overnight engineering work bringing with it the threat of it not finishing on time and hitting morning rush-hour services.

NR will announce next week more than £2b will be spent on maintenance and day to day upgrades on lines out of Waterloo; Southern, Southeastern and Thameslink will receive £4.5b of upgrades with a further £4.5b on routes to and from Paddington.

[grahame]

from Get Surrey - a list of "11 unusual things about Waterloo station you probably didn’t know".  I am sufficiently sad, old and fully read to rarely be surprised by things in these lists - but in this case 4 were new to me ... so sharing in case there are some new to you too.

[Robin Summerhill]

Hmm - item 9 "The name has been a sticking point"

It is said that when Winston Churchill was plannning his own funeral arrangements, he insisted that his funeral train would leave London from Waterloo, despite the insistence of railway managers that, as the eventual destination was to be Blenheim Palace and Bladon churchyard, Paddington would make much more sense. Churchill was adamant that the train should leave from Waterloo.

When  pressed even harder he said:

"If De Gaulle dies before me, it can leave from whatever damn station you like. But if I die before De Gaulle, it leaves from Waterloo"

 

[broadgage]

After the closure of the old "news cinema" a moving message display board was installed at high level at the platform 1 end of the concourse.
The distinctive curved steel work for this was still in place until recently and might still exist.
This was long before the LED age, and the display contained thousands of small incandescent bulbs. It displayed news headlines, stock market prices and adverts.

Other trivia, the Duke of Wellington PH just outside the station was at one time operated by Travellers fare.

[Oxonhutch]

Until its demise in a German bombing raid in WWII^▸ (World War 2 - 1939 to 1945), London Necropolis Company's trains to the cemetery at Brookwood ran from their own terminus just south of the main station, and whose post-war ruined remains can be seen here (The entrance - still there today - is at 121 Westminster Bridge Road). Trains bringing mourners back to London terminated at Waterloo itself.