Disruption 9 May 2013 due to lineside equipment problem at Hayes and tree on line at Longcross

[whole diary]

[TaplowGreen]

...........well I'm certainly glad I'm not trying to get anywhere out of Paddington tonight, and the same this morning as well I believe although not quite as severe......just heard from a pal who is stuck there and apparently it's carnage 

[BBM]

FGW^▸ (First Great Western) website is saying that tickets are valid on SWT^▸ (South West Trains) from Waterloo but their website is currently reporting the following:

Owing to a fallen tree blocking the line at Longcross both lines between Virginia Water and Ascot are blocked.

The train affected is in the process of being moved back to Virginia Water at which point we will be able to work on the damaged track in the Longcross area. As a result there is still no estimate for when a normal service will resume.

As the electrical power to the train line has to be switched off in order to do this, we cannot currently run any trains between Virginia Water and Ascot. This has also delayed other services on the Reading/Windsor lines with some services delayed by up to 60 minutes.

The line between Virginia Water and Chertsey has now reopened however services are being delayed by 60 minutes between London Waterloo and Weybridge (via Brentford).

A train shuttle service is running between Ascot and Reading in both directions, calling at all stations.

Replacement road transport is being organised to run between Virginia Water and Ascot. Buses arrived at Virginia Water at 19:20 with further buses scheduled to arrive at 20:15. Taxis are also being utilised between Virginia Water and Ascot.

[johoare]

NR^» (Network Rail - home page) website was not keeping up at all... Which isn't terribly helpful.. Though could be due to a lack of up to date information provided to them...

[bobm]

From SW Journeycheck

Owing to a fallen tree blocking the line at Longcross both lines between Virginia Water and Reading are blocked.
The train affected is in the process of being moved back to Virginia Water at which point we will be able to work on the damaged track in the Longcross area. As a result the line between Virginia Water and Reading will be blocked for the rest of the day. Repairs can then be completed overnight.

As the electrical power to the train line has to be switched off in order to do this, we cannot currently run any trains between Virginia Water and Reading. This has also delayed other services on the Reading/Windsor lines with some services delayed by up to 30 minutes.

The line between Virginia Water and Chertsey has now reopened however services are being delayed by 30 minutes between London Waterloo and Weybridge (via Brentford).
 
Replacement road transport is being organised to run between Virginia Water and Reading. Buses arrived at Virginia Water at 19:20 with further buses scheduled to arrive at 20:15. Taxis are also being utilised between Virginia Water and Ascot.

We are sorry for the disruption this will cause.

FGW^▸ (First Great Western) services made extra calls between Wokingham and Reading but customers in Bracknell and Martins Heron were not so lucky until the replacement bus services got up and running.

Bad night all round coming out of London, what with the problems at Hayes on the Paddington line as well.  http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=12400.0

[thetrout]

Also an Incident at Bath Spa which blocked the Down Main. So could only use 1 Platform. 22:15 off Bath Spa - Bristol Temple Meads was the service involved I believe.

Caused quite a few people to get onto the late running 23:19 to Exeter St Davids, thinking it was the Frome train. I rescued 5 or so people from the trap of the 1970's HST^▸ (High Speed Train)

[JayMac]

A major inconvenience also for the passengers who use Longcross station at that time of the evening.

For both of them. 

[Chris from Nailsea]

Administrator note: I've merged two inter-related topics here, simply in the interests of continuity and ease of future reference.

[TaplowGreen]

.............overall not a great week for FGW^▸ (First Great Western) - I had pals who got to Paddington at 7 last night and had still got nowhere 3 hours later - some were advised to go to Waterloo but the staff at Pad hadn't checked/weren't informed that there were problems there too so they ended up trailing all the way back up the Bakerloo line to find Paddington still in chaos and most of the staff locked away in their crew rooms.

Can't legislate for falling trees I guess but this "lineside equipment" issue near Hayes always seems to create meltdown when it happens - is there some inherent problem/vulnerability?

Overrunning engineering works on Wednesday morning didn't help either.......ah well TGIF.

[Timmer]

Also an Incident at Bath Spa which blocked the Down Main. So could only use 1 Platform. 22:15 off Bath Spa - Bristol Temple Meads was the service involved I believe.

Caused quite a few people to get onto the late running 23:19 to Exeter St Davids, thinking it was the Frome train. I rescued 5 or so people from the trap of the 1970's HST^▸ (High Speed Train)

This was the incident Trout is referring to:
http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/Man-82-falls-train-platform-Bath-Spa-station/story-18947745-detail/story.html#axzz2St3amzgH

An 82-year-old man was treated by paramedics for a cut head after falling under a train at Bath Spaundefined station last night.

The man had been getting off a First Great Western service from London at 11.09pm when he slipped between the train and the platform.

The accident happened after a night of chaos on the railways following a two-hour power failure affecting signalling equipment at Hayes in Middlesex, which affected all trains in and out of Paddington.

Passengers and the train manager pulled the man up from the rails after he slipped down and an ambulance was called.

edited to shorten URL

[bobm]

Bath Spa is definitely one of the stations where a "mind the gap between the train and the platform edge" announcement is justified.

[thetrout]

Not so much in this case... The Gent was alighting from one of the First Class Carriages, where the gap is no where near as horrendous as up near say Coaches A or B... When the train is in reverse formation, the size of the gap at the West end of Platform 1 has caught me out before now...

Hope he makes a speedy recovery!

[Electric train]

Overrunning engineering works on Wednesday morning didn't help either.......ah well TGIF.

Wednesday mornings engineering overrun look like a "Road Rail" machine had failed while it was being "off tracked" at the temporary RRAP^▸ (Road Rail Access Point) (Road Rail Access Point" at the site of the former Fifes Banners sidings (just east of Taplow Station). 

The machine operators are very well trained and skilled at dealing with the machines, event they are limited to what they can do with a 20tonne machine when things break on them, just dragging the machine off will destroy the track aliment resulting in a ESR^▸ (Emergency Speed Restriction ) (emergency speed restriction) all day and possibly longer until a track repair is done not to mention the damage to ^100,000 plus machine by dragging it off.

[TaplowGreen]

...that's interesting re: the over running engineering works - but these lineside problems seem to occur quite often in the Hayes area and always cause total chaos, is there an underlying reason for them and/or is anything being done about it, or is it just a case of fingers crossed and hope it doesn't happen again?

[Electric train]

...that's interesting re: the over running engineering works - but these lineside problems seem to occur quite often in the Hayes area and always cause total chaos, is there an underlying reason for them and/or is anything being done about it, or is it just a case of fingers crossed and hope it doesn't happen again?

There is a lot of Crossrail engineering works happening in the West Drayton - Hayes area this could be the cause of recent failures.

Often this type of work involves moving operational cables and equipment out of the way into temporary positions, this inserts risks so where possible cables and equipment are located to a new permanent positions this is not always possible though, occasionally when contractors are working on the existing system just disturbing it causes faults or as was the case with the major disruption just before Christmas 2012 they make a mistake like leaving signalling location case doors open when it is raining.

Or it could be an intermittent fault somewhere in the system which is proving difficult to pin down

[ChrisB]

Chatting to an FGW^▸ (First Great Western) manager on train yesterday, I am reliably informed that a driver for a resue loco was despatched to Old Oak Common immediately that HST^▸ (High Speed Train) failed. Traffic at that time is horrendous, and including prep time on the loco, he reckoned it would be cica 90 minutes before it was ready to move out of the depot. On this occasion, it seems FGW did all possible, pretty much as soon as, to rescue the situation.