Long delay on the 11:00 Penzance to Paddington - 04 Aug 13

[whole diary]

[LiskeardRich]

First Great Western's spokesman on Westcountry News has just said on TV that it was incompetence by the on duty staff for such an incident to take so long and cause such a delay. For future reference for revisiting on on-demand TV it appeared at approx 1804 on ITV Westcountry News.

[John R]

The train was 30 minutes across fields from the nearest road, so it was considered that detraining 500+ pax & asking them to traipse that far with their luggage was unacceptable. I agree.

If that's the case then I agree, but another or faster solution should have been possible within the 5 1/2 hours that the train was sitting there, particularly given the conditions, lack of water and sanitation.

I'm curious about one thing. Did the rescue locomotive need to be there to uncouple the rear power car, or could it be uncoupled in situ, and then the front could just move clear.    

[Electric train]

Mark Hopwood on Today (monday) apologising.

Unfortuantely incidents like these are going to become more common so long a we run a shoestring railway particularly at weekend.

Once it became apparent that it was  as sever mechanical breakdown (split brake piep which would require a replacement part then steps should have bee taken to evacuate the train and load the passengers onto a another service. Either an Empty HST^▸ (High Speed Train) bought back wrong line or on the Down.

For safety reasons the replacemnt train should have been bought to a complete stand and protected with detenators. Then the transfer could take palce.

Unfortunately my plan falls down on several counts Networkrail would consider it unsafe to empty a train onto a mainline, secondly FGW^▸ (First Great Western) probably wouldn't have had a spare driver or guard to man the empty train  even if they could find a spare servicable HST set.

Interesting there are no FGW Thunderbird locos unlike Virgin. I think with an increasing number of HST, which aren't getting any younger,  brake failures FGW will have to consider employing Thunderbirds

De-training passengers would only be considered in the event of a derailment, fire; the risks of of loading even able bodied passengers is high let alone anyone with mobility problems.
The issue in this case my well be a managerial one either solely on the part of FGW maybe some rests with NR^» (Network Rail - home page). 

I would ask if it was the rear power car that had failed it could have been left in section with staff to protect it and the front section allowed to proceed, the failed unit could have been rescued later.

I am sure there will be a post mortem over this, which I am sure some will be invited to attend without coffee or biscuits

[Gordon the Blue Engine]

You don't need a loco to uncouple a Power Car, it can be done by the traincrew by uncoupling the jumpers, pulling the buckeye release lever and using the good Power Car to pull the train away from the Power Car with the brakes locked on.  I think they would have been trained to do this (I stand to be corrected), but I accept it may have been an unfamiliar and difficult task in the situation they found themselves in (eg was the train on a curve, or on canted or high ballasted track etc?).

But I do think that it should have been do-able in a lot less than 5 hours especially as there was a FGW^▸ (First Great Western) engineering manager on board according to an earlier post, and a fitter turned up to help.

[dviner]

First Great Western's spokesman on Westcountry News has just said on TV that it was incompetence by the on duty staff for such an incident to take so long and cause such a delay. For future reference for revisiting on on-demand TV it appeared at approx 1804 on ITV Westcountry News.

If you've got spokesmen coming out and calling the on-duty staff "incompetent" in an interview, then things are getting out of control.

[Electric train]

First Great Western's spokesman on Westcountry News has just said on TV that it was incompetence by the on duty staff for such an incident to take so long and cause such a delay. For future reference for revisiting on on-demand TV it appeared at approx 1804 on ITV Westcountry News.

If you've got spokesmen coming out and calling the on-duty staff "incompetent" in an interview, then things are getting out of control.

To be fair the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) chap interviewed do not use the phrase "incompetence", that was the question put to him by the interviewer which was correctly answered by FGW that they are investigating 

Linky http://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/story/2013-08-05/6-hour-train-delay/ 

[LiskeardRich]

First Great Western's spokesman on Westcountry News has just said on TV that it was incompetence by the on duty staff for such an incident to take so long and cause such a delay. For future reference for revisiting on on-demand TV it appeared at approx 1804 on ITV Westcountry News.

If you've got spokesmen coming out and calling the on-duty staff "incompetent" in an interview, then things are getting out of control.

To be fair the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) chap interviewed do not use the phrase "incompetence", that was the question put to him by the interviewer which was correctly answered by FGW that they are investigating 

Linky http://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/story/2013-08-05/6-hour-train-delay/ 

Interviewer "do you think the delay was bad luck or incompetence"
FGW "I think there was some serious issues last night, there is no way the maintanance issue should have led to a 5 1/2 hour delay"

The vast majority of the public will interpret this to him saying there was incompetence. This comment from the question asked to 95% of people will be interpreted as him answering as incompetence.
 


Edit note: Response to quoted text replaced in context, for clarity. CfN.

[grahame]

I've been a passenger - three times - on services that have suffered extreme delay.  Before you panic and vow never to travel with me, I'll tell you that I have travelled an awful lot in my time.

What do I note?  When the train comes to an unexpected halt the passengers don't know what's happened and what the delay and cure will be and neither, usually, do the crew. Hindsight is marvellous stuff, but it's never available until too late in the incident, and the crew have my hugest of sympathys.  On two out of the three incidents, the rail staff were excellent in keeping us informed ... in the final case, information was sporadic and we were left with an honest "it will be a while but we don't know how long" for two hours, by which time we were all getitng rather tetchy.  But in all three cases, there were seats for everyone and they were comfortable seats designed for long distance travel.

When we eventually reached the train's terminus  - 3 a.m. for a 10 p.m. arrival into London in one case,   taxis had been alerted ahead, lists of destinattions drawn up, and taxi shares in order to get everyone off as quickly as possible set up.   Incident ended in the best of humour al around, with no-one I saw saying "never again".

Now - all three incidents were on the West Coast line, and two of them were caused by the overhead wires coming down (in one case on top of the train I was in).  A diesel loco with a couple of coaches was backed up in front, and we all got down, walked past our "86" or whatever it was on the front, and climbed up.   And I do hope that whoever operated the London - Swindon - Bristol / Cardiff / Swansea services once their electirfied has some sort of plans in place that can work rather more quickly than happened yesterday, even with the extra "oops - the train's tied up in wires" issue!

...which was correctly answered by FGW^▸ (First Great Western) that they are investigating 

I wonder if we'll hear any outcome from the investigations ...

[Worcester_Passenger]

I wonder if we'll hear any outcome from the investigations ...

I've gone back to find the RAIB^▸ (Rail Accident Investigation Branch) report on the train that got stuck near Kentish Town two years ago. Their report and recommendations are at http://www.raib.gov.uk/cms_resources.cfm?file=/120523_R072012_Kentish_Town.pdf.

It would appear that none of the lessons of that incident have been learned.

[Network SouthEast]

I have no idea (like the rest of us), the circumstances behind what happened yesterday. One thing I do know however is that very few drivers within FGW^▸ (First Great Western) sign class 57s. This means finding a driver to even drive a class 57 at the drop of a hat can be difficult to begin with.

[Southern Stag]

I believe the original intention was for the Class 59 to rescue the train, but it wasn't possible because the train could still not build air. The only way they could build air was removing the defective power car. Summoning a Class 57 would have made no difference. The Class 59 was AFAIK^▸ (as far as I know) on the scene reasonably quickly anyway.

[Red Squirrel]

...Hindsight is marvellous stuff, but it's never available until too late in the incident, and the crew have my hugest of sympathys.

Having read the RAIB^▸ (Rail Accident Investigation Branch) report posted by Worcester Passenger, I think the biggest problem with these incidents is 'hope' - the crew and staff all do their best, in what can quickly become very difficult circumstances, but by the time the operator realises it has a problem it is already too late to resolve it in an acceptable time. What seems to be lacking is a set of time-based triggers for escalation.

We should have the benefit of hindsight while these incidents are unfolding, because similar things have happened before and recommendations have been made.

As soon as a train has been standing for one hour, the operator should see getting the passengers off safely and quickly as their highest-priority task. It should be out of the question for passengers to be trapped on a train for more than 2 hours; five-and-a-half hours is close to criminal. They were in Wiltshire, for goodness sake, not the middle of the Nullarbor Plain.

[IndustryInsider]

It's an interesting one.  The staff might not do their best - it depends who is working the train as there are some poor members of staff out there.  The initial prognosis might indicate that the delay will not be as bad, so desperate measures (like de-training) are not chosen, but the problem then gets worse.  Or there can be an almighty cock-up as there was when a HST^▸ (High Speed Train) failed over Wharncliffe Viaduct a few months ago where a breakdown in fault finding communication between the driver and technical staff by phone led to the delay escalating far more than it needed to.

Anything that makes the press like this incident has will lead to some banging-of-heads though, which can only be a good thing if the lessons are learned.

[dviner]

First Great Western's spokesman on Westcountry News has just said on TV that it was incompetence by the on duty staff for such an incident to take so long and cause such a delay. For future reference for revisiting on on-demand TV it appeared at approx 1804 on ITV Westcountry News.

If you've got spokesmen coming out and calling the on-duty staff "incompetent" in an interview, then things are getting out of control.

To be fair the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) chap interviewed do not use the phrase "incompetence", that was the question put to him by the interviewer which was correctly answered by FGW that they are investigating 

Linky http://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/story/2013-08-05/6-hour-train-delay/ 

I've just had a chance to watch the news item now, and we can see how misreporting can give the wrong impression. See - the original quote was that the FGW spokesman said it was incompetence, when he didn't. To be fair, that was a bit of a loaded question if responded to directly - if he replied that it wasn't incompetence, it would be "FGW says six-hour train hell was just bad luck". As Electric Train points out, he did reply to the question appropriately (which I probably would have messed up if it was me being interviewed).

When you calmly look at what's reported to have occurred, and take various things into consideration, you can see how this could add up to 6 hours delay. The key thing is to identify where the current processes failed in this situation, and what steps are necessary to prevent a similar occurrence.

[devon_metro]

Wow doesn't the situation look so perilous in first class!!!! God get a grip!!
Being delayed for 6 hours is very inconvenient but worse things could have happened.

FGW^▸ (First Great Western) clearly didn't handle the situation the best they could but talk about slow news day!