Intense use of single line

[whole diary]

[grahame]

Is this a record?   53 services schedules along the Thingley to Bradford Junction line today;  Paddington to Swansea running from Reading to Swindon via Berks and Hants, Trowbridge, and Chippenham.

7 a.m. to 7 p.m. - 40 services scheduled - which I make a service every 18 minutes.  Geeeeeze!

[bobm]

Trainspotter's paradise.   

[JayMac]

That's a song by Stevie Wonder isn't it? 

[grahame]

A train every 18 minutes for 12 hours ... over a single line section that takes a minimum of 12 minutes to pass over.  That's best junction-to-junction time, Thingley East to Bradford Junction. Add a minute for getting the train clear and the next one coming the other way onto the junction, add a further minute or 2 to 12 of the trains for a Melksham stop, and a couple more minutes for a couple of freights that were in there, with our of pattern and train problems on at least one freight train yesterday and a remarkably good job was done.   I know it's all in the course of a normal days work, but congratulations to all concerned.

Yes - one of the Transwilts trains was diverted / reversed at Bathampton (but thank you for laying on taxis to / from Melksham;  I hope passengers and taxis got properly connected which is an ongoing logistical nightmare.  And a number of the trains were a few minutes late; in this context "is that all" unless there was an ongoing connection into an infrequent service to be missed.  Finally, one train turned around at Chippenham to pick up its schedule; passenger counts show that up to about half of the passengers on a train leaving Chippenham for Trowbridge actually join at Chippenham so it wouldn't have been empty - but I do hope suitable arrangements were made for those who turned up for it as scheduled at Swindon.

To some extent this is a "log post" where I can look back and remind myself what's possible - testing the limits.   An intermediate block signal would have allowed the saving of around 5 minutes on trains that followed each other, a crossover (and perhaps a higher speed one) at Thingley main junction would save around 2 minutes on each cycle, more doors available at Melksham would save up to a minute on some services there; that's a far less exact science as you only need to have to get the wheelchair ramp out ..., but becomes much more of an issue as passenger numbers rise.

The line only survived from 1966 until 1985 because of freight and diversions - so in spite of some holdups and issues yesterday, the general mood amongst the knowledgeable should be well content, congratulations to everyone who helped it go off so smoothly, and a huge THANK YOU for not replacing the local trains with buses as that decimates, disappoints, damages, de-motivates, drains our customer base.   We do all need to strive together to ensure that on these occasions things work just as well, or even better; with the line maturing we're moving out of our "honeymoon period" and into a period where many / most of our users don't know fully the history or the operational issues, and are unlikely to be quite as forgiving.

[TaplowGreen]

.......not looking too good today? 


Cancellations to services between Westbury and Chippenham


Due to a fault with the signalling system between Trowbridge and Chippenham the line is blocked. Disruption is expected until the end of the day.
Train services between Westbury and Chippenham will be cancelled.
Further Information
We are attempting to resource road transport to cover the train service. Details of the road replacement will be publicised once it is confirmed.
For more detailed information please contact a member of station staff or make use of the Customer Help Point systems available.

[Adelante_CCT]

The replacement bus will be operated by South Gloucester Coaches.
Replacement road transport services are conveying passengers between Westbury and Chippenham via Trowbridge and Melksham in both directions until further notice.

The signalling system was obviously overworked yesterday, it's never had to do so much!

[grahame]

Yeah ... I swore when I saw that

Cancellations to services between Westbury and Chippenham
Due to a fault with the signalling system between Trowbridge and Chippenham the line is blocked. Disruption is expected until the end of the day.
Train services between Westbury and Chippenham will be cancelled.
Customer Advice
The replacement bus will be operated by South Gloucester Coaches.
Replacement road transport services are conveying passengers between Westbury and Chippenham via Trowbridge and Melksham in both directions until further notice.
Further Information
An update will follow within the next 1 hour.
Due to the line of route, traffic congestion and connectional times, the replacement bus will run later than the advertised train times.
For more detailed information please contact a member of station staff or make use of the Customer Help Point systems available.
Last Updated:30/10/2016 10:14

Noting "Disruption is expected until the end of the day."  ... and thank goodness (I suppose) that it wasn't a fault of the same sort / taking the same time to fix somewhere like Reading West!

[bobm]

Points failure at Bradford Junction.

[grahame]

Points failure at Bradford Junction.

Hmmm ... I would suggest a Melksham to Swindon shuttle ... if we had facilities like toilets and cafe available at Melksham Station ... next year, perhaps ...

[IndustryInsider]

Noting "Disruption is expected until the end of the day."  ... and thank goodness (I suppose) that it wasn't a fault of the same sort / taking the same time to fix somewhere like Reading West!

Are you hinting that it would have been given much higher priority (and sorted sooner) had it been at Reading West?  I reckon it probably would.  It probably would have been yesterday as well with all the diversions going through Melksham.  Fortunate that it didn't happen then?

[grahame]

Noting "Disruption is expected until the end of the day."  ... and thank goodness (I suppose) that it wasn't a fault of the same sort / taking the same time to fix somewhere like Reading West!

Are you hinting that it would have been given much higher priority (and sorted sooner) had it been at Reading West?  I reckon it probably would.  It probably would have been yesterday as well with all the diversions going through Melksham.  Fortunate that it didn't happen then?

I was wondering, yes.   Not so much hinting but more asking.

I'm not sure what it's like now with the new Didcot control centre covering to Thingley, but rumour had it that in the days when Swindon passed trains to Westbury, the system they used was only one step newer than a block bell, and so old that it would routinely fall over and be hard to get the spare parts for.  In the days there were 4 trains a day passing through Melksham, this ancient equipment was no big deal. Now we have days with 53 ....

So I suppose I'm asking "does it take so long because it's old and hard to fix, or because it's low priority, or a bit of both?"   Or (if it's a points failure at Bradford Junction) could it be that the points are clipped for the secondary main line to Bath, and the engineers don't want to take the junction out of traffic completely for a period while they install fully working replacement components?

[IndustryInsider]

Probably a bit of both to be honest.  If it is a tricky to find spare part then of course it's much less likely you'd have such equipment signalling trains at a more critical location in the first place, but there's no doubt the pressure from GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) would have been much greater to sort it out had it happened yesterday, indeed, NR^» (Network Rail - home page) would themselves have been under much more onus to reduce the delay minutes which would have racked up quickly. 

I don't have access to the internal systems today to find out more details unfortunately, though if anyone does...?

[grahame]

Probably a bit of both to be honest.  If it is a tricky to find spare part then of course it's much less likely you'd have such equipment signalling trains at a more critical location in the first place, but there's no doubt the pressure from GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) would have been much greater to sort it out had it happened yesterday, indeed, NR^» (Network Rail - home page) would themselves have been under much more onus to reduce the delay minutes which would have racked up quickly. 

I don't have access to the internal systems today to find out more details unfortunately, though if anyone does...?

Thanks - I'm not screaming for an answer today, but a message (personal if preferred) over the next few days would be good to help us understand the metrics;  we know the TransWilts is a bit of a balancing act at times and want to be pragmatic, without always being the last to be fixed because we're too darned tolerant 

[Adelante_CCT]

Unfortunately I believe your thinking to be correct, had it been yesterday then most likely would have been done ASAP.

How long would this normally take to fix? Closing the junction for say an hour may be tolerable, if its likely to take 2-3 + hours however then closing the line for that long, with the level of service it has today (with extras to Paddington etc) for the sake of (I'm sorry to say) just 11 Transwilts services means it would be very low priority indeed, and more worthwhile fixing at the end of service, especially as all passengers on that route (excluding Melksham) have an alternative option (via Bath)

[simonw]

Is there a case to double track this area?

Single tracking is all well and good on seldom used lines, but the success of TransWilts and the use of the track this weekend suggests that double tracking should be considered, or at least in part.