Friday 2nd and Saturday 3rd March 2018 - Severe weather - advice not to travel

[whole diary]

[TonyK]

Sea looks pretty angry at Teignmouth.

Not alone. You should see Mrs FT, N!

[grahame]

Yes information on websites has been extremely poor, and continues to be. I was due to travel to Bournemouth today, and real time info always showed trains as if they were running on time, while Journey Check just listed a number of routes where there were no services but made no mention of the Cardiff to Portsmouth line. I don't have a smartphone, and if it hadn't been for friends whose apps showed all trains cancelled, I wouldn't have known. Meanwhile, the South West Trains website showed info about their services very clearly - that all services to Bournemouth were cancelled.

I still have no idea if traveling tomorrow will be possible and even worth attempting, and don't have much faith in being able to find out in time (I will need to travel early if I travel at all).

Two thoughts:

1. The TransWilts app is online via http://train.fyi   (won't tell you much tonight, as most trains have finished)

2. Again via browser - http://www.wellho.net/railmaps/clim.php  (links from map at top of page) ... click on station to get the departure board from there.  Under test - will switch to tiger when it's back working properly - tiger has been poorly today so at the vets.

Not sure if I'm making valid suggestions for you, or aiming at a completely different target ...

[SandTEngineer]

Now that trains have virtually stopped running for the night the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) website is up and running again.....

[grahame]

Now that trains have virtually stopped running for the night the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) website is up and running again.....

I know what you mean - through the problem really was that trains had virtually stopped running for the whole day in many parts!   

Unlike a real life queue, users joining a queue for a website that lacks capacity don't have a visual feedback that they thing's got a long queue so join anyway ... rather that being able to say "goodness all those people" and look for an alternative - indeed, they will keep trying if they get dropped and simply make it worse!

One would imagine that GW^▸ (Great Western)'s web site designers, server providers and admins have robustness testing in place. The lack of too many "oh sh*t" times suggests to me that they do have continuous integration (perhaps with Jenkins) and behaviour and / or test driven development and / or load testing in place - things like unittest, Cucumber, Gherkin, Selenium, Watir Webdrivers and Jmeter.   But I do wonder what the "busiest" scenario that they have tested has as its upper levels, and whether they may lack load sharing with a system of brining more servers into the pool quickly (or even automatically).  Could it really be just a big server that "should have enough umph", or could it be that the load sharer at the 'front desk' of handling the traffic itself has hit its limit?

But there have been issues with industry feeds during the last 24 hours ... and those issues themselves may have somewhat been reflected back at the front end - especially if somewhere within the server system the backroom data gathering function is struggling to get accurate information itself, and when it does get information to be able to assimilate the quantity thats far larger than usual, as well as requiring (like us web site users) to try a number of time because the Network Rail feeds keep failing due to load.

I'm asking questions that I don't expect to be answered. And a risk assessment suggests this is something that doesn't happen terribly often, and when it does the effect is a bit of irritation rather than being a danger or safety risk.  So I don't expect a lot of money to be chucked at fixing it.   I do like the idea of an extra layer of front page that gives a very short and rapid status report without all the fancy graphics and perhaps with some more caching ... but then there IS typically a news flash status on the front page - so perhaps we're already some way down that line - or as far as the graphic artists will let us go without killing the professional and consistent look and feel of GWR.

[grahame]

At 4 O'Clock this morning, I started this thread quoting JourneyCheck

Further Information

An update will follow within the next 6 hours.
Individual train service alterations may not appear on journey check, our advice is not to travel.
Last Updated:02/03/2018 03:24

Sixty seconds ago I rechecked and it still reads exactly the same.   What happened to the update due by 09:24 ... It's now 18:43!  

Updated  ...or rather re-timestamped.  Now reads

Cancellations to services on all routes
 
Due to severe weather between London Paddington and Penzance all lines are disrupted.
Train services running across the whole Great Western Railway network may be cancelled. Disruption is expected until the end of the day.

Customer Advice
Due to the heavy snow and heavy freeze overnight, train services will start later today than the normal timetable and some lines may not start at all. The advice is not to travel, if you start your journey we can not guarantee that you will get to your destination and we will not be able to provide alternative transport due to adverse road conditions. We aim to reinstate services when we can but this in some cases may not be at all during today, Friday 2nd March. Mainline and branchline services along the whole GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) network are expected to be affected by the weather conditions.

Further Information
An update will follow within the next 6 hours.
Individual train service alterations may not appear on journey check, our advice is not to travel.
Last Updated:02/03/2018 22:07

I'm not clear if "train services will start later today" still applies to 2nd March (at 22:07 on that day) or to what is now today - 3rd March.   I loo forward to finding out the story when I wake in the morning.   'night all !

[Sixty3Closure]

It's an interesting question as to how much you scale up for exception circumstances. Its not that difficult to test with modern tools but I guess its how much do you want to spend for those once a year scenarios. We spend a lot on it but its rather a different setup and I don't want to point fingers too much as we had occasional glitches as well. Also from what I understand from all those young people at work its not so much the amount of data as the number of connections so I don't know how much a low res site would help.

Personally it was the lack of information (sound familiar) was frustrating as I didn't know whether to try go into work or not. I know GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) probably didn't have much information themselves but not being able to see the little there was on the website meant I couldn't make an informed (or slightly better informed) decision.

Twitter wasn't much help - "we're really busy right now...." but I know from experience that GWR are one of the poorer TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) for providing Agency Wire information (that's information from Reuters, AP etc to Broadcasters) so I'm not entirely willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

[grahame]

Advice is not to travel again today - Saturday 3rd March 2018.

Cancellations to services on all routes

Due to severe weather between London Paddington and Penzance all lines are disrupted.
Train services running across the whole Great Western Railway network may be cancelled, delayed or revised. Disruption is expected until the end of the day.

Customer Advice
Due to the continued poor weather conditions, train services will start later today than the normal timetable and some lines may not start at all. The advice is not to travel, if you start your journey we can not guarantee that you will get to your destination and we will not be able to provide alternative transport due to adverse road conditions. We aim to reinstate services when we can but this in some cases may not be at all during today, Saturday 3rd March. Mainline and branchline services along the whole GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) network are expected to be affected by the weather conditions.

Further Information
An update will follow within the next 6 hours.
Individual train service alterations may not appear on journey check, our advice is not to travel.
Last Updated:03/03/2018 03:00

Thanks to GWR for their update from last night's message within the timeframe they gave, and for updating the message to make it clear which day to applied to.

[grahame]

From Network Rail:

Thanks to our engineers working non-stop in freezing conditions yesterday and through the night, the railway line through Dawlish; connecting Devon and Cornwall to the rest of Britain; has reopened this morning for rail services.
 
Thank you to our customers for their patience while we made the railway safe for passenger services.

[chuffed]

  I loo forward to finding out the story when I wake in the morning.   'night all !
[/quote]

I heartily commend grahame's effort to pass on as much essential information as possible....but do wee really need to know about his night time habits ?

[grahame]

I loo forward to finding out the story when I wake in the morning.   'night all !

I heartily commend grahame's effort to pass on as much essential information as possible....but do wee really need to know about his night time habits ?

No, you don't.  But 'twas Billy the dog needed to answer the call of nature - I withheld my personal data!

[bobm]

From Network Rail:

Thanks to our engineers working non-stop in freezing conditions yesterday and through the night, the railway line through Dawlish; connecting Devon and Cornwall to the rest of Britain; has reopened this morning for rail services.
 
Thank you to our customers for their patience while we made the railway safe for passenger services.

Looking at Opentraintimes maps, it seems single line working has been introduced with all trains using the up line (the one furthest for the sea).   Down trains cross over at Dawlish Warren and back again at Teignmouth.

[ellendune]

NR^» (Network Rail - home page) have just tweeted that:

#Dawlish update 09:45: Both railway lines through Dawlish; connecting Devon and Cornwall to the rest of Britain; have reopened for rail services.

Thank you for your patience while we made the railway safe for passenger services.

[Timmer]

GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) services for tomorrow posted as three separate tweets on the GWR Twitter page - LTV^▸ (London [and] Thames Valley), High Speed and West Local services. Check them out if travelling tomorrow.

[plymothian]

GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) services for tomorrow posted as three separate tweets on the GWR Twitter page - LTV^▸ (London [and] Thames Valley), High Speed and West Local services. Check them out if travelling tomorrow.

Lots of trains are going to need to get back to where they belong, fuelled, tanked, examined etc ready to launch a normal service on Monday.

The exam backlog is going to mean even more 'more trains needing repair than normal' than normal.

[TonyK]

Looking at Opentraintimes maps, it seems single line working has been introduced with all trains using the up line (the one furthest for the sea).   Down trains cross over at Dawlish Warren and back again at Teignmouth.

Still happening. I just (on OpenTrainsTimes) watched 1C92 PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains)-PNZ cross over at Dawlish Warren.