The fair weather railway?

[whole diary]

[grahame]

Power lines are down in the Wrangaton area, no trains Newton Abbot/Totnes-Plymouth.
A38 shut too, so getting from Plymouth-Exeter is a bit of challenge!

Take the A386 Plymouth - Okehampton then the A30 Okehampton - Exeter.

Don't I recall a railway headed that way - or is a bit in the middle of that missing too?

[Adrian]

Always strikes me as perverse logic when Network Rail suspends services in the name of safety - and those people who still need to travel are forced to make a somewhat more hazardous journey by road.  Seems to me that in many cases it's because they don't want the inconvenience of trains potentially becoming stranded, if there is more than a slight chance of that happening.

And who exactly decides whether it is safe or not to operate a train service?  After the snow back in March you would have expected that all stations would have been inspected for safety before train services resumed, but my local station clearly wasn't - there was a sheet of ice up the steps to the platform.  Yet half an inch of snow covering the rails, and all trains must stop?

[TaplowGreen]

Always strikes me as perverse logic when Network Rail suspends services in the name of safety - and those people who still need to travel are forced to make a somewhat more hazardous journey by road.  Seems to me that in many cases it's because they don't want the inconvenience of trains potentially becoming stranded, if there is more than a slight chance of that happening.

And who exactly decides whether it is safe or not to operate a train service?  After the snow back in March you would have expected that all stations would have been inspected for safety before train services resumed, but my local station clearly wasn't - there was a sheet of ice up the steps to the platform.  Yet half an inch of snow covering the rails, and all trains must stop?

It's a reflection on society as a whole - Wales copped it pretty hard yesterday and the far South West but for most of the country it was what we used to call (in a more stoic age) "wet and windy".

I was working in Lancashire all week - travelled up to Preston on the (excellent) Virgin WCML^▸ (West Coast Main Line) service from Euston, came back yesterday. On Thursday night the News was full of storm and tempest, advising people not to travel, trains will all be cancelled, don't travel unless you have to etc etc, come Friday morning yes it was raining and breezy but I travelled from Darwen back to Preston on the M65 without drama and the train from Preston back to Euston, which started from Glasgow was 5 minutes late but on time into Euston - same thing happened a few months ago.

We live on an island surrounded by an occasionally angry sea and with occasional rough weather elsewhere. We, the infrastructure, its operators and the media should be more robust.

Why do we give weather features names for goodness sake? (and whatever happened to Hurricane Higgins?)

[grahame]

Why do we give weather features names for goodness sake?

Why do we give trains names come to that?

I suspect to help easily identify them ... "Storm Daniels" is much easier than "the storm that hit Washington in January 2018"

[IndustryInsider]

I was working in Lancashire all week - travelled up to Preston on the (excellent) Virgin WCML^▸ (West Coast Main Line) service from Euston, came back yesterday. On Thursday night the News was full of storm and tempest, advising people not to travel, trains will all be cancelled, don't travel unless you have to etc etc, come Friday morning yes it was raining and breezy but I travelled from Darwen back to Preston on the M65 without drama and the train from Preston back to Euston, which started from Glasgow was 5 minutes late but on time into Euston - same thing happened a few months ago.

We live on an island surrounded by an occasionally angry sea and with occasional rough weather elsewhere. We, the infrastructure, its operators and the media should be more robust.

A case of managing expectations? 

Glad you got back to Euston on time.  Many services were heavily delayed on the WCML yesterday though, especially later in the day.  The 13:58 Holyhead to Euston was stung particularly hard, eventually terminating at Crewe 2 hours 20 and minutes late.

[didcotdean]

Why do we give weather features names for goodness sake?

Why do we give trains names come to that?

I suspect to help easily identify them ... "Storm Daniels" is much easier than "the storm that hit Washington in January 2018"

What really prompted the Met Office and their Irish counterpart into action was the so-called 'St June's Day Storm' of 27/10/2013. They didn't call it that, but was a name attached to it by a commercial forecaster, although the storm was also variously called Christian, Simone, Carmen, and Allan by other organisations. Having a single name with a degree of official authority was thought desirable after this confusion for all storms expected to be felt somewhere in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) or Ireland.

[froome]

Always strikes me as perverse logic when Network Rail suspends services in the name of safety - and those people who still need to travel are forced to make a somewhat more hazardous journey by road.  Seems to me that in many cases it's because they don't want the inconvenience of trains potentially becoming stranded, if there is more than a slight chance of that happening.

And who exactly decides whether it is safe or not to operate a train service?  After the snow back in March you would have expected that all stations would have been inspected for safety before train services resumed, but my local station clearly wasn't - there was a sheet of ice up the steps to the platform.  Yet half an inch of snow covering the rails, and all trains must stop?

It's a reflection on society as a whole - Wales copped it pretty hard yesterday and the far South West but for most of the country it was what we used to call (in a more stoic age) "wet and windy".

I was working in Lancashire all week - travelled up to Preston on the (excellent) Virgin WCML^▸ (West Coast Main Line) service from Euston, came back yesterday. On Thursday night the News was full of storm and tempest, advising people not to travel, trains will all be cancelled, don't travel unless you have to etc etc, come Friday morning yes it was raining and breezy but I travelled from Darwen back to Preston on the M65 without drama and the train from Preston back to Euston, which started from Glasgow was 5 minutes late but on time into Euston - same thing happened a few months ago.

We live on an island surrounded by an occasionally angry sea and with occasional rough weather elsewhere. We, the infrastructure, its operators and the media should be more robust.

Why do we give weather features names for goodness sake? (and whatever happened to Hurricane Higgins?)

I was also up in Lancashire towards the end of this week. Later on Friday, presumably after you left, there were many cancellations and a lot of frustrating delays, which were all being blamed on the weather. And yet they had far less rain than down in Wales and the south-west, though the wind was definitely blowing a bit!

[TaplowGreen]

I was working in Lancashire all week - travelled up to Preston on the (excellent) Virgin WCML^▸ (West Coast Main Line) service from Euston, came back yesterday. On Thursday night the News was full of storm and tempest, advising people not to travel, trains will all be cancelled, don't travel unless you have to etc etc, come Friday morning yes it was raining and breezy but I travelled from Darwen back to Preston on the M65 without drama and the train from Preston back to Euston, which started from Glasgow was 5 minutes late but on time into Euston - same thing happened a few months ago.

We live on an island surrounded by an occasionally angry sea and with occasional rough weather elsewhere. We, the infrastructure, its operators and the media should be more robust.

A case of managing expectations? 

Glad you got back to Euston on time.  Many services were heavily delayed on the WCML yesterday though, especially later in the day.  The 13:58 Holyhead to Euston was stung particularly hard, eventually terminating at Crewe 2 hours 20 and minutes late.

The one bit of good advice (as it always is in these circumstances) was be prepared to travel early to mitigate the risk of later delays - I did, and was OK.

Wales got hit very hard by the storm as I noted in my original post so perhaps the issue with the Holyhead service wasn't surprising - overall from what I saw however the WCML long distance London-Scotland services held up pretty well, and the "excellent" comment on those servivces wasn't intended to be specific to yesterday, just the general level of service, including customer service - GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) could learn a lot from them.

However this isn't a race to the bottom - overall - we just need to learn to toughen up a bit in these circumstances.

[IndustryInsider]

Yes their customer service is very good. Second best large operator in that regard after Cross Country in my opinion.

[1st fan]

Why do we give weather features names for goodness sake?

Why do we give trains names come to that?

I suspect to help easily identify them ... "Storm Daniels" is much easier than "the storm that hit Washington in January 2018"

Ah yes giving trains names is an excellent idea especially on the Cotswold line. Options such as "Terminates At", "Cancelled", "Will Be Started From", "Will No Longer Call At" etc. would seem to be obvious names.

[Andy]

Why do we give weather features names for goodness sake?

Why do we give trains names come to that?

I suspect to help easily identify them ... "Storm Daniels" is much easier than "the storm that hit Washington in January 2018"

Ah yes, ....
If only the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) Govt were as pro-active in taking action to eliminate the problems arising from/risk of storm damage along the seawall as PoTUS has been to deal with Storm(y) Daniels....
;-)

[Bus Queen]

What is this obsession with giving everything a name actually all about. What happens when that storm kills do children view everyone with that name as evil. What happens if Trevor the train is involved in an accident & is beyond repair. Do we mourn Trevor and  say he left x amount of friends behind that Trevor was a lovely train. 

[grahame]

What is this obsession with giving everything a name actually all about. What happens when that storm kills do children view everyone with that name as evil. What happens if Trevor the train is involved in an accident & is beyond repair. Do we mourn Trevor and  say he left x amount of friends behind that Trevor was a lovely train. 

No easy solution, I fear ... I think we *do* need some sort of short code rather than a long description, but what it should be ...