Severe disruption - 29 Aug 20

[whole diary]

[bobm]

For the record there was severe disruption on the line between Reading and Wokingham yesterday.

At around lunchtime the signalling failed just outside Reading station blocking the line in both directions until early evening.

Wokingham became a temporary terminus for services coming in from Redhill and Staines (the Waterloo service already curtailed due to engineering work).

One SWR^» (South Western Railway - about) service was trapped at Earley with passengers sent on by taxi.  At least one GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) service which had terminated at Wokingham was sent on empty to Winnersh to make more room at Wokingham.

Services were restored around 8pm with another brief interruption two hours later due to another problem.

All seems to be well this morning.

[CyclingSid]

I got caught in this about16:00 on a No 4 service from Bracknell to Reading. Filled to all seats taken (social distancing?) and left passengers at Wokingham station. Bus then sprang a coolant leak and overheated coming up the hill to the Three Tuns. Driver coaxed it to the Three Tuns so the passengers could be decanted to a town No 17 service. I think the passengers wondered what they had done wrong.

Was there any bustitution, or were they relying on scheduled services?

[ellendune]

When these incidents happen what happens after service is restored?  Is there a subsequent review to see if it could have been prevented or whether further work should be carried out to stop it happening again?

[Electric train]

When these incidents happen what happens after service is restored?  Is there a subsequent review to see if it could have been prevented or whether further work should be carried out to stop it happening again?

Yes.

There will be an investigation panel, probably early next week looking at what equipment failed.

If it was NR^» (Network Rail - home page) equipment that failed how well did NR fault teams responded, were spare available etc, same applies to a failed train.   If it was external failure, such as an electricity supply company outage they will contacted to understand what happened. 

The usual questions in the Route / region investigation panel (which as ToC and NR members) will be what failed, why, can it be prevented in the future or what mitigations are practical to do; was the response what should have been expected. The operational response will be looked at in terms of how did NR and the ToCs work to manage the disruption.

During a disruption that seemed to have occurred yesterday NR's Route / Region Control will have established once it was apparent it was a prolonged incident initially a 'Silver Command' this would be lead my a senior on-call Manager or member of the Route Executive team and involve ToC managers, NR Ops, NR Maintenance Engineers and Route Asset Support Engineers.  It can be escalated to 'Gold Command' which will involve Snr Executive members from NR and ToC

[bobm]

Was there any bustitution, or were they relying on scheduled services?

Buses were laid on but took time to organise so reliance was placed on Reading Buses initially.