Thames Valley infrastructure problems causing disruption elsewhere - 2017

[whole diary]

[NickB]

Tonight GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) seem to have mislaid most of their train crews at short notice and we are left watching trains turn from on time to preparing to delayed to we might run maybe. Utter tosh.  I cannot convey in words my hatred of this company.

[Western Pathfinder]

I have been reading on twitter that A Pidgeon flew into the OLE^▸ (Overhead Line Equipment, more often "OHLE") and exploded ! Up Main is blocked by rubble from this or so it would seem .

Now where are Dick Dastardly and Muttley when you need them   

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon.
You have no idea how hard I had to resist using that quote myself 

[grahame]

The levity is fine, but please don't underestimate the pretty awful effect that this farce had on tens of thousands of people last night and once again exposed GWRs^▸ (Great Western Railway)/the railways frailties and systemic failures.

I'm very selective in posting my personal woes when I've had a poor journey ... but yesterday evening was something. I had planned to check in to my hotel (in St Albans) at around 23:00 but in the end got here at 1 a.m.

OK - so I missed the 19:47 because of a fire drill at Melksham Without Parish Council and was at the station there for the next and final train - the 20:32.   When a stone train came through at 20:32 I kinda new we were in trouble, and I knew that the lady who answered the help point and assured me it would be along at 20:40 had been fed a porkie by her computer.  We need an intermediate signal to do that - I wonder if providing such a signal might be cheaper and easier than fixing the prediction software  

Train rolls in at 20:50 (exactly as I had predicted to other passengers on the platform!) ... although I was catching the 21:06 from Westbury, I wasn't too worried as the help point lady said that was running 20 late.  And indeed so - chaos at Westbury, and a 25 minute delay.

I speculated to myself that this was the final run before retirement of the driver of the Paddington train, and he was so sad to be retiring he was taking his time.  Crew on the train were talking about speed restrictions due to hot weather (no mention of pigeon) but it did seem there was an awful lot of relief line running.  Rolled into Paddington an hour late - around 23:30.

Edit to correct typos

[SandTEngineer]

This was a quote on the WNXX^▸ (Stored Unserviceable, Mainline Locos HQ All Classes) Forum:

Just to sum up how awful yesterday was:

GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) evening peak PPM^‡(resolve) was just 1.6%
High Speed Services evening peak PPM was 3.8%
London/Thames Valley evening peak PPM was 0%
West evening PPM did better at 12.5%

A shocker of a day with just one train arriving into Paddington making PPM!

[Oberon]

Please tell me someone that these idiots are not preparing to run (in to the ground) South West Trains as well..

[ChrisB]

Aren't Network Rail picking up these delay minutes? Hardly fault of GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)?

[broadgage]

 Cheer up, tomorrow is forecast to be even hotter, more speed restrictions, more train failures, and more dead air conditioning.
After that thunderstorms and lightning are expected. I seem to recall a lightning strike disabling the signalling over a wide area, followed by reassurances that this was very rare and unlikely to happen again until it occurred again within a couple of weeks.
Do the axle counters work in heavy rain yet ?

[John R]

and more dead air conditioning.

Not Thames Valley infrastructure but on the subject of air-con, the Customer Host this afternoon mentioned that only 2 coaches had working air-con on our 7 coach set. Fortunately it was before the evening rush hour, but I guess the next working was going to be decidedly uncomfortable with a train load of passengers.

[Timmer]

and more dead air conditioning.

Not Thames Valley infrastructure but on the subject of air-con, the Customer Host this afternoon mentioned that only 2 coaches had working air-con on our 7 coach set. Fortunately it was before the evening rush hour, but I guess the next working was going to be decidedly uncomfortable with a train load of passengers.

And why does it constantly fail on High Speed Train's (HST^▸ (High Speed Train))s? Because passengers will not close the drop down windows in the vestibules when leaving/joining the train.

Edit: VickiS - Clarifying Acronym

[IndustryInsider]

You can hardly blame passengers for failing to do that.  The blame lies with old fashioned and dangerous opening windows, and old air-con technology.  One of the benefits of new trains is that air-con is generally much better, the 387s are already demonstrating that and I've little doubt the new 800 series trains will do the same.

[Electric train]

and more dead air conditioning.

Not Thames Valley infrastructure but on the subject of air-con, the Customer Host this afternoon mentioned that only 2 coaches had working air-con on our 7 coach set. Fortunately it was before the evening rush hour, but I guess the next working was going to be decidedly uncomfortable with a train load of passengers.

And why does it constantly fail on HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train)? Because passengers will not close the drop down windows in the vestibules when leaving/joining the train.

You can hardly blame passengers for failing to do that.  The blame lies with old fashioned and dangerous opening windows, and old air-con technology.  One of the benefits of new trains is that air-con is generally much better, the 387s are already demonstrating that and I've little doubt the new 800 series trains will do the same.

The air handling system on an HST (Mk3) coach is very similar to the design used on Mk2^▸ (Mark 2 coach) d, e, f.  These air con systems were design for a 50/50% split in each coach being smoking and non smoking, can you remember those day    The air flow is designed for enter at the non smoking end and extracted from the smoking end.  Its quite a big ask for the air handling unit to do this, where as modern trains 387 etc have a much more distributed air handling system.

Also remember the Mk3 air con system is basically 40 years old, parts will have been changed and mods done but basically a 40 year old design, how many car on the road have 40 year old air con or offices that have 40 year old air con systems

[JayMac]

Another example of the benefit of new trains over old.

But the 'HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) Must Plod On' brigade will doubtless say that sweltering is a small price to pay.

[IndustryInsider]

Aren't Network Rail picking up these delay minutes? Hardly fault of GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)?

Whilst the initial course of the disruption my well-being Network Rail's fault, GWR are responsible for minimising the resulting delays.  This is something they continue to be woeful at doing.  Removing operational staff at Cardiff, Westbury and Oxford recently is an indication of how ridiculous their strategy for improvement is.

They have become much better at dealing with planned disruption, such as engineering blockades, but continue to fall apart when dealing with unplanned disruption.

[grahame]

The air handling system on an HST^▸ (High Speed Train) (Mk3) coach is very similar to the design used on Mk2^▸ (Mark 2 coach) d, e, f.  These air con systems were design for a 50/50% split in each coach being smoking and non smoking, can you remember those day    The air flow is designed for enter at the non smoking end and extracted from the smoking end.  Its quite a big ask for the air handling unit to do this, where as modern trains 387 etc have a much more distributed air handling system.

I never cease to be a-mazed at the depth of knowledge and the things I learn here.

[grahame]

Aren't Network Rail picking up these delay minutes? Hardly fault of GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)?

Whilst the initial course of the disruption my well-being Network Rail's fault, GWR are responsible for minimising the resulting delays.

How do the "financials" stack up?   Is the system set up so that it's in a TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) short term financial interest to minimise NR^» (Network Rail - home page) caused delays?

One can imagine a scenario (surely not the case?) where a delay that a third party such as Network Rail leads to increasing compensation payments to the TOC the more minutes that can be attributed back to it.  If compensation received is more than compensation paid out, this would lead to an accountant's temptation to discourage measures that would get things back on schedule quicker.