That sort of thing happens quite often with the Adelantes. The TMS (Train Management System) gets sent a spurious message of some sort (engine faults, door faults, toilet faults, etc.) which displays to the driver in the cab, who has to obviously treat it as a potential fault. It's another case of 'over-engineering' of these units. There is a gauge with LED lights on the side of the coach by the fuel tank which displays the actual level of fuel for each engine, so I am a little surprised the driver didn't check these to find out his true fuel status. What price a fuel guage in the cab though!
Just a further comment on this particular cock-up; I had cause to chat to the driver today who was relieving this service upon arrival at Oxford on the day in question. He stated quite clearly that the set
WAS low on fuel - apparently three warnings of low fuel were sent to the cab diagnostic computer (applying to a different carriage each time) and a fourth was received whilst the train was in the platform at Oxford. Advice from control (who have computer systems that log the train mileage and can therefore work out how much fuel is likely to be in the train) indicated that these were genuine warnings.
Did FGW try to gloss over the real problem, as a faulty on-train computer sounds a lot better than admitting its train had run low of fuel? This is by no means an isolated incident, as I can remember two reasonably recent incidents, one involving a turbo spluttering to a halt at Heyford and the other an empty
HST▸ conking out just outside Paddington. That one really screwed things up!
Either that, or the driver was trying to cover up his own mistakes, but he's an old, experience hand and didn't get involved directly as the driver who had worked the train from Paddington dealt with the problem in the main. I wonder...
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