Hitachi trains grounded

[boxbrownie]

1 hour ago, rodent279 said:

British penny pinching?

WTF? 

[MarshLane]

52 minutes ago, Ian Hargrave said:

There appear not to be any LNER bi mode Azumas in service atm. ?

 

Yes there are two all day, plus a third this evening.

 

800210 did 0930 KGX-EDN

800207 did 1103 KGX-LDS

800208 came off Doncaster Carr at 1934 and started on 2045 LDS-KGX

 

[Gwiwer]

1 hour ago, Hobby said:

 

Yes.

 

The local's car parking is a bit iffy, though...

 

Made a Stirling job of that, then

[Ian Hargrave]

8 minutes ago, MarshLane said:

 

Yes there are two all day, plus a third this evening.

 

800210 did 0930 KGX-EDN

800207 did 1103 KGX-LDS

800208 came off Doncaster Carr at 1934 and started on 2045 LDS-KGX

 

Positive.. TPE 802 operating on diesel between York & Liverpool but apparently no LNER Azuma doing likewise 

[phil-b259]

6 hours ago, melmerby said:

That can be stopped by the software installation.

Real time virus/malware etc. software will not allow it to be read, if it contains untoward files.

 

However that real time anti-virus / malware software would need to be connected to the internet to be kept up to date with the latest threats - and the whole point of not having critical systems connected to the outside world is to prevent hacking / virus transmission being possible in the first place. In such a situation then anti-virus updates will have be by a USB stick - which could get contaminated if people don't follow strict instructions or update the virus software regularly.....

[Siberian Snooper]

The local news (Spotlight) reported that the disruption will be continuing for the forseeable future.

 

 

[Reorte]

27 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

Made a Stirling job of that, then

Please bring back the groan button!

[Ian Hargrave]

It would be an uplift for the Scottish tourist industry just emerging from lockdown around the Highland Mainline if they could get the service restored ASAP. Scot rail  struggles to cope with overcrowding on its mainline timetable.What a shame..one of the great rail experiences denied the travelling public...who come from all over the world.Maybe not now for overseas tourists but an opportunity for UK staycation rail enthusiasts .

[MarshLane]

27 minutes ago, Ian Hargrave said:

Positive.. TPE 802 operating on diesel between York & Liverpool but apparently no LNER Azuma doing likewise 

TPE have (had?) 12 sets available for traffic so they can keep running unless any defects are found on the nightly checks.

[Gwiwer]

13 minutes ago, Siberian Snooper said:

The local news (Spotlight) reported that the disruption will be continuing for the forseeable future.

 

 

Given that there are elements of the rail industry unable to foresee the future beyond the next few minutes this could be a very elastic timeframe. 
 

It would be particularly unfortunate if a significant level of service could not be operated from next week as it is expected there will be a large upturn in leisure travel and some element of return-to-work. 
 

If I were employed by an affected operator I would be pressing for answers by now. As an employee of an “alternative” travel option there has already been one too many extremely nasty (in fact quite threatening) incidents where customers face not only a disrupted and very much longer journey but find there are no reserved seats (not something we offer at all) and that they have found the train too well filled for their comfort. 
 

Distuption on this scale over more than a couple of days really should see the government - as effective operator under ERMA agreements - stepping in and making what ever arrangements they can. 

[Gwiwer]

1 minute ago, MarshLane said:

I don’t know any more details, but I am told ORR has this afternoon declined permission to return the sets to service at the current time. 

If they have passed the required safety checks then what are their grounds?  If not then what are their plans to get people moving?  

 

The fare-paying public is being held hostage to problems they have every reason to know more about and to know when they might be able to travel. 
 

Too many are being told “try again tomorrow” which is simply not an acceptable answer. 

[MarshLane]

5 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

Given that there are elements of the rail industry unable to foresee the future beyond the next few minutes this could be a very elastic timeframe. 
 

It would be particularly unfortunate if a significant level of service could not be operated from next week as it is expected there will be a large upturn in leisure travel and some element of return-to-work. 
 

If I were employed by an affected operator I would be pressing for answers by now. As an employee of an “alternative” travel option there has already been one too many extremely nasty (in fact quite threatening) incidents where customers face not only a disrupted and very much longer journey but find there are no reserved seats (not something we offer at all) and that they have found the train too well filled for their comfort. 
 

Distuption on this scale over more than a couple of days really should see the government - as effective operator under ERMA agreements - stepping in and making what ever arrangements they can. 

Difficult to give answers if you don’t know them. The one thing I do know is the industry is pulling together to assist and DfT are heavily involved. But remember nothing of this is an easy fix passenger facing or behind the scenes.

Edited May 12, 2021 by MarshLane

[Gwiwer]

I’m afraid I see little evidence of “pulling together” when a simple London - Plymouth journey (as one example) currently takes around seven hours by at least three trains instead of three hours by one, may involve indirect routes or lengthy waits and is putting both staff and passengers under immense stress and pressure. 
 

I see a XC unit shuttling Swindon - Bristol but I don’t see any additional services or strengthening - even where it might be possible which is far from everywhere - to accommodate displaced passengers. 
 

I don’t see “pulling together” when displaced customers are required to pay again in order to travel with a different TOC and then advised “you might get a refund”. And I don’t see “pulling together” when bus drivers in Cornwall know nothing about the GWR / NR websites suggesting rail tickets will be honoured on their buses and again demand payment or no ride. 
 

It’s a huge task. It needs an incident co-ordinator to take charge.  Not the piecemeal approach and the “come back later” attitude currently found far too widely. 

[TravisM]

55 minutes ago, Ian Hargrave said:

Positive.. TPE 802 operating on diesel between York & Liverpool but apparently no LNER Azuma doing likewise 

Someone would be getting a severe slap on the wrists if a LNER Azuma ended up in Liverpool 

[rodent279]

5 hours ago, FraserClarke said:

 

And it's not the first time an entire class of headline express passenger locomotives have been hastily withdrawn from service following the discovery of cracks... Kings and Merchant Navies at least both suffered the same ignominy. 

This is nothing new. Glasgow Blue trains are probably the most well known from the BR era,  but didn't the BR standard class 7's get withdrawn for a while, due to axle failures?

Gresley Pacifics were well known for overheating inside big ends, though I don't think they were ever withdrawn from service en masse. Even the legendary Deltics suffered cracked bogie frames, which is why they were replaced with the cast steel version.

As pointed out above, these trains are derived from a type that is designed for a considerably more generous loading gauge. Let's not forget that packing a high speed, long distance, state of the art train into a 26m long aluminium bodyshell, really is squeezing the maximum possible out of the restricted British loading gauge.

 

Edit: another train, home-grown, that had problems at the outset, was the class 317's. Leaving aside the "wrong kind of snow" issue that so often gets mocked, there were also issues with faulty welds, which in one case led to a transformer (or was it a smoothing choke?) dropping off from the underside of a unit. Fortunately without disastrous consequences-but it nearly could have been.

Edited May 12, 2021 by rodent279

[Gwiwer]

4 minutes ago, rodent279 said:

packing a high speed, long distance, state of the art train into a 26m long aluminium bodyshell, really is squeezing the maximum possible out of the restricted British loading gauge.

Which begs the question as to why the trains were not designed from the start with British conditions stipulated instead of buying adapted designs?  
 

It isn’t a matter of where they were built. What matters - and what will need to come out in the wash - is the flawed decision-making which afflicted the train procurement process and the GWR electrification fiasco which resulted in hasty changes. 
 

Some of those chickens may already be home to roost. 
 

 

[jamie92208]

46 minutes ago, Reorte said:

Please bring back the groan button!

Your wish is my command.

 

 

Jamie

[Phil Parker]

2 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

Which begs the question as to why the trains were not designed from the start with British conditions stipulated instead of buying adapted designs?

 

Because designing from scratch would cost a lot more than adapting an existing design. That, and you should gain a benefit from the testing of the existing hardware. There weren't many BR, designed from scratch diesels that didn't have teething troubles. 

[MrTea]

I’ve had to travel from Reading to London for a course for the last couple of days. I have to confess I wasn’t looking forward to it, having seen the reports, but in actual fact the situation on the services has been absolutely fine and they’ve all got me to where I needed to be on time. 
 

I think GWR have done the sensible thing with strengthening their existing class 387 outer suburban services and extending them to Swindon. I travelled home on the 17:28 from Paddington tonight which was a 12-car 387 and there was plenty of space in the front unit particularly. 
 

From the outside you could argue that the response has been a bit slow in terms of adapting the timetable but I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect an instant fix for the overnight withdrawal of 90 units which make up 97% of the GWR intercity train fleet. I can’t see how you could have a contingency plan for such a situation?

 

The TOCs have been fortunate in some ways that this has happened during the Pandemic. Loadings are much lighter than normal. It would have been total chaos if it had happened under ‘normal’ circumstances. 
 

Thanks to everyone who is working behind the scenes to get services back to normal!
 

Ian

[rodent279]

Pendolinos are an adaptation of an existing design, as are many others. That in itself isn't the problem-even if they are an adaptation, to all intents and purposes, they are a new standalone design. Something has been overlooked, or miscalculated, in the process of adapting to the smaller UK loading gauge.

ISTR class 91's had quite a few niggling bugs and problems, which GNER spent a lot of money on rectifying in an extensive refurb, in the early 2000's. Granted, the whole fleet was not withdrawn wholesale, but they were not perfect from the get-go.

Edited May 12, 2021 by rodent279

[MarshLane]

32 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

I’m afraid I see little evidence of “pulling together” when a simple London - Plymouth journey (as one example) currently takes around seven hours by at least three trains instead of three hours by one, may involve indirect routes or lengthy waits and is putting both staff and passengers under immense stress and pressure. 
 

I see a XC unit shuttling Swindon - Bristol but I don’t see any additional services or strengthening - even where it might be possible which is far from everywhere - to accommodate displaced passengers. 
 

I don’t see “pulling together” when displaced customers are required to pay again in order to travel with a different TOC and then advised “you might get a refund”. And I don’t see “pulling together” when bus drivers in Cornwall know nothing about the GWR / NR websites suggesting rail tickets will be honoured on their buses and again demand payment or no ride. 
 

It’s a huge task. It needs an incident co-ordinator to take charge.  Not the piecemeal approach and the “come back later” attitude currently found far too widely. 

 

Thats because you don't see what is happening behind the scenes.  Everyone is under pressure and staff are doing their best in difficult circumstances.

 

You say "I dont see additional services or strengthening"?  Where do you expect the stock to come from when there are no spare Castle sets or Voyager units?  We do not live in a world where you can pick up a spare train from another operator and put it into service, like it or not, that's the reality.  There isn't spare stock sat around just waiting for something to go wrong.  At least you could get from London to Plymouth even if it took longer and had a change of trains.  XC stepped up to offer to run extra services, that involved staff coming in on rest days, or working longer (within their allowed hours), there isn't just one XC HST, there are three early morning Voyager diagrams as well, which all have to be staffed outside the normal arrangements by CrossCountry staff.  It involved maintenance being undertaken in Neville Hill (they dont normally do any XC HST maintenance) on another HST set to keep that the other set operating the Bristol-Swindon service.  C2C have released three Class 387s - half of their 387 fleet - to GWR to provide additional capacity.  You may not see it, but the co-operation is there.

 

A friend of mine had to travel yesterday from Redruth to Hanwell, he said it was a nightmare of a journey, but two conductors thanked passengers for their patience and understanding, and he couldn't praise the staff high enough on three different TOCs for what was (for them) a very difficult day.

 

I acknowledge there should be better ticketing arrangement when things go pair shaped, but whether individual operators want to accept other operators advance tickets is down to them, logically they should, but again there's more involved.  But I'd suggest the attitude of bus drivers is something that should be taken up with their own companies.  These things dont just appear on a whim.

Edited May 12, 2021 by MarshLane

[25901]

31 minutes ago, jools1959 said:

Someone would be getting a severe slap on the wrists if a LNER Azuma ended up in Liverpool 

Never mind that, if it parks up over night they’ll have the wheels lol

[corneliuslundie]

I think the point being made was that it seemed that no-one had contacted the bus companies to make the arrangements. You can't blame the drivers for not being thought readers.

Yes, we fully appreciate that a lot is going on behind the3 scenes and many people are working very hard. What the whole exercise is showing though is that the fragmented nature of the industry makes things much more difficult. In BR days a class 101 DMU was a class 101 wherever in the country it was. Now every operator seems to have different stock, and even if it is nominally the same there are differences which make training needed before they can be moved to another part of the country. What is essentially different for example between Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow suburban services which requires them to have different units? Alright, I know that stock is often moved around (and staff then have to be trained to use it) but there are far too many types, each of which will then have its own problems.

I know I am shooting myself in the foot, as what I am asking for has actually happened with GWR, LNER etc. So I will ask another question which no-one will be able to answer: what happened to thorough testing or prototypes before bulk orders? I thought we learned that lesson with the early diesel prototypes which were ordered in bulk before the prototypes had been tested (because of pressure from the then equivalent of the DfT).

Jonathan

[Ian Hargrave]

40 minutes ago, jools1959 said:

Someone would be getting a severe slap on the wrists if a LNER Azuma ended up in Liverpool 

lndeed.Apologies for the ambivalence 

[Gwiwer]

16 minutes ago, MarshLane said:

C2C have released three Class 387s - half of their 387 fleet - to GWR to provide additional capacity.  You may not see it, but the co-operation is there.

All six were leaving anyway and were out of traffic for that reason.  They were going to GN I believe but a 387 is a 387 and all should be able to run anywhere authorised and driven by any qualified driver.  

 

SWR retains its change-at-Salisbury pattern instead of arranging through working between Waterloo and Exeter.  That returns from 17th May as a Covid easing measure not specifically to alleviate hardship for GWR passengers.  There is never anything spare in the 158 / 159 fleet except that with some diagrams not currently operating 7-car rakes could have been boosted to 9-car and the alternate-hours service west of Salisbury restored to hourly.  The inter-availability of tickets between Reading and Waterloo vice Paddington is of little consequence as Reading retains a reasonable level of service to London.  

 

As advertised "Around 75% of Plymouth - Penzance services will operate normally" but why not run them hourly and extend them all to Exeter with the booked workings through to Bristol or Cardiff as they still are?  GWR must have a few drivers sitting spare for the moment.  The stock is there and passed for the route.  At least they would meet the SWR trains and cut out one change.  

 

It should be relatively easy to update the apps directly controlled by the rail industry.  Third-party apps are another matter and often give customers and staff problems.  NR and TOC journey planners are not altogether up to date.  One journey I attempted to re-plan today (Denmark Hill - Taunton route via Slough) came up as "change at Salisbury and Westbury" when the GWR service thence to Taunton simply doesn't exist.  

 

The industry attempts to provide a good service.  What it offers is patchy.  There are people sweating through the night to get things moving.  But as is too often the case those at the coal-face are treated as mushrooms and can only offer the customers apology and such information as they are given.