Slight frost cancels trains?

[Sweedy]

It is not a new issue. In the 80's (before the individual TOC's came into being) I travelled from Longfield in Kent on very frosty mornings. Pick up from the third rail was a major issue. On some mornings not all trains ran but there was a service. Each of the trains was actually hauled by a diesel locomotive coupled to the EMU's. Of course then it was all one big BR so diesels and EMU's had the same owner operator.

 

Progress I guess????

[Claude_Dreyfus]

Imagine a bank.

 

You have £10,000 deposited into it. Then £500 is withdrawn. A week later another £100 is withdrawn, and so one, so forth. Problem is, that initial deposit us not replenished, so eventually and inevitably it disappears. There is no money left.

 

Now, imagine that bank is a railway company, and the deposit is not cash, but goodwill. Eventually, with every crass excuse, delay due to bad planning, lessons continually not learned (London Bridge over the last two years), a complete absence of information when things go wrong, late/dirty/crammed trains, that goodwill disappears...without being replenished.

 

This isn't about one night, or one cancellation, this is months and months of issues, some minor, some significant... This is when your train is a least 10 minutes late every night (except tonight, it is 15).

 

This is frustration, this is what happens when a company squanders a good reputation. Stuff happens that is completely out of their control, but they will get hammered for it.

[96701]

The usual twin fusterclucks of Southeastern and Notwork Fail strike again. SWMBO was an hour late today despite getting on her normal train within 10 mins of scheduled time. Little communication from SE as per normal. Trains diverted at the last second with no warning. Trains showing on the live departures apps suddenly vanishing.

 

Capture.JPG

Who do you work for? Perhaps I could use an offensive term for them too.

[melmerby]

If the railways are deteriorating at the rate a lot of people claim why are passenger numbers still rising continuously?

Something about them must be right

The increases are not just down to population growth.

 

Keith

[duncan]

isn't the current high enough that it melts the thin ice covering, especially when arcing ?

[meld]

Yes, the ice does melt under arcing when it is a thin sheet, but immediately re-freezes as the metal conductor rail ( steel or Aluminium ) is still well below freezing.

[stewartingram]

And the alternative is?  Easy...drive your car instead!

 

Hang on, does your car journey run to a precise timetable? So that you can reliably say that departure at (say) 0705 from home gives an arrival at 0840? Or can you not ACCURATELY predict the journey time, but just ESTIMATE it? (with many variables that change for every journey). Biggest problem is congestion?

 

Now look at the railway journey.

The timetable CAN be accurately planned (by the operator), it is NOT an estimation. Yes errors can occur but will be revised. This really centres around traffic flows (ie congestion) along the journey, thus a major problem of a road journey is eliminated by going by rail

Other delay factors are common to both types of journey; breakdowns, weather related events, accidents etc. But funny how on a rail journey, the blame can be passed to the (railway) system, but on the road the same type of incident is rarely blamed on anything to do with the road system!

 

I commute about 90 miles to work, either day or night shift. Approx 75 miles by train (Great Northern, with occasionally Greater Anglia as an alternative), and including across central London by tube, (though instead sometimes by bus).

In general, GN gives a good reliable service; maybe a few minutes late arrival (say <10 minutes). Insignificant in reality, and certainly far less than the ETA by road can be predicted. GA does provide a slower alternative; worst delay in 11 years has been just over an hour though. Even using a totally different route (Thameslink) only cost about 40 minutes!

The tube runs to a timetable, but we never think of that, just turn-up-and-go. Problem is, a delay with 1 train affects the whole line until that problem is cleared, but plenty of alternative lines, or bus, or walk.

Bus across London depends on the roads with the same estimation of journey time factored in.

My car journey (home station or return) can only be estimated. I ALWAYS leave home with time to spare, preferring to have waiting time at the station if the journey is good.

 

In short, NO journey anywhere can be accurately predicted, there are just too many factors that can change. However, rail comes top and is very reliable; when things go wrong (and probably because of my inside knowledge) I usually reckon that when a problem occurs, corrective actions take effect within 30-40 mins, which gets things moving. Give it about 90-120 mins and the delays are back to insignificant.

 

And then, use of a car involves extra costs that are rarely factored in by drivers.

 End of journey parking.

 Wear and tear and depreciation on the car.

 Need for insurance to cover the commute.

 Responsibility of ensuring the car doesn't break down on route also puts that onus on the driver...so better servicing (not just an annual MoT and fix if it fails?) with the cost that entails.

TRUE running cost is not that you get 40mpg at pump price of £1/litre (why do we say it that way??).

 

To me these things say use rail whenever I can.

 

Stewart

[Sidecar Racer]

Who do you work for? Perhaps I could use an offensive term for them too.

 

To late , he already uses that and others .

[phil-b259]

Imagine a bank.

 

You have £10,000 deposited into it. Then £500 is withdrawn. A week later another £100 is withdrawn, and so one, so forth. Problem is, that initial deposit us not replenished, so eventually and inevitably it disappears. There is no money left.

 

Now, imagine that bank is a railway company, and the deposit is not cash, but goodwill. Eventually, with every crass excuse, delay due to bad planning, lessons continually not learned (London Bridge over the last two years), a complete absence of information when things go wrong, late/dirty/crammed trains, that goodwill disappears...without being replenished.

 

This isn't about one night, or one cancellation, this is months and months of issues, some minor, some significant... This is when your train is a least 10 minutes late every night (except tonight, it is 15).

 

This is frustration, this is what happens when a company squanders a good reputation. Stuff happens that is completely out of their control, but they will get hammered for it.

 

Oh don't get me wrong - punctuality etc on the Brighton Main Line is rubbish generally and commuters are not happy - yes they do deserve better for the money they pay for their tickets. Thing is we (the front line staff know it, our bosses know it and even the heads of NR / Southern know it) - but there are no easy fixes. If there was we would have done them by now.

 

Due to demand we are obliged to try and run more services yet, we have too little stock to do so, with too few drivers to drive them, with not enough stabling / servicing space to fix them on an infrastructure whose 1980s signalling was never designed to cope with the current level of service on tracks that are in desperately in need of renewal (particularly at key junctions where the underlying sub base is shot to bits and tamping does nothing and all the wooden sleepers are 30 years old meaning keeping point fittings secure is an ongoing battle) but there is not enough time for the engineers to do so thanks to the ever increasing number of trains.

 

If we had a magic wand to fix things we would - but the truth is we don't and can't. So you get a bad service and we don't get the opportunities we need to stand half a chance of making serious improvements.

 

Its a fact that while people think the BML is not as busy as the WCML because its only a 'commuter' line - if you actually have a look at the stats the BML actually comfortably beats the WCML in terms of number of trains most days.

 

Oh and please note this is not some sort of cry for sympathy etc. I just want people to understand what we inside the industry as a whole are up against and acknowledge its not as simple as the press like to make out.

[APOLLO]

Slight frost and our trains don't run

 

Not so here - this one got through - JUST !!!!!!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iwYHFhl7yM

 

Some nice diesel thrash !!

 

Brit15

[jjb1970]

The problem for the railways is that even if they offer an excellent service for 99% of the time it tends to be the days when it all goes horribly wrong that people remember. I commute in/out of London for work and yes it is infuriating when things go wrong but I have to say that I find the trains between London and Milton Keynes (I know it is a different line from these problems, but the WCML also has its moments) to be clean, reliable, fast and overall provide an excellent service. I know it is the done thing to bemoan the TOCs but I find London Midland (at least their Southern bit out of Euston, can't speak for their ops further North) to be very good.

[Dan Hamblin]

On the Underground a fixed percentage of the fleet on each line (Victoria and W&C excepting) are fitted with de-icing fluid tanks and dispensing nozzles. This way de-icing fluid can be dispensed on the conductor rail before the ice can form and is more effective than trying to melt the stuff after it has formed. Perhaps this is a solution that should be adopted for main line use?

 

Normally the train operator will turn the de-icing system on when boards on the lineside are displayed, but on the more extensive NR infrastructure a radio broadcast or even remote GPS activation could be considered. GPS may be more effective actually because you wouldn't want to dispense the fuid in tunnels as that is a waste of time. If capacity is an issue then there must be records of the areas that are worst affected currently, which could be used for targetted dispensing, again using GPS activation.

 

Regards,

 

Dan

[phil-b259]

On the Underground a fixed percentage of the fleet on each line (Victoria and W&C excepting) are fitted with de-icing fluid tanks and dispensing nozzles. This way de-icing fluid can be dispensed on the conductor rail before the ice can form and is more effective than trying to melt the stuff after it has formed. Perhaps this is a solution that should be adopted for main line use?

 

Normally the train operator will turn the de-icing system on when boards on the lineside are displayed, but on the more extensive NR infrastructure a radio broadcast or even remote GPS activation could be considered. GPS may be more effective actually because you wouldn't want to dispense the fuid in tunnels as that is a waste of time. If capacity is an issue then there must be records of the areas that are worst affected currently, which could be used for targetted dispensing, again using GPS activation.

 

Regards,

 

Dan

 

Its certainly a possible solution - however don't forget London Underground have a massive advantage in that they own both the infrastructure and operate all the trains - plus on quite a lot of lines they own the stock and manage the depots too. Thanks to the way the privatisation has been done on the mainline you have to get several parties to come together when the accountants, DfT and whole industry structure effectively is designed to frustrate such things.

 

For example

 

Southern can claim delay minute payments back from NR if the con rail ices up and a fair proportion of passengers will not claim compensation so whats the incentive for them to come on board?

Whos responsibility / who is going to pay to fill the de-icing tanks on the trains and maintain the discharge equipment when it is only required a few months a year?

Will the train leasing companies play ball or will they demand stupid money for it?

Will the trains cost more to lease? how will this affect the franchise costs and subsidy profile?

How does NR demonstrate to HM Treasury that it is lowering rail costs by promoting 'competition' if it stops the current procedure of contracting out such tretment trains to the FOCs?

 

I'm not saying these are unsolvable issues - far from it, but it needs to be recognised that the way LU is structured is miles different from the national network and what they do is not necessarily easy to organise elsewhere - even if its not hard to do physically.

[Dan Hamblin]

I should have remembered that with so much fragmentation simple solutions never happen...

 

Regards,

 

Dan

[Edge]

I'll just put in a nice note here for all of the southern employees - I regularly travel to Brighton on your trains and I've yet to be delayed or given any particular cause for worry / concern during any of my trips. Same with my journies to East Grinstead, only had an issue one at Clapham Junction which was immediately put right by on train staff.

 

Just thought it would be nice for balance for one guy to say how nice his experience was

[jonny777]

The problem with showers moving inland from the south coast, is that their positions are highly unpredictable as is their intensity. If the rain freezes on contact with the third rail, or the skies clear and temperatures drop sharply afterwards, it will ony become a problem along the narrow corridor where the shower passed. Another line two miles away could be completely unaffected.

 

NR can de-ice the rails at 0100, but if the shower falls at 0300 and washes the de-icer off, then freezes again - what use is that?

 

The Highways Agency have exactly the same problem in showery conditions with roads - they grit the roads early in the night, a shower washes all the salt off, the skies clear, the temperature falls to minus 2 and the road is covered in a sheet of black ice; cars crash and every driver insists the gritters had not been out.

 

As it is impossible to follow every single shower all through the night with a de-icer; we are just going to have to calm down in those conditions and accept that delays will occur.

[AndrewC]

Sidecar Racer, on 12 Feb 2016 - 21:27, said:

To late , he already uses that and others .

If he thinks that was offensive, his head would explode if he spend a few minutes reading what people on Twitter are saying about SE, Southern, & NR.

 

Mr Dreyfus hit the nail on the head. Any good will and credibility they had is long gone. I highly doubt that it can ever be restored without a wholesale change. Changing the ToCs is just trying to polish a turd. The biggest issue is not the constant poor service but poor communications. Every major problem for the past 8 years has come out with a comms issue as being one of the major lessons to be learned. That lesson is never applied. The next disruption and the same lack of communication happens. Nothing has changed, nothing has improved, nothing will. The peasants are sharpening their pitchforks and lighting the torches. Even legit problems like freezing rain on the conductor rail is one more slap in the face to the commuter. Again the comms were poor from SE. What did come across was worded as to invite ridicule.

[caradoc]

The issue of communications with passengers is a long-running one (probably as old as the railway itself !), and despite current railway processes such as PIDD (Passenger Information During Disruption), which have strict instructions on how, when and what should be advised to passengers,  there are obviously still major problems. However, in a situation such as these difficulties on the Southern, when trains are stopping in section and cannot draw power, it may well be that no-one actually knows how long it will take to get things moving. Should the information provided then just be 'sorry, train(s) are at a stand and we don't know at present when we will get moving again' ? It should also be noted that staffing levels on the railway are planned for a 'normal' workload and when several serious events occur at the same time staff can become overwhelmed. Passengers certainly are entitled to be kept informed, but sometimes this is hard to achieve.

 

Regarding de-icing the 3rd rail, given the route mileage of the Southern (far, far greater than the London Underground) it would be impossible to do this effectively every night, apart from also severely hampering maintenance and inspection work. 

[phil-b259]

If he thinks that was offensive, his head would explode if he spend a few minutes reading what people on Twitter are saying about SE, Southern, & NR.

 

Mr Dreyfus hit the nail on the head. Any good will and credibility they had is long gone. I highly doubt that it can ever be restored without a wholesale change. Changing the ToCs is just trying to polish a turd. The biggest issue is not the constant poor service but poor communications. Every major problem for the past 8 years has come out with a comms issue as being one of the major lessons to be learned. That lesson is never applied. The next disruption and the same lack of communication happens. Nothing has changed, nothing has improved, nothing will. The peasants are sharpening their pitchforks and lighting the torches. Even legit problems like freezing rain on the conductor rail is one more slap in the face to the commuter. Again the comms were poor from SE. What did come across was worded as to invite ridicule.

 

While not excusing poor communications there is a fundamental truth in that many serious problems / challenging issues on the railway sound ridiculous to ordinary people. The recent issue with strong sunlight preventing drivers from being able to see if anyone was trapped in the doors of DOO trains being a very good example - though  'leaves on the line' has bought out similar cries of derision from commuters for years.

 

I mean if the BBC felt the need to point out in its recent reporting on the disastrous head on collision in Germany that "Trains cannot steer round obstacles" what chance do we in the industry have?

[Oldddudders]

There is nothing new under the (Winter) sun. One morning in 1971 (or '72) an up peak service lost the juice near Balcombe, probably due to similar icing. The service took hours to get re-started. The Divisional Manager, who lived locally, went up into Haywards Heath box, effectively taking control of the situation, but failed to do anything. Next day his job was in the window. He finished his career in the freight business. Privatisation wasn't even a dream of politicians then.

 

As has been explained, modern rolling stock is so much more sophisticated than the original 1930s units, but there has been a trade-off in the efficacy of pick-up shoes, now cantilevered instead of fixed, I think, for valid reasons.

 

Rather like safety, design looks at likelihoods before increasing costs to cover every situation. Whether this needs re-examining is open to debate, but I doubt it can be justified.

[roundhouse]

We were lucky yesterday as our train ran close to time. However ther were no trains to Tonbridge and the station announcement briefly touched on the South Eastern service being severely disrupted.

However the automated announcement was saying that it was 'severe weather conditions' which it wasn't. I didn't hear it rain but as Phil has said I guessed that it has rained in the early hours then it had frozen. Ironically Tonbridge is where many of the NR RHT / de-icer trains are kept. All the Southern services to Reigate were suspended but luckily the deisel GWR ones were running.

 

What I did notice is that the situation got worse as the morning progressed and trains were badly disrupted into the evening. Again, I was lucky with the train that I caught home from Victoria but the train was considerably busier due to ther services having been cancelled.

 

There are signalling problems between East Croydon and Gatwick this morning but luckily we are not using the trains this weekend. Phew!!

 

Whilst I understand many of the problems it does get very frustrating when most days we are delayed. Our trains used to have a booked runof just over 30 minutes but many these days are now timed at over 40 minutes and are invariably taking 50 minutes or more. That's a huge increase in journey time for a 20 mile run I percentage terms.

 

One evening recently we arrived back to Redhill and despite our train leaving LBG on time and no crawling enroute we were five late into Redhill and we just missed the bus home yet again but being late evening there are a lot fewer. I was so wound up with a previous weeks of delays I kicked a bin and hurt myself.. My own fault but the frustration builds up over time.

 

It's noticeable of late that on Southern services they have generally given up announcements re delays probably hoping hat you don't notice or its just such a regular occurrence that why bother.

 

Recently our company had a small project at East Surrey hospital. One bloke who would often have a go at me for all the delays getting in to wrk, made a few visits by train saying what's the problem till one day he couldn't get to Refhill due to many cancellation and gave up, hasn't had a go at me since then!!

[phil-b259]

There are signalling problems between East Croydon and Gatwick this morning but luckily we are not using the trains this weekend. Phew!!

 

 

The issue today is an overnight ultrasonics test train picked up a severe twist defect on the Down fast at Earlswood through the out of use platform requiring the line to be blocked immediately due to the derailment risk. NR do not generally have large quantities of p-way sitting round 24 / 7 that they can just pluck from nowhere so it has taken some time to get together all the staff and materials to resolve the issue. It is unfortunate the issue occurred where it did because the location of the crossovers at Earlswood mean the Down fast is effectively shut from Stoats nest junction all the way to Tinsley Green junction south of Gatwick Airport - with the only passing opportunity occurring at Redhill and significantly reducing the number of available platforms at Gatwick for down trains.

[AndrewC]

phil-b259, on 13 Feb 2016 - 10:31, said:

While not excusing poor communications there is a fundamental truth in that many serious problems / challenging issues on the railway sound ridiculous to ordinary people. The recent issue with strong sunlight preventing drivers from being able to see if anyone was trapped in the doors of DOO trains being a very good example

This is a perfect example. An "ordinary" person asks why this happened. Its not as if the sun has never shone at that time of day at that angle before. Has the Earth shifted on its axis? At Lewisham there are always staff about. An "ordinary" person asks why one of them couldn't check the doors and despatch the train as they do at London Bridge (many other stations are available). An "ordinary" person sees a driver just sitting there waiting for the sun to move and a whole line backed up and disrupted because nobody at SE had the idea to get station staff to assist. An "ordinary" person sitting on a train for 45 minutes with no announcement from the driver tends to get rather p*ssed off. An "ordinary" person standing at a platform for 45 minutes with no information and the staff having vanished from the platform and ticket office wonders what he/she has paid for. If SE say the staff weren't qualified to despatch the train then an "ordinary" person asks why staff are lacking in training and why there are no procedures an policies in place to handle these types of situations. Are you telling me that the platform monitors never fail? Are you telling me that if they do fail at one station the whole line gets closed? Its these absurdities and how the railways fail to handle these situations that have led to their total loss of credibility and becoming a subject of ridicule. The perceived arrogance of railway staff in thinking they need to dumb down their information to the "ordinary" people is patronising and insulting. Perhaps more robust, honest, and direct communications would have gone a long way to mitigating things.

 

Lastly, the "ordinary" person doesn't give a flying crap about the never ending excuses and whinging about how hard it is to run a railway. For them a commute is a service. A very expensive service that has been bought and paid for. Its a service that far too often isn't being contractually met by the supplier. Like any other product or service these days if it doesn't deliver what is expected then it is not fit for purpose in the eyes of the consumer.

[phil-b259]

 

What I did notice is that the situation got worse as the morning progressed and trains were badly disrupted into the evening. Again, I was lucky with the train that I caught home from Victoria but the train was considerably busier due to ther services having been cancelled.

 

 

This is a symptom of all the things I outline earlier. With not enough staff in the correct place, not enough trains (or them being in the wrong place) a timetable that tries to fit in more trains that the signalling can cope with, passenger flows distorted due to the train service not running as per timetable in the first place it is very difficult to recover things once it has gone wrong.

[AndrewC]

One thing I should mention before getting crucified by the railwaymen on this forum. I'm not referring to those that work hard daily against almost impossible circumstances to keep things running. I do know how difficult things really are and just how much effort is put into getting us ungrateful b*stards from A to B every day.

  

My anger and frustration is directed at (as is a large number of commuters and commuter groups) the poor management and broken customer processes of NR and the ToCs. The 12 car fiasco on the Woolwich line. London Bridge where there will actually be a reduction in calling peak hour services to CST and CHX after the 3 years of rebuild. (a rebuild to a 20 year old design that is already inadequate for the existing passenger numbers)