ECS Derailment - Paddington

[Edwin_m]

Nobody. 

Likely question is; who decides to put a mast at the end of a trap point?  Answer being some Bods in an office who probaby didn't know the trap was even there.

 

 

Regards,

Paul

The Stationmaster demonstrated a couple of pages back how the trap is actually alongside the previous mast, thereby maximising the distance the train must run derailed before it hits the next one. 

[roythebus]

The query in my post earlier was about the mis-information or lack of joined-up information given to passengers.

[Wheatley]

Nobody. Likely question is; who decides to put a mast at the end of a trap point?  Answer being some Bods in an office who probaby didn't know the trap was even there.

Did you actually read the earlier bit of the thread where SM and I both pointed out why/how that wasn't the case ? Which industry do you work in ? Just in case I want to make some flippant remark about how I could run it better than you.

[bigP]

--

[FraserClarke]

I'm not really sure what went on and why. Inevitably in the past when there was a serious blockage on the GWML east of Reading passengers would be told to go to Waterloo.

Inital response i heard was for us to stay on the train - if they got a road, they were going asap. After 20 min it became clear nothing would be moving for a few hours, and we were redirected. Announcements did initially recommend Ealing Broadway, as trains would "still be running from there" - or Waterloo for Reading. The issue with the latter was whether LU or Waterloo would accept all tickets. I guess it wasn't yet clear just how serious the delays would become.

 

I considered Ealing, but quickly decided it was a bad idea. Being Oxford bound, headed for Marylebone 'a pied'. Marylebone was already mental and trains unboardable. Information there was that Marylebone and Waterloo were taking GWML tickets, but Euston was not (a particular pain for those heading west of brum).

 

After 20 min I gave up on the rail network and got the Oxford bus instead. Great - until the westway ground to a halt due to flooding! Took over 2 hours to reach park royal when we got there, the flooding was little more than a puddle in the inside lane!

 

With hindsight, I should have headed to kings cross, got the next train to Edinburgh, and visited my parents. Would have been quicker than getting to Oxford!

[Turbo_Tim]

Strangely Network Rail appear to have just Tweeted a picture of the trap points involved in this incident, in connection with something else entirely: https://twitter.com/networkrail/status/744274059333091329 .

[The Stationmaster]

Strangely Network Rail appear to have just Tweeted a picture of the trap points involved in this incident, in connection with something else entirely: https://twitter.com/networkrail/status/744274059333091329 .

 

I wonder if they realised (before it was pointed out)?  And I wonder how long the picture will last on their tweet?

[Turbo_Tim]

I wonder if they realised (before it was pointed out)?  And I wonder how long the picture will last on their tweet?

I doubt it. I imagine the people who do marketing and tweeting probably are quite far removed from the physical railway.

 

Or maybe they asked someone technical for the photo and they thought they'd send them this one for a laugh

[Ivatt46403]

There's some great pics and vids of the rerailing on the Great Western Route twitter page:

 

https://twitter.com/networkrailwest/status/744157507761864704

 

https://twitter.com/networkrailwest/status/744199539293294596

 

https://twitter.com/networkrailwest/status/744163292701204480

 

(amongst others)

 

Marcus.

[RJS1977]

The query in my post earlier was about the mis-information or lack of joined-up information given to passengers.

 

Not necessarily unique to the privatised railway though. I remember about 10-15 years ago heading to London for a display of F1 cars in Regent Street. Caught the Bakerloo Line train at Paddington to be told at Baker Street that dur to overcrowding, Piccadilly Circus station was shut and to catch the Jubilee Line train to Green Park. Over to the Jubilee Line then, to be told Green Park station was closed and to catch the Bakerloo Line train to Piccadilly Circus...

[rob D2]

Would this normally be career limiting ?

 

Or bollocking , re training and back on it ?

[Great Western]

There is a suggestion the driver was taken ill, it would suggest the distance the unit got after the intial spad.

 

Complete conjecture of course but, driver is breaking for the red, takes ill falls on BPH train passes peg and off the road it goes.

[The Stationmaster]

There is a suggestion the driver was taken ill, it would suggest the distance the unit got after the intial spad.

 

Complete conjecture of course but, driver is breaking for the red, takes ill falls on BPH train passes peg and off the road it goes.

 

I have heard a whisper that there could be more to it than that.  However unless RAIB get involved we'll probably never hear any detail of what happened or why;  as far as we're concerned it's a SPAD and that's the end of it although something might be found in the SPAD summary when it's published next year..

[RJS1977]

I'm not really sure what went on and why.  Inevitably in the past when there was a serious blockage on the GWML east of Reading passengers would be told to go to Waterloo - which offers three potential diversionary routes to Reading while Reading itself now has even more capacity than it has ever had in the past to turnround long distance trains from further west.  I'd have been off to Waterloo like a rocket, remembered Ascot was on and them headed via eitehr Guildford or Basinsgtoke - easy enough to tell others to do the same.

 

 

Apart from Ascot, the other issue with a Waterloo diversion is that the Bakerloo Line platforms are currently out of use at Paddington. Those two factors put together probably mean this is about the worst time it could have happened from a diversionary point of view.

 

PS - one other Waterloo diversion you didn't mention - to Slough via Windsor!

[RJS1977]

Incidentally I was talking to a fellow CWRPS member earlier today who had been on his way to an RCTS meeting in Bourne End on Thursday where Chris Green was speaking and was being introduced by Mark Hopwood. My friend and Mark Hopwood both arrived at Bourne End on the same train and were walking together to the venue, when Mark Hopwood's mobile rang, he answered it, and after a brief conversation legged it back to the station without explanation to my friend, to try to get back to his office as quickly as possible.

 

When my friend arrived at the RCTS venue, Chris Green was just arriving and my friend explained that Mark Hopwood had been called away unexpectedly. Chris Green said Mark Hopwood had already phoned him and told my friend about the accident.

[royaloak]

I have heard a whisper that there could be more to it than that.  However unless RAIB get involved we'll probably never hear any detail of what happened or why;  as far as we're concerned it's a SPAD and that's the end of it although something might be found in the SPAD summary when it's published next year..

The report will make interesting reading thats for sure. 

 

In view of your earlier post about why it took so long to get the trains moving again, I wonder why it took  them more than 5 minutes to fix all the TC cables that were cut by the derailed train?

The overheads were also knocked out of position but hey its just the MDTR that has these problems isnt it, I mean health and safety wouldnt affect any of the methods of working either compared to what happened in 1983 would it!

[The Stationmaster]

The report will make interesting reading thats for sure. 

 

In view of your earlier post about why it took so long to get the trains moving again, I wonder why it took  them more than 5 minutes to fix all the TC cables that were cut by the derailed train?

The overheads were also knocked out of position but hey its just the MDTR that has these problems isnt it, I mean health and safety wouldnt affect any of the methods of working either compared to what happened in 1983 would it!

 

As the Health & Safety Act applied as much in 1983 as it does today I doubt that would make any difference at all.  the big difference between then and now is the ability to quickly get people out on the ground to assess what has happened and what can be done, if anything, to safely work around it plus of course how the ohle isolation zones are arranged (plus the extra job of checking ohle structure damage.

 

Cut cables is nothing new either - the big difference nowadays is the lack of operating staff to be able to work around whatever signalling kit is out of action until such time as it is repaired.

[royaloak]

H&S rules have got much tighter now than they were in 1983.

 

We cant afford to have people waiting around 'just in case' as that is far too expensive, as major incidents dont happen very often I think we an assume it is cheaper to shut up shop (as at Paddington on Thursday) than it is to have the necessary staff available.

And no I dont agree with it either.

[Reorte]

We cant afford to have people waiting around 'just in case' as that is far too expensive, as major incidents dont happen very often I think we an assume it is cheaper to shut up shop (as at Paddington on Thursday) than it is to have the necessary staff available.

And no I dont agree with it either.

I suppose that's a downside to greater reliability. If you very rarely have problems it genuinely doesn't make all that much sense to have people sitting around twiddling their thumbs just in case. The practical choice is, I suppose, between frequent minor problems or less frequent larger ones. Not that that means that the right balance has been struck but that's a question for people much more in the know than me.

[Dunsignalling]

As the Health & Safety Act applied as much in 1983 as it does today I doubt that would make any difference at all.  the big difference between then and now is the ability to quickly get people out on the ground to assess what has happened and what can be done, if anything, to safely work around it plus of course how the ohle isolation zones are arranged (plus the extra job of checking ohle structure damage.

 

Cut cables is nothing new either - the big difference nowadays is the lack of operating staff to be able to work around whatever signalling kit is out of action until such time as it is repaired.

If NR can't get hold of enough operating staff to work around problems in London, what hope is there of any better grip being gained on a similar incident elsewhere in the country?

 

They have made a commitment to the Government that they will run the railway system with fewer staff. That is being achieved by concentrating people in large, remote new control centres leaving minimal front line staff on the ground.

 

In BR days, contingencies like this would have been dealt with by drafting in station staff, off-duty signallers etc. that are simply no longer available. The former because they are employed by other companies and the latter because those that remain are increasingly based many miles away, in new control centres that have been consciously located to avoid the need to pay London allowances to their staff.

 

The parallels between civil engineering and railway operation in Victorian times and now are striking. Nowadays, our greater knowledge of materials, geology etc. means that bridges etc. can be designed to do a little more than is needed for a little longer than is needed. However, we are still very reliant on the fact that our forebears were less "clever" so over-engineered structures to such a degree that many remain in regular use carrying multiples of the loads (and at multiples of the speeds) envisaged at the time they were built. Similarly, railways have become more predictable (most of the time) and run on a tiny fraction of the staffing needed a century ago, though the spectrum of duties they perform is much narrower.

 

It is simply not "financially viable" to maintain the ability to keep the system functioning when things go wrong. Tiny numbers of relatively local response staff (usually covering around 100 route miles apiece) remain to stop small incidents escalating into major causes of delay but the railway industry no longer has any large-scale operational response capability of its own. Employing people "just in case" as civic society considers necessary with Fire and Rescue etc. is a thing of the past.

 

Service back-up nowadays relies almost entirely on Controllers or Operations Managers having enough bus company phone numbers in their little black books. The lack, in most cases, of anything more, is a consequence of policy decisions.

 

John

[The Stationmaster]

If NR can't get hold of enough operating staff to work around problems in London, what hope is there of any better grip being gained on a similar incident elsewhere in the country?

 

They have made a commitment to the Government that they will run the railway system with fewer staff. That is being achieved by concentrating people in large, remote new control centres leaving minimal front line staff on the ground.

 

In BR days, contingencies like this would have been dealt with by drafting in station staff, off-duty signallers etc. that are simply no longer available. The former because they are employed by other companies and the latter because those that remain are increasingly based many miles away, in new control centres that have been consciously located to avoid the need to pay London allowances to their staff.

 

The parallels between civil engineering and railway operation in Victorian times and now are striking. Nowadays, our greater knowledge of materials, geology etc. means that bridges etc. can be designed to do a little more than is needed for a little longer than is needed. However, we are still very reliant on the fact that our forebears were less "clever" so over-engineered structures to such a degree that many remain in regular use carrying multiples of the loads (and at multiples of the speeds) envisaged at the time they were built. Similarly, railways have become more predictable (most of the time) and run on a tiny fraction of the staffing needed a century ago, though the spectrum of duties they perform is much narrower.

 

It is simply not "financially viable" to maintain the ability to keep the system functioning when things go wrong. Tiny numbers of relatively local response staff (usually covering around 100 route miles apiece) remain to stop small incidents escalating into major causes of delay but the railway industry no longer has any large-scale operational response capability of its own. Employing people "just in case" as civic society considers necessary with Fire and Rescue etc. is a thing of the past.

 

Service back-up nowadays relies almost entirely on Controllers or Operations Managers having enough bus company phone numbers in their little black books. The lack, in most cases, of anything more, is a consequence of policy decisions.

 

John

 

Exactly so - very little to do with the  Health & Safety Act (which in respect of rail staff safety is virtually unchanged since it became law in 1974) and a lot more to do with economics and not staffing for resilience - the sheer number of Relief Signalmen's posts, let alone supervisory posts, which have vanished with concentration of signalling control into centres covering very large areas has removed a major pool of people with the knowledge, ability, and availability to enable fairly quick reaction to the impact of incidents such as this one.

[jjb1970]

H&S often provides a convenient excuse to distract attention from poor management and performance. I'm not denying that some daft things are done by people who believe it is necessary for H&S compliance but in the main a well managed company can run efficiently and productively and meet its HSAW obligations without the sort of silliness that always gets trotted out.

[Edwin_m]

The other point is that accidents are much rarer these days.  The safety record of passenger trains has improved significantly in recent decades, but probably more important there are no longer all the loose-coupled freights and shunting which would have been putting something into the dirt somewhere on the network every couple of days.  So it simply isn't worthwhile to provide breakdown equipment and crews at every depot, and if they were still there then they probably wouldn't get enough practice to know what to do on the rare occasions they were needed. 

[roythebus]

The managers can have as many bus company numbers as they want in their books. bus companies, like railways, have cut everything back to the bone. There is no luxury of spare staff or buses.

 

I was involved in providing buses for the Southall and Ladbroke Grove crashes, and trying to get staff and buses just to Paddington was a nightmare. We got some to Padd, They left for Ealing broadway which took about 2 hours from Padd. we sent a couple of Routemasters to Reading as they became available off daytime bus routes, that took 3 hours. Buses were sourced from all over the country to provide cover. Trying to get anything anywhere in London these days is far worse than it ever was. If you're very lucky you might get a few spare tourist coaches in the late afternoon and evening. 

 

To get the hundreds of buses to cover a major emergency like this will take days.

[Reorte]

Talking of buses I really think that the railway missed a trick when they were running emergency trains at Workington due to the railway bridge being the only usable one left nearby. That was a great opportunity for "Road replacement train"!