GWML reliability 2017

[Mark_A]

OK, some of it will be related to the amount of work for electrification, but the episodes of major disruption the line has seen in the last few months must be really discouraging for staff as well as for passengers. (The latest being the signal failure that's closed Exeter-Taunton in the late afternoon on a Sunday and which may be a repeat of a failure last Wednesday...)

 

Mark

[The Stationmaster]

OK, some of it will be related to the amount of work for electrification, but the episodes of major disruption the line has seen in the last few months must be really discouraging for staff as well as for passengers. (The latest being the signal failure that's closed Exeter-Taunton in the late afternoon on a Sunday and which may be a repeat of a failure last Wednesday...)

 

Mark

 

Maybe the 'sort of' alliance with GWR getting together managerially with the NR Zone will lead to an improvement?  Although to be honest while a few significant 'signal failures' aren't the swallow which makes a summer they do leave one asking questions about NR's ability to respond quickly to technical problems which quickly hit train operations - perhaps if they realised that was closely related to passenger opinion thjy might be encouraged to do something?

[D854_Tiger]

Maybe the 'sort of' alliance with GWR getting together managerially with the NR Zone will lead to an improvement?  Although to be honest while a few significant 'signal failures' aren't the swallow which makes a summer they do leave one asking questions about NR's ability to respond quickly to technical problems which quickly hit train operations - perhaps if they realised that was closely related to passenger opinion thjy might be encouraged to do something?

 

Just wait till it starts raining again.

[The Stationmaster]

Just wait till it starts raining again.

 

We had almost 12 hours of rain overnight one day last week and I think the nearest (to us) bit of the GWML also received it.  And earlier last week part of the GWML was sat under a mid-afternoon heavy thunderstorm for an hour or so presumably the right sort of rain

[Mark_A]

Yesterday wasn't good, and now another day with very serious disruption, this time for Paddington, beginning just before the evening passenger flow. This can't be easy for anyone...

[Rivercider]

OK, some of it will be related to the amount of work for electrification, but the episodes of major disruption the line has seen in the last few months must be really discouraging for staff as well as for passengers. (The latest being the signal failure that's closed Exeter-Taunton in the late afternoon on a Sunday and which may be a repeat of a failure last Wednesday...)

 

Mark

Yes, I had the pleasure of seeing the route between Exeter and Taunton at a much more leisurely pace on my way back from the Exeter Exhibition.

Two hours stood up by the door at the end of the coach with a varied selection of fellow passengers, some of whom had already been waiting an hour at Exeter,

As we stopped at each signal along the way the guard made an apology for the delay due to 'signalling problems'.

I don't remember passing so many red or unlit signals on the same journey ever before, at least one of the road crossings along the way was being protected by the BTP,

 

cheers 

[Zomboid]

It's been unusual lately to get from Reading to Paddington in the morning peak without encountering some kind of delay along the way. They always say Signalling Problems or "Congestion" on the PA, but who knows what it really is...

 

I also got to see a 57 dragging a HST set out of Paddington earlier this week, which was a nice change to the usual. Probably something relatively minor, like the speedo in the leading PC being broken, making it impossible to drive the train from that end...

[The Stationmaster]

Yesterday wasn't good, and now another day with very serious disruption, this time for Paddington, beginning just before the evening passenger flow. This can't be easy for anyone...

 

The 'problem' seems to have started c.16.00 with Up trains being terminated at Reading from that time while the last Down train to leave Paddington was the 15.49 stopper to Reading which was very clearly caught up in the problems as it was 270 minutes late arriving at Slough although the 15.45 Paddington to Hayes was terminated at West Ealing so maybe the problem was not actually at Paddington?

[SouthernMafia]

Total loss of signalling in the Hayes & Harlington area this afternoon, which was a repeat failure from yesterday as well. NR are still working on the fix now but understand the Relief lines are open at least. Sadly there doesn't seem to be a day free of problems between Reading and Padd but this afternoon was just totally catastrophic, not to mention the inability to run much of a service west of Reading because of stranded and out-of-hours crew.

[SouthernMafia]

http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/C29394/2017/07/06/advanced

 

1W32 arrived Reading nearly 5 hours late after being trapped at Airport Jnc. TBW was eventually set up but again lack of trained NR ground staff in any quantity means it takes a long time to get it operational.

[The Stationmaster]

http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/C29394/2017/07/06/advanced

 

1W32 arrived Reading nearly 5 hours late after being trapped at Airport Jnc. TBW was eventually set up but again lack of trained NR ground staff in any quantity means it takes a long time to get it operational.

 

It would seem to me an increasingly sensible idea to suitably train all the Zone's senior ops people in temporary block working Rules & Regs - even if it took them time to get to site it might still be quicker than some of their present abysmal antics.  I say that speaking as someone whose weekend was destroyed by the failure between Swindon and Didcot back in April when quite bluntly all they needed was a couple of people out to clip points and barelya handful to put in temporary block working - within walking distance of the Zone HQ in respect of the end of one direction of temporary block working.  If all the Zone's senior ops people weren't out on that job, and ready to hand anyway in view of that weekend's closure of the Berks & Hants, there's something rather basic adrift with the Zone's management of its operations and attention to detail.

[37114]

I got caught up in it big time. Colleague texted me at 4pm to tell me that all trains out of Pad were stopped. Stayed in office till 7, hoping it would be fixed but was obvious from live departures that nothing was moving anytime soon. Got home to Chippenham at 11pm, having had to go via Waterloo, Basingstoke and Reading, the last train being standing room only to Swindon. Pretty ridiculous bearing in mind it went wrong on Wednesday night as well. I am sure it was no coincidence that more and more colleagues work from home more now

Edited July 7, 2017 by 37114

[Mark_A]

Another unrelated major disruption this evening with Paddington services suspended from 8pm for at least two hours. Can't be easy to restart things to get everyone home.

[Banger Blue]

Another unrelated major disruption this evening with Paddington services suspended from 8pm for at least two hours. Can't be easy to restart things to get everyone home.

An electrical fire under Platform 10 saw the station evacuated and the Fire Brigade attending.

 

Trains were turning round at Slough and turning round / terminating at Reading.

 

Blew my carefully crafted plan for this evenings servicing at the depot right out the water!

[The Stationmaster]

An electrical fire under Platform 10 saw the station evacuated and the Fire Brigade attending.

 

Trains were turning round at Slough and turning round / terminating at Reading.

 

Blew my carefully crafted plan for this evenings servicing at the depot right out the water!

 

Why not turn round as many of the suburban trains as possible at Ealing Broadway - where passengers could go forward/arrive via LUL services?  Turning round the stoppers at Slough is ridiculous as the only available route eastwards is via Windsor and walk between the stations.   Ealing Broadway always used to be used to turn round the suburban trains in the past (provided the signalling was working of course) and it's no more difficult to do it now than it was back then.

 

Sensible to turm round mainline services at Reading as it is the place with facilities to do so and a connection through to London Waterloo. 

[Southernman46]

Yesss ............. those of us in SWT territory are very concerned that their "skills" are transferrable .........

[phil-b259]

Yesss ............. those of us in SWT territory are very concerned that their "skills" are transferrable .........

 

It could be worse - you could have got Govia (with a artificially provoked labour dispute thrown in too - though that might yet still happen with First too*)

 

*My latest Union 'magazine' tells me that the RMT have lost no time in demanding First stick by their predecessors agreement to never implement DOO in ANY form for the lifetime of the franchise or face the rapid escalation to a full blown industrial very quickly. All very "come and have a go if you think you are hard enough type of talk" that generally is not the best way to start a good future relationship between management and staff - yet a relationship that is essential if the franchise is to run smoothly.

 

https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/re-franchising-of-south-west13717/

[Zomboid]

Of course there will be a series of strikes on the new SWT. I have no insider knowledge, but SWT are the last bastion of guard operation on London suburban operations. No way are the DfT going to stand for that.

[4630]

First are playing the 'no change' card at the moment for the new franchise.  Time will tell, of course;

 

http://www.firstgroupplc.com/about-firstgroup/uk-rail/south-western-information-for-employees.aspx

 

Scroll down to the FAQs

Edited July 13, 2017 by 4630

[phil-b259]

First are playing the 'no change' card at the moment for the new franchise.  Time will tell, of course;

 

http://www.firstgroupplc.com/about-firstgroup/uk-rail/south-western-information-for-employees.aspx

 

Scroll down to the FAQs

 

I don't think that Mr Cash or his colleagues are exactly reassured by that:-

 

"...... and we can only assume that the response from First is a blatant attempt at looking to roll out DOO/DCO on the new franchise at some point, whilst cutting areas of staff. Therefore, the National Executive Committee has instructed me to arrange a meeting with the company to seek assurances on all of the above matters. If no assurances are forthcoming then the NEC will consider the use of all other options at their disposal."

 

From https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/re-franchising-of-south-west13717/

Edited July 13, 2017 by phil-b259

[Captain Kernow]

It would seem to me an increasingly sensible idea to suitably train all the Zone's senior ops people in temporary block working Rules & Regs - even if it took them time to get to site it might still be quicker than some of their present abysmal antics.  I say that speaking as someone whose weekend was destroyed by the failure between Swindon and Didcot back in April when quite bluntly all they needed was a couple of people out to clip points and barelya handful to put in temporary block working - within walking distance of the Zone HQ in respect of the end of one direction of temporary block working.  If all the Zone's senior ops people weren't out on that job, and ready to hand anyway in view of that weekend's closure of the Berks & Hants, there's something rather basic adrift with the Zone's management of its operations and attention to detail.

What seems to be pretty basic stuff to you, me and others 'of a certain age', Mike, is now lost on the youthful muppets generally in charge of 'policy' on Western Route, whether this be operational, asset management, property sales, strategy etc.

 

There are some good people still around, but there just aren't enough of them.

 

Mobile Operations Managers (MOMs) posts were withdrawn at Plymouth, Taunton and Bath in the late 2000s alone, purely in the belief that it was more important to meet budgetary targets for 'Opex' (operational expenditure) than provide a robust ability to respond to incidents. That was on the West Country Area of Western Route, I can't recall what was done on the Thames Valley area, but I'm willing to bet it wasn't dissimilar.

 

Similar cuts have been made in maintenance staffing, in an effort to meet budgetary targets imposed from above, and it is generally from the ranks of the maintenance teams (especially the PW) that staff for TBW are drawn these days.

 

As for Route HQ staff going out and getting their hands dirty, immediately prior to the time that I left, I could probably have counted the number that remained (i) willing to do that and (ii) qualified/compentent to do that on one hand. Even when I was still working there was an attitude amongst many senior operational people that 'we have MOMs for that kind of thing'. If you weren't in Ops, then most simply shrugged 'because it wasn't their problem'.

 

I definitely detected a view within NR before I left (and I mean some time before I retired, not the week before) that it was 'easier/cheaper' to let the delay minutes accumulate and just pay the TOCs under Schedule 8 of the performance regime, than have to have 'expensive incident response staff hanging around just in case'. It was unsaid, but there was no other conclusion that I could draw.

 

Once the number of incident response staff gets below a certain level, you have very little choice but to do just that, as there aren't the staff available to do anything else. There are some sections of route where a blockage (eg. broken rail or failed train) are now simply too much to deal with. In particular anything west of Truro in Cornwall tends to be like that, as the sections between crossovers are just too long and too many staff for SLW are required, that would take too long to deploy to site, even if they could be found. Easier to put everyone on a bus (if you can find a bus), or just leave them to simmer on the delayed train(s) and let the TOCs apologise profusely/offer the requisite compensation afterwards.

 

In fairness, however, what I will say is that Western have put a new post into the Route Control, on a shift basis, that is purely about managing the actual incidents, thus (in theory) leaving the Controllers to manage the effects of the incident on the train service and hopefully restore the booked WTT service sooner. Having heard of some of the names appointed to these posts, I know that there are some good, experienced people in them, but their role is to manage from within the Control office, and not to go out on the ground and 'get stuck in'.

 

Things in West Cornwall got worse when Roskear Crossover was taken out. The Route Asset Managers (poncy modern name for 'engineers') were determined to remove the crossover there, which was admittedly unwieldy to operate, being just a trailing one, but it was better than nothing. They also removed the London-end crossover at St Erth much more recently, but that was on the promise that new facing and trailing crossovers would be provided 'every 10 miles' as part of the Plymouth and Cornwall re-signalling (that's the scheme that they planned to put into Didcot Thames Valley Signalling Centre, before they realised that they wouldn't have enough room for the additional workstations). Of course, once the true cost of that re-signalling/re-control scheme became apparent, one of the first things that was lost was the 'crossovers every 10 miles', plus the planned reversible signalling facilities between each of these crossovers. And now we're left with a much simpler scheme that provides additional IBS signals (Intermediate Block signals) controlled from the existing signalboxes. At least that helps the employment situation in Cornwall, for the moment.

Edited July 13, 2017 by Captain Kernow

[Banger Blue]

Why not turn round as many of the suburban trains as possible at Ealing Broadway - where passengers could go forward/arrive via LUL services?  Turning round the stoppers at Slough is ridiculous as the only available route eastwards is via Windsor and walk between the stations.   Ealing Broadway always used to be used to turn round the suburban trains in the past (provided the signalling was working of course) and it's no more difficult to do it now than it was back then.

 

Sensible to turm round mainline services at Reading as it is the place with facilities to do so and a connection through to London Waterloo. 

Could very well have been Ealing Broadway for the majority of services, I was just aware that a couple of extra ECS moves that came to the depot were from Slough so just assumed everything was turning or terminating there, Ealing Broadway does make more sense. To be honest we had units coming at us left right and centre and trying to ID what was what, I wasn't really paying attention to the operation at that end of the line.

[jim.snowdon]

Turning round trains en masse at Reading may make it easier for the operators, and tolerable for anyone travelling to London, but anyone travelling to stations between there and West Drayton is left with virtually no means of practical onward travel by public transport. Running some trains as far as Slough is an improvement, as at least there are bus services between there and Heathrow; the only place that is difficult to access is Iver.

 

Jim

[caradoc]

Captain Kernow makes (as always) very valid points about operational response to incidents; We had exactly the same issues in Scotland. One major issue was that PW staff lost their competence for Temporary Block Working, therefore in the event of a major signalling failure four operating staff (eg MOMs) are required. With the best will in the world it takes time to get these staff to site, and to secure the points in the affected area.

 

In my Control experience the two types of incident which caused most disruption were wires down and major signalling failures. When the wires come down on one line of a double track railway, single line working (SLW) is an option, but a consideration is always how the repair will be done; If the unaffected line requires to be blocked, and the OLE isolated, do you run a (very) limited service, for the rest of the day, via SLW and defer repairs until the nightshift, or block both lines and fix the fault as quickly as possible ? The level of traffic during the day, and through the night, would be assessed, and the affected operators consulted, before a decision is made.

I recall an incident last year when the OLE came down on the WCML at Lockerbie, almost at the start of service on a Sunday morning; The decision we made then was to run the first few Up passenger services (so that the stock wasn't trapped in Scotland), then block both lines to carry out repairs. A major factor in this was that the only 'no-train' period on the WCML in Scotland is Saturday night to Sunday morning, therefore no matter when repairs were done disruption would have occurred, and the best course of action was to restore normal working as quickly as possible.

 

Regarding the signalling failures on the GWML, I became increasingly concerned towards the end of my career about the number of such incidents; Centralising control of signalling is extremely efficient in terms of cost, maintenance and operating, however failures such as those described above have an immediate and massive effect on the service.

I recall a spate of signalling power failures, again on the WCML; The cause turned out to be failed 'Hi-pin' connectors. The design of these was such that a failing or broken connector could not be observed without isolating the power and dismantling the thing ! How on earth did such a design ever get approved for use on the railway ?

 

In my opinion, as a (former) operator, the resilience of signalling is a major issue for Network Rail; Given the devastating effect on the service, the design and maintenance of all aspects of signalling must ensure that such incidents are a rarity, not as commonplace as they seem to be now.

[The Stationmaster]

Could very well have been Ealing Broadway for the majority of services, I was just aware that a couple of extra ECS moves that came to the depot were from Slough so just assumed everything was turning or terminating there, Ealing Broadway does make more sense. To be honest we had units coming at us left right and centre and trying to ID what was what, I wasn't really paying attention to the operation at that end of the line.

 

Real Time Trains showed everything at ealing Broadway as 'Cancel' so obviously the dumbo Slough situation was what happened.  It leaves me very seriously wondering about the competence and commitment among the people who make such daft decisions - I doubt they'd have lasted 5 minutes (and certainly not beyond the first major train service upset type incident) in the past.

 

Turning round trains en masse at Reading may make it easier for the operators, and tolerable for anyone travelling to London, but anyone travelling to stations between there and West Drayton is left with virtually no means of practical onward travel by public transport. Running some trains as far as Slough is an improvement, as at least there are bus services between there and Heathrow; the only place that is difficult to access is Iver.

 

Jim

 

It has long been the practice to turn the long distance trains round at Reading - there are, and long have been, reasonably sufficient facilities to do it there and the new layout makes it even simpler.

 

But for the suburban service/stoppers the policy always was to get as far east as practicable with Ealing Broadway being the ideal because turnrounds were simple a bit further east (provided the signalling was working of course) and it offered decent, albeit slow, connections into London via the UndergrounD.  Slough on the other hand has always been a bit constrained when turning round trains arriving from the west and I don't think the recent resignalling has made it any better from what I've seen of it - it can handle a 30 minute interval without too much problem but a more frequent interval is likely to demand various revisions of the service to work properly whereas ealing Broadway could handle a far more frequent service with no problems at all.