How do normal services resume after disruption (accidents, weather, strikes, etc)?

[BachelorBoy]

I'm always impressed by how quickly normal services seem to resume after bad things happen to railways (and for that matter, how quickly diversions and alternative services can be arranged).

 

Railways are complicated enough when running normally, so how do proper operations get going again when rolling stock and personnel are probably in the wrong place, and lines, trains, and buildings need to be checked and repaired?

 

What do railway staff and managers do first thing when they arrive for work on, say, the morning after a storm like we saw in 1987?

 

Who is responsible? Are there people appointed as disaster-recovery managers? 

 

(I presume things may be much more complicated since the split between track owners and train operators).

 

PS I hope this is in the right topic. Apologies if not.

 

 

 

 

[anroar53]

A couple of entries from my blog of day to day running that I have gradually been posting online. This one covering the derailment of a Freightliner train in Tring Cutting in January 1977. Very much a 'one persons view' of events as they unfolded over a couple of days. I still haven't got round to transcribing the Great Storm of 1987 when I was on Early shift at another location, but that had loads of stuff in it too.

 

https://www.facebook.com/WestCoastSouthernSection/posts/pfbid0wT4vincKUf43QbmuTFVyqc4hh7NxD9Pe9gtG1XRoCZYJn7CiLqG1iRbgHygRzpg7l

 

https://www.facebook.com/WestCoastSouthernSection/posts/pfbid02bn9d6HzdNM3mpy67fucqyH2Q8jY8GpPUVbyPGDe7H7FTVQoJUxXC3mABt6tFPxUQl

[phil-b259]

5 hours ago, BachelorBoy said:

I'm always impressed by how quickly normal services seem to resume after bad things happen to railways (and for that matter, how quickly diversions and alternative services can be arranged).

 

Railways are complicated enough when running normally, so how do proper operations get going again when rolling stock and personnel are probably in the wrong place, and lines, trains, and buildings need to be checked and repaired?

 

What do railway staff and managers do first thing when they arrive for work on, say, the morning after a storm like we saw in 1987?

 

Who is responsible? Are there people appointed as disaster-recovery managers? 

 

(I presume things may be much more complicated since the split between track owners and train operators).

 

PS I hope this is in the right topic. Apologies if not.

 

 

 

 

This is a difficult thing to answer as the best way of understanding what goes on is the Network Rail control logs and for obvious reasons they cannot be shared in public.

 

But to surmise when an incident takes place on Network Rail infrastructure (be it a train, infrastructure or passenger related matter) then they (or to be more precise their incident controllers on duty 24/7) will act as the lead for the incident and co-ordinate the responses from other parties as required.

 

Now that’s not to say all incidents require NRs input to resolve - if a train breaks down or has some sort of issue then the driver will be expected to call their own company’s fitters - and in such cases NR will instead be concerned with delays, any trapped trains not at stations (and the consequent risk of passengers potentially deciding to self evacuate etc), organising assistance to clear the line if the train is declared a total failure by the driver…

Edited November 21, 2023 by phil-b259

[1466]

I can only add my opinion as an interested but non  professional observer .

For me the 1988 Clapham Common train crash was a turning point . 35 people killed and 400 injured .

It seemed to me that the Railway at that time was starved of investment and even  , if indirectly , that might have contributed to the cause . However , immediately following the crash , it appeared to me that all resources were committed to rescue and then to reopening the lines .  Cost didn’t appear to be a drag . It was , I thought , a tremendous response . What I took away from a dreadful tragedy was that our railways could perform much better if they weren’t starved of resources . The potential was there but it was severely constrained. 

Subsequently , whenever there is a problem , my perception is that there has  first to be an inquiry to apportion blame so that “ compensation “ may be paid to other stakeholders  . Inevitably there is a discussion or perhaps negotiation which takes precedence.Reopening the railway seems to have moved down  the priorities.

I emphasis this is my personal opinion which is not guided by professional railway knowledge. I stress “seems to me “; appears to me ; my perception “

I would be delighted if well informed professional knowledge shows me to be wrong .

[Oldddudders]

My experience is very out of date, but I suspect  traincrew supervisors/managers and Control are still the key figures. The former know who they have on hand, and what their route-knowledge is, so cobbling together a crew to do an out-and-back trip to an important destination, possibly in a WTT slot, gets things moving.  Control, which is manned 24 hrs, will know what the situation is regarding routes that are clear or blocked, and will try to liaise with the TCSs to get a service over as many routes as possible. Communication with all stations about what is happening is vital, and I have no doubt C21 comms enable info to move more rapidly than the telex messages my Control colleagues were sending out in the early '70s. 

 

Where a line is going to be blocked for a longer period, then an emergency WTT may be needed, and train-planners may well be invoked to set this up, since Control only has so many resources. Contingency plans have been used over the years, but how often does the blockage fit the plan? 

 

Meanwhile, there are often roles for staff, who do not have a direct operational role, to help out. Thus on the morning of Clapham I was one of many NSE HQ people roaming the concourse at Waterloo trying to help bewildered passengers. In later days, I did similar stints at Euston and KX in the wake of line blockages, and in the latter case - after Potters Bar - saw Chris Garnett, Chief Exec of GNER, very visible on that side of the station, directing customers and supporting his staff.

 

Such people do what they can. The morning after the 1987 storm, my Sub-Sector boss went down to his local station - Haywards Heath - to find trees blocking the line. The local P Way staff were in evidence, but needed chainsaws to get cracking. He went to the local hardware store and paid cash for four such items. 

 

[The Stationmaster]

Very much horses for courses and it has changed a lot on NR in the past decade or so..   It all depends on what you are dealing with and hw serious it but normally (and nowadays entirely it would appear) Control Offices will make the decisions and work towards restoring services in a way which takes account of where resources are ending up and what resources and line capacity is available to do what can be done.

 

This method - very common in the past as explained my 'Olddudders' can have disadvantages because Control is managing the current scene and might not have the proper manpower resources to also plan ahead.  So in many situations you are better off bringing in an emergency (train) planning person or team to get things planned to start from a particulatr point as the whatever is happening progresses towards normality.  This will often have to include priority decisions about what runs first and what can be left a while (Controls should also be aware of those priorities but don't forget that once you are fighting the battle it is very easy to overlook how you had planned to fight it).

 

So a. lot depends on what you expect to have in terms of train & traincrew resources where & when and what you expect to have in terms of track access where & when.  As a past Emergency Planner who spent a decade and a half in the role I think that approach has its advantages in the right circumstances - especially in respect of replanning the next operating day when things are going to get back to 'normal'.  overnight.  And in that context 'normal' usually means something very different from what is usually normal.

 

It is also good practice to stand back and get away from the hurly burly of current control of what is happening and plan the resumption from the emerging information of what will be where (and working out what is likely to be where) when normal running can resume.  

 

Emergency planning in these situations needs a rather different approach from normal train planning because you usually have to work quickly and be as 'flexible' as possible and thaht is something many permanent timetable planners seemed to find difficult.  I used to - on more than one occasion - replan the entire WR HST worked timetable overnight on my own; much simpler that way that doing it with more people but you need people to feed information in.   Advanced emergency planning can be done in exactly the same way - say for a strike - where it's best to divide the work by service groups with one planner for each and others feeding information.   I have done it - for our whole timetable - sometimes receiving information in three different languages - when I did the emergency planning for Eurostar services back in the 1990s.  That was normally preplanning for strikes but also included service recovery planning, e.g.  after the fires in the Channel Tunnel (where we were constantly getting a moving target of infrastructure availability information).

 

From what i see nowadays the big failing seems to be too much reliance on Control Offices without providing emergency planning support during major incidents.  Some seem to manage extremely well - MTR running the Liz Line seem to be excellent at service recovery planning from what I've seen as a lineside observer.  GWR don't seem to be very good - they try their best with the mainline services but at the same time appear to forget - or more likely are unable to cope with due to limited manpower - various secondary services which don't fall to local control to deal with.   Thames Valley semi-fasts are a particular example here but they certainly weren't putting out to stations in Cornwall properly thought through information when they were cancelling long distance trains due to Driver shortages.

[Mark Saunders]

The whole idea is to return to the plan and it takes time to put the pieces back in the correct position!

[Fat Controller]

I still remember the heart-felt comment in aa SNCF controllers log as yet another incident occurred; 'as if that was not enough !' I spent 23 years  as a Controller at Eurotunnel, dealing with all sorts of disruption.  One thing I learnt fairly quickly is that you could have  virtually identical incidents on diffèrent days which you resolved in a completely  different fashion. Though there would be procedures for most eventualities, a lot would depend[ on who the other 'actors' were,

 

 

[caradoc]

2 hours ago, 1466 said:

Subsequently , whenever there is a problem , my perception is that there has  first to be an inquiry to apportion blame so that “ compensation “ may be paid to other stakeholders  . Inevitably there is a discussion or perhaps negotiation which takes precedence.Reopening the railway seems to have moved down  the priorities.

 

That was simply not, ever, the case in my 32 years as a railway operations controller, with BR, Railtrack and Network Rail. 

 

[Oldddudders]

19 minutes ago, caradoc said:

 

That was simply not, ever, the case in my 32 years as a railway operations controller, with BR, Railtrack and Network Rail. 

 

I'm so glad you said that. Had it been true, then the industry would indeed be en route hell in a handcart. 

 

But early on site examinations of evidence are always required for the inevitable enquiry, unconnected with who pays. Without meticulous examinations of nearly 200 years of mishaps, the railway would not be half as safe, through understanding what and why. 

[1466]

29 minutes ago, caradoc said:

 

That was simply not, ever, the case in my 32 years as a railway operations controller, with BR, Railtrack and Network Rail. 

 

I am very pleased to be corrected .

[SM42]

There are  a lot of people in control offices doing a lot of phone work. 

 

NR incident controllers will be concerned with getting some infrastructure up and running, getting the right staff to site and getting stranded trains into stations   and train  running controllers will be working with the controls of the various operators to recover the timetable when the railway is back and short term alterations if the line is blocked.  Contingency plans come into play but often are a base as they can never match exact circumstances. 

 

The various operators' will be juggling their train crew and trains to get something moving or get them back where they should be  or juggling staff ns trains across diagrams

 

Recovering the  timetable when the line is open again means  trains still get cancelled or miss out stops to get back in timetable as quickly as possible 

A short of short term pain for long term gain thing

 

One thing for sure is that the disruption spreads  far beyond the incident in both time and distance as late running has knock on effects that ripple outwards.

 

Andy

[Michael Hodgson]

How long it takes depends very much on the nature of the accident and extent of blockages, but quite often the priority is to get at least a limited service running.  Commuters who have finished their day's work don't take kindly to being stuck in town with no means of getting home, so they need something - however overcrowded, slow and inconvenient it may be.  In recent years the industry has improved remarkably in its ability to get replacement buses into action quickly.

 

They have emergency timetables that are prepared in advance specially for certain contingencies, which can mean shuttle services either side of obstructions.  But some things can't easily be foreseen.  There was a major fire in premises adjacent to the then KIngs Cross power signalbox which had to be evacuated because of the risk of explosion of acetylene cylinders, and the box was out of bounds for about 36 hours while fire brigade struggled to deal with the fire, even having to keep their own staff well clear too.  That signalling scheme was unusual in that emergency panels had been provided in locked rooms at a dozen or stations covered by the box in case the telecommunications cables from the power box got damaged.  These could be manned when required for local operation, and they were routinely tested (for a short period once every month I believe).  Unfortunately it hadn't been anticipated that they might need to use all of them at the same time, so finding enough signallers was a problem.  However they did manage to run a limited service, terminating everthing at Finsbury Park.

 

To take another incident, the Hatfield derailment blocked the ECML and my journey to work.  After the ambulances had carted off those who needed to go to hospital and usual "crime scene" of people crawling all over the area, it didn't take them too long to remove the debris from the line. The southern end of ECML was closed for quite a long period, with my trains diverted over the Hertford loop on an emergency timetable, with the normal service on that route completely withdrawn.  Presumably Hertford residents used the GER route, but that option wasn't option to a lot of people nearer town.

 

But the real problem that stopped them restoring normality was the emergency speed restrictions put in all over the country because of "gauge corner cracking" - the underlying cause of which was fixed by winding up Railtrack PLC and replacing it with Network Rail.  My daily commute of an hour each way door to door had become five hours a day in total.

 

 

 

[Wheatley]

11 hours ago, BachelorBoy said:

What do railway staff and managers do first thing when they arrive for work on, say, the morning after a storm like we saw in 1987?

 

Who is responsible? Are there people appointed as disaster-recovery managers ,? 

As others have already indicated, the night shift / front line on call staff who were dealing with whatever 'it' is hand over to the day shift and they all carry on.

 

Control Office staff  may be reduced overnight but usually only the Customer Service Controllers and delay attribution staff etc, the essential posts dealing with organising train crew, units and the Duty Manager are still there.

 

If its a really big one others can be brought in to staff phones etc  but a common problem in the initial post privatisation era when everyone was still finding their feet, was stopping the second line on call charging off to site along with the first line. Second line should either be doing something strategic somewhere or waiting to relieve the first line when their 12 hours are up, depending on the circumstances. 

 

Most train care depots are busier overnight than during the day so there are people to send/ deal with it  and people coming on shift early next day to relieve them.  

 

And also to echo what others have said, the delays, costs, blame etc get sorted out later, and usually by clerks and junior(ish) managers rather than the armies of solicitors people perceived the industry has. The arrangements for attributing blame (or cause) and sorting the money out are very well established. There are even a couple of 'agreements' (as in "agree or no operating licence for you") specifically designed to stop passengers being messed about by TOCs passing the buck. 

[The Stationmaster]

18 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

 

 

They have emergency timetables that are prepared in advance specially for certain contingencies, which can mean shuttle services either side of obstructions.  But some things can't easily be foreseen. 

 

(heavily snipped

 

I think the most famous 'contingency' plan was CP1 - or this is what will happen when the by then electified WCML main line is blocked at its southern end and various services will be diverted to run to Paddington from  Birmingham.  A very comprehensive document going into great detail with fully timed paths for the diverted trains plus outline loco and crew diagrams.

 

The only problem with it was that it was completely unworkable as whenever it needed to be implemented there was great difficulty finding a loco and if a loco could be found there was rarely a Driver who knew the road who could be found to drive it.    The last time I saw it 'implemented' during the whole of the period it was supposed to be in operation only two southbound trains out of about half a dozen actually left Birmingham heading for Paddington and only one of them got there.  The other got to Oxford because a Driver had been found who knew the road to Didcot Power Station but there was no one to work it forward from Oxford and it returned empty.  Great plan if you knew well in advance thet it was going to be introduced but virtually impossibe to introduce when a reason to use it cropped up in everyday working.

 

'Fat Controller' will I suspect be more than familiar with SNCF's approach to emergency train service planning and it was even worse than CP1.  A voluminous document was produced by SNCF diagrammers to deal with 'emergency situations' affecting the Eurostar service.  Highly technical and incredibly detailed it was actually meaningless as it didn't recognise what or where an emergency could arise anywhere on the route between Paris and London so it was impossible to move to it when an emergency happened.  Also it was totally useless for a pre-planned emergency situation such as a strike or even the closure for engineering work ofnan interval (a section of line between crossovers) in the Channel Tunnel.  Very typically SNCF who found it difficult to 'plan on the hoof' unlike (former) BR or SNCB and took some tompe to get used to the idea.

 

Most amusing emergency planning meeting I ever attended was a pre-planning meeting for a one day SNCB Drivers' strike to be covered by a Eurostar emergency road replacement service between Brussels & Lille.  The meeting was in Brussels and conducted entirely in Flemish (for racial  reasons - honest) - initially translated into English for me.  Until I found that I understood enough of the Flemish to write things down for myself and read them back for checking.  Simple to pick up times, and train numbers and I knew the place names in Flemish anyway,  And the agreed form of the plan for each service was standard so once I'd heard three the rest weren't difficult even if you didn't know much of the language

[45125]

Having been a Trip for a couple of TOCs over the years, most incident recovery goes very well with those that do the organising in control rooms doing a great job. However it does sometimes go belly up due to those with very little operational experience in the higher positions not taking notice of those with the experience or the information that is been passed from those at the point of incident. 

 

When working with one TOC, route knowledge from most drivers was quite widespread. and one particular depot had two links and those links covered each other, so during disruption it was always the great jet of jail card.

 

Al Taylor.

[BachelorBoy]

thank you everyone. Fascinating