Eurostar tunnel floods

[Siberian Snooper]

Pity the new stock is built to the European loading gauge, otherwise you could take the train out onto the Midland line and reverse it down the Thameslink line, to get to Kent. Yes it would be a lot slower and probably play havoc with Thameslink trains, but some sort of service is better than no service!!!

[Artless Bodger]

34 minutes ago, Siberian Snooper said:

Pity the new stock is built to the European loading gauge, otherwise you could take the train out onto the Midland line and reverse it down the Thameslink line, to get to Kent. Yes it would be a lot slower and probably play havoc with Thameslink trains, but some sort of service is better than no service!!!

Thanks for confirming that, I wondered about the Velaros compared to the earlier sets. I had thought otherwise to use the North London line link, then reverse and round to Clapham Jct, and up to Factory Jct and pick up the old route through Kent. There was even a diversionary route in Kent as Maidstone East track layout was revised for Eurostar diversions and I saw them crossing the Ashford Road bridge a couple of times. That's progress for you I suppose, more sophistication but less adaptability.

[Wickham Green too]

1 hour ago, Siberian Snooper said:

Pity the new stock is built to the European loading gauge, otherwise you could take the train out onto the Midland line and reverse it down the Thameslink line, to get to Kent. Yes it would be a lot slower and probably play havoc with Thameslink trains, but some sort of service is better than no service!!!

Very much slower as it would have to coast from Farringdon to wherever in Kent as there's no third rail pickup fitted ☹️

[The Stationmaster]

Definitely bring reported as a burst fire main - so maybe down to NR and its maintenance contract in this case.

 

I'm a little  surprised that being an underwater tunnel ths one doesn't have a pumping capacity - somebody must have been very confident tha.t it wouldn't leak.

 

The Severn Tunnel is far more complex when it comes to pumping arrangements,  Firstly the pumping systems have to cover two different types of water.  The major one is The Great Spring , which is drained into a separate tunnel to the point where it is pumped from so doesn't enter the running tunnel at all and produces c.11 million gallons daily.  The second source is ground water, proncipally from the Welsh end of the tunnel and that is drained into a culvert adjacent to the running tunnel and pumped separately from the water from the spring - itis dumped back unto the river.  The Great Spring poses the greater risk of tunnel flooding although when I went down the Sudbroopk sgadft I was told there was no need to worry as it's estimated it would take about 12 hours to flood to the tunnel crown at the tunnel's lowest point = which is quite a way from the place where the pumps are doing their work.

 

The Great Spring water is good quality and has been sold for various uses over the years a principal customer being Llanwern steelworks while Whitbread purposely constructed a brewery in the area in order to take the spring water because it matched fairly exactly their water specification for brewing, I don't know if that brewery is still operational.

 

The history of track circuits in the tunnel is not a good one.  the GWR installed I.B. signal in the tunnel during WWII but they turned out to be unrelaible so were taken away after the war.  The next attempt to put intermediate signals in the tunnel came with the extension of Newport MAS/the Bristol MAS scheme in the '70s.  Not surprisingly (to those who knew) track circuit reliability quickly emerged as a problem and it was eventually solved by doing away with the intermediate signal and replacing the track circuits with axle counters.  In 1985, following an emergency exercise in the tunnel and in consultation with the WR Chief Signalling Inspector, I altered the relevant Instructions and banned the use of Track Circuit Operating Clips in the tunnel for safety reasons - apart from the fact they were by then useless in there in any case.

 

The atmospghere in the tunnel is quite interesting as it might not be what many people expect.  The tunnel itself is not particularly wet (I've been in a far wiorse tunnel that the Severn Tunnel for wetness underfoot) so clearly the dainage system does its job.  But, notwithstanding the pumping of air via the Sudbrook shafts, there is a sort off warm ish f dampness in the air and it is that which interfered with the track circuits.  The tunnel atmosphere does apparently shorten rail life but not excessively.  The Mersey rail tunnel is far, far, worse in that respect and a pal of mne who was Area Civil Engineer there forseveral years was amazed at the rate of rail deterioration.

[Wickham Green too]

9 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

... Whitbread purposely constructed a brewery in the area in order to take the spring water because it matched fairly exactly their water specification for brewing, I don't know if that brewery is still operational. ...

Can't think why it mattered when they were producing horrors like 'Tankard' or 'Trophy' !!?!

[Michael Hodgson]

17 minutes ago, Wickham Green too said:

Can't think why it mattered when they were producing horrors like 'Tankard' or 'Trophy' !!?!

  There's a northern saying about southern beer ... The watter in the Wear's better than the beer ow-er he-or.

[fulton]

21 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Definitely bring reported as a burst fire main - so maybe down to NR and its maintenance contract in this case.

 

I'm a little  surprised that being an underwater tunnel ths one doesn't have a pumping 

Latest BBC report states, was not the fire main but the pumps were overwhelmed, so either the design was inadequete, the design was good but the pumps did not perform, or the system was not maintained so the pumps could not cope.

[Wheatley]

14 hours ago, locoholic said:

And even a delay of a few hours while staff got things opened up wpud be better than nothing.

 

Loss of key infrastructure, in this case a single point of failure (i.e. lose this bit = lose the lot) will be factored into to the operators' emergency plans but likely as a 'high consequence / low probability' item. If it was the sort of catastrophic failure which could kill large numbers of people (eg fire on a train in a tunnel) then you take precautions anyway as a single event, however unlikely, will finish your business. You could, for example put a b****y great fire main in there to mitigate the risk. It doesn't alter the fact that closing the tunnel while you deal with the fire and its consequences is going to be hugely disruptive but that is offset against the fact that it hopefully won't happen very often if af all. 

 

If it was a high/medium consequence / high probability event which could cause regular disruption to your business then you might well have stations staffed which otherwise wouldn't be if you know you're going to need them regularly. A better example is breakdown cranes and tool vans - they were needed often enough in the steam era that it was worth paying for very expensive pieces of capital equipment to sit around at every large shed just in case. Today not so much. 

 

But this is slow flooding of a tunnel with no risk to life  because of a fairly boring infrastructure fault, and is possibly so unlikely that "Stop the job until its fixed" is the most sensible (and certainly the most cost effective) contingency plan. 

 

At any other time of year apart from the few days between Christmas and new year, Easter weekend or the first weekend of the summer holidays, this woukd hardly have been worth reporting. Apart from the opportunity to be able to write "Channel Tunnel" and "flood" in the same headline obviously. A few hundred people have been inconvenienced, most reasonably large airports can do that routinely  without half the coverage this has generated. 

 

Edited December 31, 2023 by Wheatley

[Stoke West]

51 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Definitely bring reported as a burst fire main - so maybe down to NR and its maintenance contract in this case.

 

I'm a little  surprised that being an underwater tunnel ths one doesn't have a pumping capacity - somebody must have been very confident tha.t it wouldn't leak.

 

The Severn Tunnel is far more complex when it comes to pumping arrangements,  Firstly the pumping systems have to cover two different types of water.  The major one is The Great Spring , which is drained into a separate tunnel to the point where it is pumped from so doesn't enter the running tunnel at all and produces c.11 million gallons daily.  The second source is ground water, proncipally from the Welsh end of the tunnel and that is drained into a culvert adjacent to the running tunnel and pumped separately from the water from the spring - itis dumped back unto the river.  The Great Spring poses the greater risk of tunnel flooding although when I went down the Sudbroopk sgadft I was told there was no need to worry as it's estimated it would take about 12 hours to flood to the tunnel crown at the tunnel's lowest point = which is quite a way from the place where the pumps are doing their work.

 

The Great Spring water is good quality and has been sold for various uses over the years a principal customer being Llanwern steelworks while Whitbread purposely constructed a brewery in the area in order to take the spring water because it matched fairly exactly their water specification for brewing, I don't know if that brewery is still operational.

 

The history of track circuits in the tunnel is not a good one.  the GWR installed I.B. signal in the tunnel during WWII but they turned out to be unrelaible so were taken away after the war.  The next attempt to put intermediate signals in the tunnel came with the extension of Newport MAS/the Bristol MAS scheme in the '70s.  Not surprisingly (to those who knew) track circuit reliability quickly emerged as a problem and it was eventually solved by doing away with the intermediate signal and replacing the track circuits with axle counters.  In 1985, following an emergency exercise in the tunnel and in consultation with the WR Chief Signalling Inspector, I altered the relevant Instructions and banned the use of Track Circuit Operating Clips in the tunnel for safety reasons - apart from the fact they were by then useless in there in any case.

 

The atmospghere in the tunnel is quite interesting as it might not be what many people expect.  The tunnel itself is not particularly wet (I've been in a far wiorse tunnel that the Severn Tunnel for wetness underfoot) so clearly the dainage system does its job.  But, notwithstanding the pumping of air via the Sudbrook shafts, there is a sort off warm ish f dampness in the air and it is that which interfered with the track circuits.  The tunnel atmosphere does apparently shorten rail life but not excessively.  The Mersey rail tunnel is far, far, worse in that respect and a pal of mne who was Area Civil Engineer there forseveral years was amazed at the rate of rail deterioration.

Still RTB markers in place , altough some disappeared when bridges were altered for electrification . Also provided water to Sudbrook paper mill

[The Stationmaster]

1 hour ago, Wheatley said:

 

Loss of key infrastructure, in this case a single point of failure (i.e. lose this bit = lose the lot) will be factored into to the operators' emergency plans but likely as a 'high consequence / low probability' item. If it was the sort of catastrophic failure which could kill large numbers of people (eg fire on a train in a tunnel) then you take precautions anyway as a single event, however unlikely, will finish your business. You could, for example put a b****y great fire main in there to mitigate the risk. It doesn't alter the fact that closing the tunnel while you deal with the fire and its consequences is going to be hugely disruptive but that is offset against the fact that it hopefully won't happen very often if af all. 

 

If it was a high/medium consequence / high probability event which could cause regular disruption to your business then you might well have stations staffed which otherwise wouldn't be if you know you're going to need them regularly. A better example is breakdown cranes and tool vans - they were needed often enough in the steam era that it was worth paying for very expensive pieces of capital equipment to sit around at every large shed just in case. Today not so much. 

 

But this is slow flooding of a tunnel with no risk to life  because of a fairly boring infrastructure fault, and is possibly so unlikely that "Stop the job until its fixed" is the most sensible (and certainly the most cost effective) contingency plan. 

 

At any other time of year apart from the few days between Christmas and new year, Easter weekend or the first weekend of the summer holidays, this woukd hardly have been worth reporting. Apart from the opportunity to be able to write "Channel Tunnel" and "flood" in the same headline obviously. A few hundred people have been inconvenienced, most reasonably large airports can do that routinely  without half the coverage this has generated. 

 

Agree.  Interestingly when Eurostar was being worked up in the early 1990s the inability to run trains - basically for whatever reason - was considered, even to the extent of hiring aircraft to do the job.  The result was that any sort of idea of provision, beyond refunding fares in certain situations, was dismissed on the very much the same basis as you have outlined; there was simply no viable alternative. 

 

And if you think about, it even now, how on earth would you, at the drop of a hat, come up with an alternative?   Simple fact is that Eurostar is quite a bit different from UK domestic train operation because of the security aspects (they are a legal requirement), immigration/other passport controls, and Customs controls.   All of these require specialist personnel, plus the various facilities and equipment to enable them to carry out their work, and accommodation for them.  So the cost of maintaining an alternative site, ready for instant use, would be large.  Don't forget that when St Pancras opened for Eurostar operations the already fully equipped alternative which actually existed, at Waterloo, was closed because the business couldn't justify the cost of having two terminals in London.

[Grovenor]

There would be no need of extra sfaff for security and border control etc. They could all be sent down to Ashford along with the passengers.

Just need to be sure someone can find the keys for the mothballed facilitioes. But getting all the relevant parties to agree and act on it would likely take longer than fixing the problem given the beaurocracies involved

[The Stationmaster]

3 minutes ago, Grovenor said:

There would be no need of extra sfaff for security and border control etc. They could all be sent down to Ashford along with the passengers.

Just need to be sure someone can find the keys for the mothballed facilitioes. But getting all the relevant parties to agree and act on it would likely take longer than fixing the problem given the beaurocracies involved

Only problem being that the extent of facilities and accommodation etc at Ashford is considerably less than that at St Pancras because it was designed for a far lower volume of passengers.

[KeithMacdonald]

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

Simple fact is that Eurostar is quite a bit different from UK domestic train operation because of the security aspects (they are a legal requirement), immigration/other passport controls, and Customs controls.  

 

That nudges a dim and distant memory. Something to do with many millions of £s were spent preparing and upgrading Network Rail to run Eurostar north of London. But then all came to nought because late in the day it was decided that the security/passport/customs controls were unworkable outside of a single place in London(?).

[The Stationmaster]

29 minutes ago, KeithMacdonald said:

 

That nudges a dim and distant memory. Something to do with many millions of £s were spent preparing and upgrading Network Rail to run Eurostar north of London. But then all came to nought because late in the day it was decided that the security/passport/customs controls were unworkable outside of a single place in London(?).

No.  Security matters (alldealt with) and immigration implications (also all dealt with) had nothing whatsoever to do with the cancellation of North of London Eurostar services.  The whole 'North of London' idea, which included the sleeper trains from the south west/South Wales, was basicallya political sop to keep people loving 'beyond London' some involvement in the overall project.  

 

Some of it at inception of the project made sense commercially but some of it definitely didn't.  Once the political imprerative was removed as a result of privatisation of Eurostar the whole thing received a major rethink to see what could m be made of it on a sound commercial basis while at the same time I was trying hard to reduce the operating costs (which I'd been doing already as it happened and had already massively cut back the  budgetted operating cost of the 'beyond London' sleeper service.

 

But both the day trans and even more so the sleepers were being hit hard as commercial ideas by the rapid spread in Britain of cheap air fares.  And overall journey times were very poor and not really competitive, even from Birmingham.   There were several large meetings to try to work out ways of better using the Regional Class 373s but in reality it came down to various ideas from the companies now involved in owning Eurostar UK to look at alternatives - on which I did most of the practical operational planning work.  Two people were brought in, separately as 'senior railway managers' to give forth their ideas (some of which they actually got from me as I had to brief them on what was involved) but that got nowhere.

 

We were in fact within a couple of weeks of starting the first North of London Class 373 working (even with guest lists ready to sort the invitations) when a small meeting, about 9 or 10 of us, was held to make a final recommendation on whether or not to go ahead.  Operationally we were ready to roll but the commercial case was so poor that the plan didn't stand a chance and the service was scrapped.  After that at I was asked to look at one other possibility and operationally it was very straightforward and achievable with some investment but again the commercial people decided against it as they considered the jpurney time wasn't sufficiently attractive to create a big enough market.

 

There was desultory look at further commercial possibilities which did come up with some piositib ve numbers sufficient to justify one or two trains a week but that too was cast aside and that finally killed the project for good.

 

ENS was rather different as the management structure was different but it was becoming increasingly obvious that going too far westwards simply wasn't on although a cut back version might have worked especially as I'd revised the plan to create more commercially viable opportunities west of London but not so very far out.  We actually had a starting date for the first service, a London starter, when the schem collapsed followina decision by Eurostar UK to drop out.  WEven at tahtstage there were still various technical problems in 3rd rail land and the multipicity of loco changes - one at every national border - gave poor overall times.

 

With European open access, and now an overhead electrified route in England, it might be technically more feasible from St Pancras than ever would have been from Waterloo.  But it requires very specialised rolling stock, still requires some intermediate loco changes, and it needs a really viable route to ever justify the investment.  So I doubt we'll ever see it happen

[40F]

On 30/12/2023 at 14:56, woodenhead said:

Some of the fleet will be in France, a lot of it at Temple Mills with two or three at St Pancras.

 

As long as they can get trains to Stratford they would be ok.

 

The problem will be getting passengers through customs, it’s all mothballed at best away from St Pancras.

 

You cannot ignore customs and immigration rules otherwise all you’d need to do to get in is have someone sabotage something near St Pancras to make it a free for all which would be a terrorist risk

 

Temple Mills and Stratford are NORTH of the Thames so therefore they would not be able to provide any trains to Ebbsfleet as that is SOUTH of the river and the affected tunnel