Southern / TL Disruption - 17 November 2016

[tsr]

At the moment, Northbound Southern services to London Bridge are disrupted by a signalling problem at Sydenham. Looks like the only route available is from Up Slow to Up Fast at the time of writing, though it seems both those lines have been blocked just as I post. Unsure what the precise issue is. Simultaneously, there are also patches of severe congestion via Redhill & towards the South Coast due to a number of issues including displacement of drivers, an earlier signalling problem affecting movements to/from Stewarts Lane at the start of the peak, and earlier emergency engineering on the Down Fast at Salfords. Lastly, poor rail adhesion is affecting some Milton Keynes Central/WLL services.

Unfortunately Thameslink isn't a terribly good alternative because there are a couple of trains stranded in the Kentish Town area due to overhead wire problems. Where possible, trains either side of this are being detrained, and due to the position of the problem, there is virtually no functional service between St Pancras and West Hampstead TL, with the rest experiencing consequential delays. EMT, however, do now appear to be running at reasonable speeds through the Kentish Town area. Regarding them, I'm not actually sure of any restrictions there may have been, or if any will be imposed.
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Trapped trains at Sydenham being set back (wrong direction moves). At least one train at Kentish Town is now being assisted but several remain trapped.
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Incident at Kentish Town now reported by some as OHLE infrastructure issues followed by one or more train failures, which is becoming confusing. Meanwhile Sydenham is all open but with severe congestion and stock displacement affecting London Bridge. One or two trains diverted to Victoria.

 

[causton]

Incident at Kentish Town now reported by some as OHLE infrastructure issues followed by one or more train failures, which is becoming confusing.

The (now closed) Tyrell incident which stated OHLE issues said:

"At around 18:40 this evening, a tripping was reported in the electrical supply equipment between West Hampstead and Mill Hill Broadway. This prevented trains in the area from being able to move.
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The power was restored 5 minutes later and trains in the area were able to continue onwards with their journey."

Is it just a big coincidence that 2O86 failed around this time as well I think?
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Latest from the Kentish Town incident:

"Thameslink train services will remain suspended in both the north and southbound directions between St Albans and London Blackfriars due to a broken down train blocking the line between Kentish Town and West Hampstead Thameslink.
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Attempts have been made to move the faulty train using another train however this has been unsuccesful and the line is now expected to remain closed for a number of hours."

 

[Ze Random One]

Caught in this, definitely a bad day to travel in South London.

Southeastern control very kindly laid on some special stop orders for trains on the Catford loop. Unfortunately nobody told the driver on the train I was on, meaning that the passengers were then abandoned at Peckham Rye without any obvious non-cancelled way of getting back!

 

[causton]

1Z57 Blackfriars to Streatham and 2Z26 Hendon - Bedford - odd additional services
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In response to my earlier question, it seems the two incidents were separate. 2V84 has been blamed for the overhead wire problems, but 2O86 was in the same section at the time the wires tripped so it could have been this that damaged the train and caused it to fail?
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Yes. "After tripping at 1831, 2O86 is electrically dead on DSL over Carlton Road Jn after tripping at 1813. Unable to re-set, train is dead with no power or lights." Mystery solved, I can go back to sleep now

 

[PHILIPE]

Perhaps with Southern's performances, the passengers may not even notice

 

[tsr]

Thanks causton. Much appreciated! If I was actually at work I'd have more info!

As for the Sydenham issue, it was a points failure which was resolved fairly soon after the MOM got to site, but not before trains had been sat there for the best part of an hour! The Uckfield Line is, shall we say, not looking at all pretty...

 

[Chrisgr31]

Perhaps with Southern's performances, the passengers may not even notice

I was going to suggest that the passengers wouldn't notice. I have yet to catch a train home this week that hasnt been at least 10 minutes late, and 2 were over 30 late.

Was actually discussing this earlier and I think the reality is the only option is to remove some trains from the timetable. The moment anything goes wrong the knockon impact is just so great.

 

[skyhigh]

Yes. "After tripping at 1831, 2O86 is electrically dead on DSL over Carlton Road Jn after tripping at 1813. Unable to re-set, train is dead with no power or lights." Mystery solved, I can go back to sleep now

Out of interest, what kind of stock would have been working that? If it was a 319/377, would a 700 have been able to cope with it? (I don't have much idea what the issue is, I'm not trying to 700-bash)

 

[Bishopstone]

Delays rippled far and wide. Two hours Gatwick-Seaford tonight, via a bus from Brighton.

The announcements at Gatwick station assume everyone wants to travel north, to London. Silence regarding the yawning gaps in the southbound service.

 

[DelayRepay]

I've just got home to St Albans after leaving work just after 7pm. I did go back to the office for a bit as initially it looked like service would resume pretty quickly.

Staff at City Thameslink advised to go to St Pancras as they expected that if service was being restored it may be a split service.

Staff at St Pancras were mostly hiding, but the St Pancras customer service staff and police were advising people that Thameslink had agreed to pay for Uber taxis (but only Uber). Thameslink twitter deny this!

Just as Thameslink twitter announced the line was re-opened, the staff closed the shutters and started putting everyone in taxis. They were taxi-ing people to Bedford and Luton as well as all the other Thameslink stations so I dread to think how much that will end up costing them.

 

[Bald Rick]

Out of interest, what kind of stock would have been working that? If it was a 319/377, would a 700 have been able to cope with it? (I don't have much idea what the issue is, I'm not trying to 700-bash)

It was a 319 with a 377 the next train behind it.

 

[southernyoshi]

Bear in mind that I'm just a lay passenger - would it be worth making all of Thameslink 3rd rail? The overhead lines seem to fail more often there than on other lines - can it cope with TL's intensity?

 

[Bald Rick]

Bear in mind that I'm just a lay passenger - would it be worth making all of Thameslink 3rd rail? The overhead lines seem to fail more often there than on other lines - can it cope with TL's intensity?

AIUI this wasn't an OLE fault. And neither was last night's fatality, nor last week's signalling issues.

In my 13 years of commuting on the MML I think I have had major delays caused by faults with the OLE system (ie not just the OLE itself) 6 times, and three of those were the days of the major dewirement at Radlett.

In any event, 3rd rail systems are less reliable than OLE, because of the implications on the signalling and on track safety. But there's another thread for that somewhere.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

There was another 319 failure around 1740 from St Pancras ( a late running SAC terminator) which was cancelled at Kentish Town platform 2 - the pan had dropped on the rear set which resulted in it being towed uphill by his friend. What was a patchy peak with delays to 15 , rapidly became a disaster area ....

The passenger tolerance is rapidly becoming exhausted - with thousands of journeys affected with each incident.

 

[Deepgreen]

I happened to catch my old 'favourite' - the 1659 London Bridge to Horsham. We left on time, but lost a few minutes en route to East Croydon, where it all collapsed, in the traditional fashion. A crawl to Purley ensued, and then the 'coup de gras'; a 22 minute wait outside Redhill. The driver kept us well informed about the issue, which, yet again, was a lack of crew members for the splitting train ahead of us in platform 3 at Redhill. Only once we moved into the platform at Redhill did the conductor pipe up with his pointless repetition of the recorded announcement. Once again, the guard/conductor role was very absent during the delay, leaving the driver to feed us information, thereby lowering the public's perception of the guard's usefulness still more. They simply seem not to appreciate that they need to be more visible/audible now then ever. It is irrelevant to the average passenger that the driver may have the more immediate access to information - the guard's role is supposed to include 'customer service' and information, which they increasingly fail to provide.

I fear any support among the passenger base may dwindle rapidly in the face of this sort of indifference.

 

[Sunset route]

I happened to catch my old 'favourite' - the 1659 London Bridge to Horsham. We left on time, but lost a few minutes en route to East Croydon, where it all collapsed, in the traditional fashion. A crawl to Purley ensued, and then the 'coup de gras'; a 22 minute wait outside Redhill. The driver kept us well informed about the issue, which, yet again, was a lack of crew members for the splitting train ahead of us in platform 3 at Redhill. Only once we moved into the platform at Redhill did the conductor pipe up with his pointless repetition of the recorded announcement. Once again, the guard/conductor role was very absent during the delay, leaving the driver to feed us information, thereby lowering the public's perception of the guard's usefulness still more. They simply seem not to appreciate that they need to be more visible/audible now then ever. It is irrelevant to the average passenger that the driver may have the more immediate access to information - the guard's role is supposed to include 'customer service' and information, which they increasingly fail to provide.

I fear any support among the passenger base may dwindle rapidly in the face of this sort of indifference.

I thought that all the Horshams had gone over to the OBS role now?

 

[tsr]

I thought that all the Horshams had gone over to the OBS role now?

It's worrying if a signaller has been told that...

No, you still have conductors on a large number of them, booked "assist". This means they are basically obliged to work the train if present, apart from dispatch duties, which the driver now carries out. However, in "exceptional" circumstances (whatever those actually are), trains can run DOO. The exceptions are Class 455s or any other stock without bodyside cameras.

OBSs generally only work to or from Horsham via Dorking.

Obviously this will all change when various conductors transfer to OBS roles.

 

[Deepgreen]

It's worrying if a signaller has been told that...

No, you still have conductors on a large number of them, booked "assist". This means they are basically obliged to work the train if present, apart from dispatch duties, which the driver now carries out. However, in "exceptional" circumstances (whatever those actually are), trains can run DOO. The exceptions are Class 455s or any other stock without bodyside cameras.

OBSs generally only work to or from Horsham via Dorking.

Obviously this will all change when various conductors transfer to OBS roles.

In any case, the 'conductor' introduced himself as such when he made his belated and pointless announcement.

 

[AndyY]

I finished work just before 21:00 last night, arrived at City Thameslink to be greeted with a departure board showing all trains delayed but without any explanation (reminder to self: need to check trains before leaving office, always). There was no notice in the station explaining what was happening, but I was able to find a member of staff who told me that no trains were running through central London and advised going to West Hampstead for northbound trains.

Rather than try my luck at West Hampstead, I decided to use the underground instead, but suffered further delays on the Northern Line.

I am really not amused with what was going on this week. Despite the signalling system being fixed last week, there seems to be delays every single day (Monday evening: broken down train, Tuesday morning: signalling problems, Wednesday evening: don't know but trains were delayed by up to 1h). This is the worst 2 weeks I have had for the last 5 years, and the service seems to be getting worse every year.

 

[paul332]

Agreed, this was one of the worst weeks I can recall on TL - and my problems are miniscule, only between City and Cricklewood with several alternatives, compared to the poor unfortunates further north for whom TL is the only option.

During the 3 day overhead and signalling troubles I used TfL, but yesterday tried TL again. Mistake! I was on a delayed stopper 22 minutes late, sardine-packed, crawled up the hill from St P to Kentish Town (due 17:18, arrived around 17:40) then announced as failed, with a following train able to pick us up on the adjacent platform 3.

Then followed a Mr Hulot-style farce (for those of a certain age), with passengers suddenly returning en masse to the failed train (doors still open), then back to Platform 3, then ditto again; then a 377 ran through, then eventually the even later 17:32 picked most of us up. Got to Cricklewood OK and noticed the previous (failed) train and the next both showing on the PIS as arriving in 3 and 4 minutes time - whether either of them ever made it I have no idea. But at least I got home only half an hour late. I have every sympathy for those stuck in following trains and having to endure this rubbish every day.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Agreed, this was one of the worst weeks I can recall on TL - and my problems are miniscule, only between City and Cricklewood with several alternatives, compared to the poor unfortunates further north for whom TL is the only option.

During the 3 day overhead and signalling troubles I used TfL, but yesterday tried TL again. Mistake! I was on a delayed stopper 22 minutes late, sardine-packed, crawled up the hill from St P to Kentish Town (due 17:18, arrived around 17:40) then announced as failed, with a following train able to pick us up on the adjacent platform 3.

Then followed a Mr Hulot-style farce (for those of a certain age), with passengers suddenly returning en masse to the failed train (doors still open), then back to Platform 3, then ditto again; then a 377 ran through, then eventually the even later 17:32 picked most of us up. Got to Cricklewood OK and noticed the previous (failed) train and the next both showing on the PIS as arriving in 3 and 4 minutes time - whether either of them ever made it I have no idea. But at least I got home only half an hour late. I have every sympathy for those stuck in following trains and having to endure this rubbish every day.

Yes - same train I got - and it was a farce - but at least Kentish own now has platform staff - not that they were particularly helpful or knew what was going on - the 1732 had a very difficult and slow run to St Albans due to the extreme crush loading and lengthy dwell times. All par for the course for TL.

 

[Sunset route]

It's worrying if a signaller has been told that...

Lol not officially told anything (no surprises there), just have to work things out from snippets of gossip from under the con rail most of the time, although a work colleague has a family member who drivers out of Horsham depot, plus I have friends who are/were guards working out of Eastboure depot, but not seen them in a while as the car is the most reliable method to get to and from work at the moment.

 

[broadgage]

Bear in mind that I'm just a lay passenger - would it be worth making all of Thameslink 3rd rail? The overhead lines seem to fail more often there than on other lines - can it cope with TL's intensity?

Apart from any other reasons, the health and safety industry are very strongly opposed to any significant expansion of a system that uses a lethal voltage exposed at ankle height.
VERY MINOR infills and additions MIGHT be accepted, but significant expansion of conductor rail systems wont happen.

 

[LLivery]

Once again, the guard/conductor role was very absent during the delay, leaving the driver to feed us information, thereby lowering the public's perception of the guard's usefulness still more. They simply seem not to appreciate that they need to be more visible/audible now then ever. It is irrelevant to the average passenger that the driver may have the more immediate access to information - the guard's role is supposed to include 'customer service' and information, which they increasingly fail to provide.

I fear any support among the passenger base may dwindle rapidly in the face of this sort of indifference.

I have to agree. Like all Southern commuters this week, my journeys have been awful. Every day this week, my trains to and from work have been delayed or cancelled. As for the guards; twice this week I've had to go to Crawley for work, both days used the London Vic - Bognor & Portsmouth trains to/from ECR (which were all delayed) and the guards/OBS were totally silent apart from when arriving at East Croydon. It was the diver giving information when being held. Before, along with door duties, you would get guard announcements, tickets where always checked and you always saw them. Its a shame if this is the future.

 

[Taunton]

When are Thameslink going to bite the bullet and put a manned diesel loco at a strategic point that can get stalled electric units out of the way.

 

[southernyoshi]

Are these troubles caused by Thameslink's stagger through between Blackfriars & East Croydon & its knock-on effect on everything that goes through East Croydon? Are there simply too many trains in South London - could attaching & splitting be used more? Or would nationalising (or TfL-ising) be enough to solve it all? Like I say, I don't pretend to know any detail but what could be done if anything.

 

[Bishopstone]

Are these troubles caused by Thameslink's stagger through between Blackfriars & East Croydon & its knock-on effect on everything that goes through East Croydon? Are there simply too many trains in South London - could attaching & splitting be used more? Or would nationalising (or TfL-ising) be enough to solve it all? Like I say, I don't pretend to know any detail but what could be done if anything.

The desperately poor punctuality of Southern and Thameslink services, over the last few months but particularly the last fortnight, is worthy of a separate thread to discuss the root causes.

In the current climate, this is not a thread I'll be starting, though.

 

[infobleep]

Delays rippled far and wide. Two hours Gatwick-Seaford tonight, via a bus from Brighton.

The announcements at Gatwick station assume everyone wants to travel north, to London. Silence regarding the yawning gaps in the southbound service.

That seems to be the official policy of Govia Thameslink Railway.

If it's any consultation, South West Trains hasn't been great this week either. I was about to put up a post. I don't know if all these problems affecting train companies are due to the cold weather / changes in tempature or leaves. I know some SWT issues are definitely weather related. Don't know about the other issues and GTR though.

Sent from my SM-G925F using Tapatalk

 

[ChiefPlanner]

That seems to be the official policy of Govia Thameslink Railway.

If it's any consultation, South West Trains hasn't been great this week either. I was about to put up a post. I don't know if all these problems affecting train companies are due to the cold weather / changes in tempature or leaves. I know some SWT issues are definitely weather related. Don't know about the other issues and GTR though.

Sent from my SM-G925F using Tapatalk

The whole Network has been very poor this week - and though we are in leaf-fall time , there seems to be a shedload of other issues around as well. Roughly 85% of trains hitting target - much worse on some - GTR was about 67% yesterday which 25% worse than they should be. Cold snowy /icy weather to come .....
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Are these troubles caused by Thameslink's stagger through between Blackfriars & East Croydon & its knock-on effect on everything that goes through East Croydon? Are there simply too many trains in South London - could attaching & splitting be used more? Or would nationalising (or TfL-ising) be enough to solve it all? Like I say, I don't pretend to know any detail but what could be done if anything.

The long and slow detour via South London has gone quite well (apart from swallowing up driver and unit time) - remember there were some service changes in South London directed at London Bridge works - which have reduced the overall service patterns + further reductions following train crew (driver) shortages. Answer is therefore "no" ...

 

[DelayRepay]

Last night is the first time I've known Thameslink authorise taxis for large volumes of passengers from St Pancras all the way to Bedford.

I know there are difficulties getting busses at short notice, but First used to manage to get hold of some busses to shuttle between the TL and GN lines when there were problems. TL seem to rely on the local bus services, which don't have capacity. (In my experience they also seem to let the bus drivers know so people have to pay).

I guess they realised how annoyed everyone was after the past fortnight and decided it was best to foot the bill for all the taxis to get people moving.