What a mess it was today. A lot of commuters not appreciating the severity of the problem as FCC wasn't given much info.
At 0844 at Hatfield, I was waiting to get the 0846. At around 0850 it literally disappeared from the board. No announcement, no cancellation text or anything. (It would later transpire that it was delayed about 40 minutes, so it wasn't cancelled - it just moved down the list and the current CIS doesn't therefore announce anything). I then checked up and saw the 0902 from Hitchin was stuck at Knebworth - and was gradually getting more overdue.
I went inside to ask someone on the gateline and he didn't know anything (but he knew something had happened) and was checking to see why his pager wasn't saying anything. Another check on the web revealed that there were electrical supply problems, and the 0902 service was now definitely stuck.
By this time, people could see no trains running southbound and were coming in to ask what was happening - and a lot of people were, rightly I guess, moaning that the 0846 simply disappeared. This does show a weakness of the current information system if a train can appear to have been deleted in an instant.
At this point, there was a manual announcement to say there were electrical problems between Potters Bar and Stevenage, followed by the pagers going off to give equally limited info. About 10 minutes later, the announcer said no trains were running either direction.
I hung around waiting for a bus, and then noticed a train going north. So I went back in and and eventually the 0907 from WGC was run some 15 minutes late. It wasn't very busy at all, but everyone was told to get on. Later, I saw the 0846 was run - but was held behind us all the way so there was no point getting off and waiting for it as it caught up.
Anyway - given the circumstances, it wasn't too bad this morning. Anyone north of Welwyn Garden City would have been through hell, until they started to divert via the Hertford Loop. This isn't good for people at stations along the HL though, if they're all closed to let EC, GC etc through.
FCC emailed me during the day and I received a lot of texts, so they did warn people that it would be until around 8pm to fix the wires in the tunnel at Welwyn North. However, they also said trains would run from Moorgate to WGC, with buses from Alexandra Palace to Hertford North - which wasn't quite the case in reality.
When I got upstairs at Old Street, with the trains showing as running to time, we waited and got told about the arrangements. The lady then said the next train southbound was currently at Hornsey - running almost an hour late. Nobody cared as who goes from Old Street to Moorgate?
Alarm bells started to ring. What happens if trains are late to Moorgate? Yes, no trains the other way! 1810 came and went and on the third announcement the lady suddenly added the last bit of vital info - that southbound service was going to form the northbound service to WGC that we were all waiting for.
ARGHHHH! How could she not mention that? Suddenly everyone on the platform went mad (you could hear the anger as everyone sighed, tutted and laughed) and left - as it would now be up to 20-25 minutes to turn it around, and imagine how packed it would be if everyone was waiting at Moorgate for this single train? I could have gone to Moorgate when it came in to get a seat, but opted to take the tube to King's Cross and go St Albans instead.
As usual, FCC always seems to fail to give out information when they need to most. And some members of staff are very bad at giving out information even when they have it.
On Monday, we'll see the posters apologising for the day and on the next forum an acknowledgement that they've got to learn from this - but they were slow to inform staff by pager - and the people at stations apparently get to keep the pagers, while it's mostly the people ON the trains that get the BlackBerrys.. Is that wise?
