Post Hatfield speed restrictions - how impactful were they?

[Djgr]

As a company we abandoned the train and started flying from Liverpool to Luton, meeting at the Ibis Hotel with our partners from Kent.

It was a true privatisation shocker.

 

[Ploughman]

As one of the Tech Staff in a renewals team, I was chasing about the country, along with numerous gangs, on Stressing jobs following the rail changes.
Based in Leeds, the furthest South I got was Sandy, with various sites between there and Huntingdon.
North I got to Ferryhill at the end of a long stretch from North of Darlington to Ferryhill.
The news stock item footage of changing rails with a road railer with a supervisor walking alongside was filmed on that stretch.
The supervisor was one of ours from Leeds.
I had to call him up on the radio as a visitor had jut arrived on site. The then Chairman of Railtrack (Was it Corbett?) had just dropped in by Helicopter and wanted a word.

 

[Galvanize]

I remember going up to visit the Grandparents up in Scotland in the October 2000 Autumn half term holidays...not long after Hatfield.
3 of us booked on...the 11:30 I think from Kings to Edinburgh to change onto a connecting ScotRail service to go north. Well...that was the plan.
Turned up at Kings Cross just before 11am and it turned out there wasn’t an 11:30 to Edinburgh anymore, it had been ammended as terminating at Newcastle. But were told at the Information Point on the old concourse (which was no doubt swamped with customers)...to join one of the “Queues” and listen for announcements. Eventually we were told to board a train (I think it was the 11:00 or maybe even an earlier one?) which was bound for Edinburgh. Unfortunately it was really busy, had 2 trainloads of people on it...Reservations had been cancelled. The journey once we got going was...very very slow, certainly remember going via Hertford...some places we stopped at signals for ages, others we just plodded along at little more than walking pace.
Even more people got on at Peterborough and Doncaster, full and standing was an under-statement!

I can’t actually remember how long it took to get to Edinburgh or what time we got there...I do recall it had started getting dark by the time we reached the Scenic Coastal stretch of the ECML. My Granddad actually said that he would drive to Edinburgh and pick us up from there instead of us trying to get to Dundee by train, as the limited Scotrail services in operation were extremely busy and leaving people behind at stations!

So whatever time we got to Edinburgh, Granddad was waiting for us...after a short walk to a Multi Storey car park near Waverley Station...we travelled up the A90 in his Vauxhall Astra instead of squeezing into a Class 158 or 170.

The journey back south...I don’t think we had too many problems...just remember the odd speed restriction here and there, and again we went via the Hertford Loop instead of the MainLine.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 8 Mar 2021 ==


Additionally (double post):

I know of people at work who remember having to operate trains on the Network full of Speed Restrictions post Hatfield...there were so many of them they had to be published in a separate booklet instead of the Weekly Operating Notice.

Also, it wasn’t uncommon for them to end up working 10, 11 or 12 hour days. Massively draining by all accounts, but fair play to all for getting through it and bearing a brave face!

 

[shap summit]

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[D6130]

Would love to read Shap Summit's recent post about Post-Hatfield Speed Restrictions, but it seems to be missing in section!

 

[bluenoxid]

Another thing that affected the railways during that October was flooding, which had an impact on a trip to Warley that I made.

 

[Bald Rick]

I had to call him up on the radio as a visitor had jut arrived on site. The then Chairman of Railtrack (Was it Corbett?) had just dropped in by Helicopter and wanted a word.

Corbett was CEO at the time of Hatfield, but resigned the next month. The late Steve Marshall (the Finance Director) took over from him, but resigned when the company went into Administration a year later.

 

[KevinTurvey]

This was a horrible 3 months and an awful time to be travelling by train, many times it was taking 4 1/2 hours between Liverpool and Euston, and the flooding at the same time and loco reliability also made things worse.

However, this was a lesser of two evils. My boss at the time told everyone to drive or fly, trains being actively discouraged. Having experienced 4 hr drives to Uxbridge and then an hour to the centre, or worse a drive to Manchester Airport, a wait and then a flight to Heathrow, then circling to land for 20 mins, then another 20 mins unloading and getting out of the airport, and then another hour to the centre, this was still taking longer than the poor train service.

I went back to the trains very quickly, I realised how lucky we were! After Christmas it got much better and by Easter was nearly back to normal.