-
Our new ticketing site is now live! Using either this or the original site (both powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
Storm Corrie, Sunday 30th January 2022
- Thread starter Scotrail314209
- Start date
- Status
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R
RailUK Forums
John Bishop
Member
No, there’s no restrictions when trees are within the railway boundary. Outwith that it becomes a bit more complex.
The railway uses specialist industry-specific forecasting, which for the weekend just gone was Red/Extreme pretty much across the board. The control office isn't sitting with the BBC weather forecast on the telly making decisions without hard analysis being done.
I think we all understand that.
Indeed although this is RailUK so there will be those who question whether their ‘specialist forecasting’ is biased towards not running a service.
That's entirely subjective. If you're stranded at a station in a distant city you've been visiting over the weekend and had no other viable option to get home earlier, it's less than ideal for a TOC to pull all services.
Arguably, the thousands of people who were able to travel before and after the incident received a substantially better service than being told to find another way/not bother. A minority (circa 300 people) would have been inconvenienced, whilst the thousands who travelled throughout the rest of the day, wouldn't.
As someone who often partakes in winter mountaineering in Scotland, I atleast, am well aware. Let me be again clear - I have no gripe with services being cancelled if the route is blocked. My gripe is with a national shut down without even seeing what weather materialises before making the decision. It's nonsense to suggest that the weather in Tweedbank will have been exactly the same as the weather in Thurso for all of Sunday evening. If we're going to cancel services pre-emptively, there should atleast be some more precision and localisation about it.
Generally speaking it's more about how disruption is managed. If we want zero complaints, just close the railway. Weather, disruption, delays are a part of life. How the industry manage them is what matters and most customers understand this. What isnt a viable solution is to just say let's not bother.
But as alluded to above - for the sake of inconveniencing a handful of customers, NR Scotland decided to inconvenience a whole nation of rail travellers. As I say above, if it were more accurately localised and specific routes were closed at specific times, or subject to blanket ESRs, perhaps as low as 30mph in some rural/remote areas, surely we could have kept people moving?
I feel like I'm swimming against a tide on here sometimes and I feel I should once again re-iterate that Scotrail/NR Scotland were in a minority of one here. The rest of the UK did exactly what I am repeatedly suggesting - blanket ESRs and selective route closure. Are other members seriously suggesting we should have shut down the railway north of Sheffield (roughly) all weekend and NR LNE/LNW got it wrong?
The amber alert available to the public on the Met Office website covered almost the entire country. I have no doubt that the detailed forecast provided to NR Scotland was similar in its prediction of the area that would be affected by the weather, over the course of the day.
"No trains on Sunday" is a much simpler message to get out than "No trains between X and Y in this area, between Y and Z in this area,..."
Falcon1200
Established Member
Hyperbole ? Not really, I can assure that I have dealt with every one of those scenarios on the same shift, many more than once, and I did not even mention other problems such as tarpaulins and plastic sheets blown onto the railway and entangled with the OLE. And these are only wind-related hazards, don't get me started on heavy rain or snow.....
Perhaps you have been there, but if not a shift in a railway Control Room during severe weather would be instructive, the staff barely get time to go for a pee, never mind have a cuppa, a bite to eat or any kind of break !
what’s your opinion about services being cancelled where there is a reasonable probability of the route being blocked, and /or of a train being stranded by a blockage?
what level of probability / risk of such an event would you accept as being reasonable to run a service?
TBH, I'd be quite worried if you expected services to run through a blockage!
Nicholas Lewis
Established Member
That would infer there was a known risk of the route being blocked by falling trees, either within the boundary or not, which is a sensible risk assessment that should be made for each route and I believe it is in place. In the longer run no primary operational railway route should be at risk from falling trees from gusts of less than 50mph but above that routes should be closed. One hopes that HS2 builds in that resilience. Anyhow of course this is an aspiration but without political backing nothing will happen so the industry has no choice.
Also having a quick scan of the main Scottish newspapers can't see any of them taking Scotrail to task over it just helpfully reporting the reasons why and what action they would have to take before routes could be reopened and that wouldn't be a quick task.
In todays world <1% but quantifying is it is very subjective.
Equally the same amber alert covered much of northern England. Should, therefore, services have been curtailed across the whole of northern England? Was it the wrong call there, or the wrong call in Scotland?
With respect, making the comms team's life a bit easier shouldn't really be a justification, full stop.
I appreciate that, but the railway isn't run for the convenience of a controller. The stressful days are far more than made up for on the mundane days.
In my opinion, it'd be more than acceptable to cancel based on a routes geography/topography and a specific risk assessment. For example, Dawlish at high tide or the ECML north of Newcastle on disruptive days. I'd argue, however, that everything that can be reasonably done to maintain a service should be done - for instance, diversions where possible or sourcing of RRT.
Pre-cancels should really be a last resort, for things such as late notice engineering. Given how notoriously inaccurate British weather forecasting can be, I'd suggest the notice to customers that things will likely be disrupted is more than sufficient notification - with the intention to run wherever possible.
Last edited:
As alluded to by @Carntyne, the models that the control teams would be working from were much more fine-grained than what was presented on the Met Office website. For one thing a single colour of alert (red/amber/yellow) covers a range of forecast confidence and the level of impact so it may well be that they were more confident about the predictions for Scotland than they were for Northern England.
It's not about making the communications team's job easier, it's about making it simpler for passengers to know where they stand.
Falcon1200
Established Member
Is that meant to be serious - I sincerely hope not ! Unless you think these were all incidents affecting one train rather than many separate trains ?
I agree 100%, but during severe weather multiple incidents are occurring simultaneously the phones are ringing continually to a point where before Incident A can be dealt with Incident B has occurred, before Incidents A and B can be dealt with Incident C has occurred, etc; Not hyperbole but a fact of life. But clearly we have very different views on how the railway should deal with extreme weather and are not going to agree.
John Bishop
Member
I think that the disruption experienced as a direct result of these recent winds just shows what a really poor infrastructure we have in place on the railway.
These winds weren’t record breaking by any means and were once considered a fairly normal occurrence during winter in Scotland, certainly in the more northern parts of the country. With climate change upon us, the experts tell us that more severe weather is set to become more common place, perhaps this is the time to consider a proper look at protecting the infrastructure to prevent these masses of fallen trees onto the railway which occur every time theres a bit of wind.
It would be nice to see the railway at least acknowledge this, but I’m not holding my breath. It all seems very reactive rather than proactive.
Regarding the national shutdown on Sunday, after the last storm in Aberdeenshire, ASLEF put considerable pressure on the company to stop running trains during forecast bad weather which seems to have happened this time.
These winds weren’t record breaking by any means and were once considered a fairly normal occurrence during winter in Scotland, certainly in the more northern parts of the country. With climate change upon us, the experts tell us that more severe weather is set to become more common place, perhaps this is the time to consider a proper look at protecting the infrastructure to prevent these masses of fallen trees onto the railway which occur every time theres a bit of wind.
It would be nice to see the railway at least acknowledge this, but I’m not holding my breath. It all seems very reactive rather than proactive.
Regarding the national shutdown on Sunday, after the last storm in Aberdeenshire, ASLEF put considerable pressure on the company to stop running trains during forecast bad weather which seems to have happened this time.
I can't help but feel you're rather intentionally missing my point. Irrespective of the forecast models, northern Cumbria was covered by the same yellow warning. This means that the Cumbrian coast, with stations such as Wigton just 10 miles south of Annan (which had its service suspended), continued to run - and a quick scan of RTT shows me that the Cumbria coast ran reasonably well Sunday evening. Are you saying that the Scottish weather was sufficiently different, just across the Solway, that it was totally justified to cancel the last two Dumfries trains? That the weather just north of Carlisle was that suitably and significantly different?
It must be a miracle that customers manage to cope when trains are delayed or disrupted...
Actually that's my mistake! My apologies - from an earlier post I was under the impression you were train crew, though it now appears I got that wrong and you're a controller - I shall redact!
So I'll go back to where I started. Some pre-cancels are okay, given the right circumstances. Blanket ESR, swapping out electric traction/removal of EMU services where there's a high risk etc all make sense. What I disagree with, is the cancellation of ALL train services over an area some 350 miles long and 100 or so broad before we even find out how bad (or not) the weather is. I would have thought most rail staff would understand (and agree) that were here to move people, not just throw the towel in if there's even half a chance the weather might be a bit iffy.
The bit that really gets me is this is broadly how the rest of the UK usually operates, (I'm hardly being a revolutionary here!). Yet here we are, 3 pages in, with people saying how wrong I am...
GusB
Established Member
This most recent storm perhaps wasn't record-breaking, but Malik was only a day or so before, and we had Arwen only a few weeks earlier; the fallout from that event is still very much ongoing.
When I went out the other day I noticed that there were several fences down - they had survived the first two storms, but the third was obviously too much. Similarly there will be trees that were weakened the first time around, but didn't necessarily come down. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'd rather not be out and about when a six-foot fence panel or a large tree comes loose.
Maybe it wasn't so bad in other parts of the country, but I can assure you that here it was genuinely hair-raising at times.
The railway has acknowledged this and is working to clear the line side and reinforce embankments but, as you may have noticed, there's a large maintenance debt built up during the years of underinvestment that needs to be repaid.
I think you are missing mine. The weather warning on the Met Office website is very much simplified as compared to the models that are provided on a commercial basis. It's not just a matter of saying "The amber warning covered Cumbria too" without knowing exactly what impacts were being forecast and with what probability.
Millisle
Member
It is at least interesting that passenger services continued all evening north of Carlisle on the WCML.
From what I understand, the worst weather was Central Belt northwards. Which covers pretty the majority of Scotrail's network.
Millisle
Member
From Carstairs northward these services ran on routes from which ScotRail had withdrawn all services. The other lines south of Glasgow are also outside that area. The fallout of general damage the next day was heavily focused on the north and east. What can be said is that it did not encompass the entire area of ScotRail operations.
Yes, which is why I said "the majority" rather than "all of".
Millisle
Member
Well indeed, you underline my point.
And again this goes back to my earlier point - "Trains will run between X and Y until time A, between Y and Z until time B,..." is a much more complex message to get across and has a much higher chance of (a) being misunderstood; and/or (b) being overtaken by events on the ground than a message "No trains will be running".
Sometimes is better in the big picture to not try at all than it is to make an attempt and end up with people (staff and passengers) and units stuck out of place.
Millisle
Member
The closure of a line completely seems like a reasonable strategy where there is a significant risk. It does appear, however, that the same strategy may have been applied broad-brush in areas where there was no significant risk. A single example: the 0607 Carlisle - Glasgow Central via Dumfries arr. 0835 ran to time on 31 Jan. Neither a daylight inspection of the GSW, nor obviously running at caution was deemed necessary. I am just a layman, but it does at least suggest that there was nothing much to worry about, yet the service the previous evening was taken off, unlike on the WCML through the same territory, as I mentioned above.
Just because something didn't happen doesn't mean that there was no risk of it happening. That's kinda the definition of the word.
Millisle
Member
It is the correct evaluation of the risk that is the question. Perhaps I just have a more sceptical nature.
Yes, it does appear that Scotrail/NR took the more cautious approach but I suspect that it was due to them taking a whole-network view - yes service could be maintained on some lines but the level of service that could be guaranteed to be provided wasn't enough to be worth it as set against the cost and risk of disruption to the next days' service.
I don't know the details of the diagrams that units work, but the trains that work the GSW route have to sleep somewhere overnight, was there a high enough passenger demand on a Sunday to balance out the chance that a unit got stuck and was unavailable for the Monday morning service it was supposed to work?
I don't know whether the decision was made primarily by scotrail or NR but all trains departing after 18.00 were cancelled. The WCML services mentioned would have started before then.
Unless there are major events, passenger numbers are quite low on most routes on Saturday evenings, and making a simple, easily understood shutdown was easiest for everyone including the public.
I believe that the decision was correct. On Sunday morning, trains were in the right place and, after the usual removal of trampolines etc from the wires, services could restart in the areas which had had the yellow warning. In the North (amber) area trees were down in their hundreds.
From a forecasting perspective, these storms can now be predicted days before they form (unlike in 1987). But there remains uncertainty about their strength and their exact path (the two are linked ). The predicted path of Corrie changed significantly in the run-up to its arrival.
As a comparison, if you fill a bowl with water and put a single beater in, you will eventually get a smooth vortex from the centre to the outside, but initially the circulation will be chaotic as the rotation gradually spreads outwards. The former us a mature depression, the latter a developing storm which will contain furious gusts with speeds well in excess of the average.
Unless there are major events, passenger numbers are quite low on most routes on Saturday evenings, and making a simple, easily understood shutdown was easiest for everyone including the public.
I believe that the decision was correct. On Sunday morning, trains were in the right place and, after the usual removal of trampolines etc from the wires, services could restart in the areas which had had the yellow warning. In the North (amber) area trees were down in their hundreds.
From a forecasting perspective, these storms can now be predicted days before they form (unlike in 1987). But there remains uncertainty about their strength and their exact path (the two are linked ). The predicted path of Corrie changed significantly in the run-up to its arrival.
As a comparison, if you fill a bowl with water and put a single beater in, you will eventually get a smooth vortex from the centre to the outside, but initially the circulation will be chaotic as the rotation gradually spreads outwards. The former us a mature depression, the latter a developing storm which will contain furious gusts with speeds well in excess of the average.
- Status