How was disruption handled in BR days?

[greatkingrat]

In this forum there are often stories of passengers being left stranded during disruption with no alternative transport being provided but I'm curious how this was dealt with in the past. Did BR always provide replacement transport / hotel rooms, or did passengers still end up stranded just like they do today? Is the railway worse at dealing with this than it was, or is just that with modern technology, we are more likely to hear about the times when things go wrong?

 

[SuspectUsual]

The biggest difference - and this is only based on my memories of trips with my dad when I was a kid - is that a lot of the time you hadn’t the faintest idea what was happening if the disruption happened whilst you were waiting at an unmanned station.

No PIS, very few announcements, trains just didn’t turn up

 

[JamieL]

Different times - it is unfair to compare IMHO. Compare (e.g.) local Councils then and now - in the 1980s you would go into the office and potentially queue whereas now most Government info is available on an app. Same same for the railways - if it was still BR, I suspect we would have much of a muchness with delay/disruption info.

 

[endofthetunnel]

Unless it made the national news, disruption on one bit of the country just wasn’t as well known about on the other side, so whether or not a few people missed a connection or had no replacement bus just wasn’t discussed.

I’m sure there were both positives (like more station staff and fewer TOCs to discuss it with) and negatives (like no real time info and poorer comms over the network) but there wasn’t an internet forum to then discuss every decision the railways ever made and how they would have been made better by those experts in their front rooms!

 

[Bletchleyite]

Unless it made the national news, disruption on one bit of the country just wasn’t as well known about on the other side, so whether or not a few people missed a connection or had no replacement bus just wasn’t discussed.

I’m sure there were both positives (like more station staff and fewer TOCs to discuss it with) and negatives (like no real time info and poorer comms over the network) but there wasn’t an internet forum to then discuss every decision the railways ever made and how they would have been made better by those experts in their front rooms!

Actually, the uk.railway USENET newsgroup from which a few contributors on here originate was there, certainly for latter-day (late-90s) BR. It was very active in its heyday.

 

[dk1]

I think people where made of stronger stuff. They could write a letter of complaint but by the time you did it wasn’t worth it. It was just assumed it would be ignored. No delay repay either. Passengers didn’t seem so demanding as they do today. I still can’t get my head around anyone expecting a partial refund due to no charting points or working Wi-Fi.

 

[matt_world2004]

Wasn't their dedicated pages on ceefax and Teletext that listed disruption on British rail and London transport services. Indeed I believe that's where the concept of a tube status came from.

 

[Bertie the bus]

From my experience of BR There were two major differences between now and then:

1. BR would try to get you home. If that meant sticking you on a newspaper train they would do it. They did that with me, my dad and my brother.
2. BR understood that BR was an abbreviation of British Rail and wherever possible they would get you to your destination by rail.

 

[Welshman]

As I remember, the answer to whether disruption was handled better in BR days compared with now is "yes and no".

"No" in the sense that information technology was poor then - no internet, apps, p-i-s etc. The main way of getting a message to the passenger was through the signalman stopping the train, giving a message to the guard who walked through the train and passed it on to the passengers and to the porter at the next station, who chalked it up on a blackboard near the ticket barrier.

"Yes" in the sense that fewer trains, more alternative tracks and greater route knowledge of staff working in a nationalised industry meant that services could be diverted more easily and quickly via other routes, obviating the need for rail replacement buses, etc.

As has been mentioned above, staff were also ready to offer unofficial remedies to ensure passengers got to their destinations. My Father told of missing the last train from Manchester to Halifax whilst he was returning home on leave. The next train ran only to Todmorden, and after depositing the coaches into the siding there, the driver offered him a lift on the engine from there to Sowerby Bridge, where it was going on shed, meaning he had a short walk rather than a long one. On another occasion when I was travelling from Halifax to Aberystwyth for an interview at Lampeter College, the train was so late from Shrewsbury into Aberystwyth that I missed the last bus to Lampeter, and a kindly railway porter took me in his car. Looking back, I don't think he had an ulterior motive other than wanting to help, but such help would not be offered now, nor would you accept it if it were.

 

[GordonT]

From my experience of BR There were two major differences between now and then:

1. BR would try to get you home. If that meant sticking you on a newspaper train they would do it. They did that with me, my dad and my brother.
2. BR understood that BR was an abbreviation of British Rail and wherever possible they would get you to your destination by rail.

Agreed. Also the possibility of missed connections and the greater potential to "hold" connecting trains for late runners was of greater significance. This meant that guards/ticket inspectors tended to be more proactive in going through a late running train to determine the number and destination of pax with onward connections and passing the information to control.

 

[LowLevel]

To be fair the modern railway doesn't have newspaper trains to put you on. I've worked late night ECS trains in service to get people home though and on more than one occasion, just as an example of cooperation, the late evening XC Nottingham to Leicester ECS has run with an XC 170 and crew as EM'S 2L88 in the event of disruption.

My experience of disruption under BR was if you were lucky getting stuck in a massive pay phone queue to tell someone at the other end you'd be late, whilst the staff told you they didn't really know anything, and if you were unlucky wandering off to try and find an alternative

 

[Taunton]

Different times - it is unfair to compare IMHO. Compare (e.g.) local Councils then and now - in the 1980s you would go into the office and potentially queue whereas now most Government info is available on an app.

Not my council. You have to make an appointment. Then they can't see you for 10 days. That this message is conveyed on an App after 10 minutes of leafing through unnecessary pages, and "frequently asked questions" which only an imbecile would ask, is by the by.

On the railway, one of the differences on trunk routes is passenger services ran pretty much 24 hours. If you missed the 9.45pm from Paddington to Taunton there was one at 11.45pm. Miss that, there were seats on the newspaper train at 1.00am.

Connections were connections. They were held, especially for the last train of the day. An extra after-hours service to take stranded groups, crewed by a passed fireman and a passed cleaner from the shed, was not unknown.

And overridingly, none of this "acceptance" nonsense. If things went wrong, the expression was "any reasonable route".

 

[dk1]

Where it’s said passengers were put on Newspaper & Postal services that ran overnight (very slowly in many cases) today they are just put into taxis & sent on their way. Probably arriving back hours earlier. It would be seen as a crime against humanity now to get home with the post or papers lol.

 

[Gloster]

BR was one organisation, so there were no demarcations between different departments: everybody was working to the same aim and knew the aim was to get the passenger home. There were also all sorts of informal contacts that meant you could find ways of getting things done or keep others informed. You would normally try to keep ‘them above’ informed, but if you had to do something to get things sorted out and couldn’t get through, you did. You also felt that unless you did something really dashed stupid, if it was in the interest of getting the job done, management were unlikely to complain. Of course, there were times when it got even more chaotic because two members of staff had, while both trying to do their best, separately done things that combined to make things worse.

Remember, you did not not have mobile ‘phones and all the mod cons: a dialler ‘phone and a Control one was all that many signal boxes had, and I have worked at one main-line box where we didn’t even have a dialler and the Control one didn’t work in damp weather. And, with low pay rates, there always were those who couldn’t be bothered, but better rates doesn’t seem to have eliminated that problem.

 

[Ediswan]

On the railway, one of the differences on trunk routes is passenger services ran pretty much 24 hours. If you missed the 9.45pm from Paddington to Taunton there was one at 11.45pm. Miss that, there were seats on the newspaper train at 1.00am.

I once did that on purpose. St Pancras to Leicester. I don't recall the exact departure time, but the tubes and busses had stopped for the night, so I had walked from Paddington to St Pancras. I was the only person in the compartment (old stock, very well heated) who was there by intent. Everybody else was on some kind of disruption diversion. The most extreme was a rig worker who had started with a helicopter from Morecambe Bay to Blackpool, fog in Blackpool, I forget the rest.

 

[Shaw S Hunter]

The single national railway was a big plus compared to today. Once on an ALR my plans were thrown into disarray by a freight derailment west of Taunton leaving me in Devon with no way to make the overnight Bristol-Edinburgh. I was directed to join a London train, diverted via Yeovil, whose guard then made alternative arrangements. At Paddington a taxi was provided to Kings Cross from where I was accommodated on a sleeper service north. While the availability of overnight services is of course much less today it's hard to imagine a similar arrangement being made under today's regime.

OTOH modern communications make it much easier to start any reaction to a problem very quickly. One evening when working a train from Lime St-Preston we were a very late start due to a mechanical fault. I quickly realised that the last connection for Carlisle and Glasgow would be missed so went through the train to confirm passengers' ultimate destinations and passed the details to control. By the time we reached Preston I was able to direct passengers to the last TPE to Barrow with coaches being laid on from Lancaster. Now I dread to think just what time some of the Scottish passengers got home but nobody was left to their own devices. In the old days the most likely outcome would have been a group of angry passengers haranguing station staff on arrival at Preston with solutions only being sought at that point.

 

[weepingwillowb]

Travelling back from Manchester to Harrogate in December 1981, the snow was so bad that the train arrived in Leeds well after the scheduled departure time of the last train to Harrogate. Thankfully, it had been held back for late connections, and we made it safely home in the early hours of the following morning.

 

[Falcon1200]

2. BR understood that BR was an abbreviation of British Rail and wherever possible they would get you to your destination by rail.

Wherever possible perhaps, but certainly not always; One of my duties in my first Control job in 1984 was phoning bus companies to request replacement transport, we had a comprehensive list of them and used it regularly!

They were held, especially for the last train of the day.

Connections were not always held, more than once I missed the last-but-one Oxford service at Birmingham New St having arrived from Manchester, sometimes seeing its taillight disappearing into the tunnel - The next service was around 90 minutes later.

But I do agree that BR being one organisation made a huge difference: Issues with ticket acceptance during disruption regularly feature here, and that is something which GBR needs to sort out.

 

[32475]

Travelling back from Manchester to Harrogate in December 1981, the snow was so bad that the train arrived in Leeds well after the scheduled departure time of the last train to Harrogate. Thankfully, it had been held back for late connections, and we made it safely home in the early hours of the following morning.

My own experience decades ago was that trains used to be much better at waiting at stations for connecting services. For example local services would hang back for late incoming intercity services.
It was all one big company back then and therefore more tolerance about ‘getting there’ even if it wasn’t on time.

 

[dk1]

Wherever possible perhaps, but certainly not always; One of my duties in my first Control job in 1984 was phoning bus companies to request replacement transport, we had a comprehensive list of them and used it regularly!

We where also allowed to do this at some outstations. I had three bus/coach companies I could try for replacements but tended to use one in particular as they where so reliable & knew the back roads leading to the more rural stations well.

 

[WesternLancer]

Wasn't their dedicated pages on ceefax and Teletext that listed disruption on British rail and London transport services. Indeed I believe that's where the concept of a tube status came from.

Think it tended to be planned engineering work that got listed there. I do recall looking at that back in the 1980s now you remind me.

More generally -

On relatively local services when things went wrong as a passenger a word with the guard would often result in an extra stop at my local station if the 'stopper' had been missed due to a failed connection or it being the last train (this would be on BR SR) - I would assume the guard asked the driver to stop and it was sorted (ie not involving calls to control etc) tho in reality that may have well happened I would not have known as a passenger. I certainly do not recall being told things like 'I am not sure we can do that, I'll have to ring and ask to find out'. From the passengers point of view it seemed as if staff were allowed to use their initiative to resolve the problem.

Staff from the era may say that's not how it was in reality - but from the passenger's point of view that would be what is now called 'customer focussed'.

However, no doubt it was not always like that so would not want to suggest my specs are too rose tinted.

 

[matt_world2004]

Think it tended to be planned engineering work that got listed there. I do recall looking at that back in the 1980s now you remind me.

I know it used to definitely list when British rail ferries were disrupted due to unplanned disruption.i also remember the tube status being there as well. Even for unplanned disruption

 

[Dai Corner]

Think it tended to be planned engineering work that got listed there. I do recall looking at that back in the 1980s now you remind me.

There were pages of loco failures and other disruption in the railway magazines back in the day, but reading about them weeks later had less impact than following live Tweets from delayed passengers and discussing the minutiae on forums.

 

[dk1]

I know it used to definitely list when British rail ferries were disrupted due to unplanned disruption.i also remember the tube status being there as well. Even for unplanned disruption

Yes Ceefax definitely shew up to date rail disruption information as well as engineering works. Used to look through it several times each day.

 

[WesternLancer]

Yes Ceefax definitely shew up to date rail disruption information as well as engineering works. Used to look through it several times each day.

I'm sure that is correct now I think harder. My main memory is waiting for it to scroll round to my local info from numerous pages!

 

[Taunton]

Yes Ceefax definitely shew up to date rail disruption information as well as engineering works. Used to look through it several times each day.

BR were pioneer users of the Prestel/Viewdata system, devised in the 1970s by the UK Post Office Telephones Research Unit (later British Telecom) in Ipswich, which conceptually was a predecessor of The Web. Operators at BR put the detail in on pages they managed; the development was doubtless seen at the time as an S&T function. Not apparent who at BR entered this, there would have been a limited number. Others connected over phone lines could see this. I believe the BBC would look at the BR pages (and others) on here, and operators would manually type in the information to BBC Ceefax, there being no effective link functionality between them. They possibly moved on to an automated link when this was devised later, firstly for the real-time airport arrivals feeds that got onto Ceefax.

 

[matt_world2004]

Yes Ceefax definitely shew up to date rail disruption information as well as engineering works. Used to look through it several times each day.

I think it used to be regionalised as well so the Wales area would have focussed on disruption in the Wales and surrounding regions .

Ferry and London transport disruption was carried nationally though

I think one of the reasons London transport information was carried nationally is that it was on a separate page and removing it may have broken some fast text links

 

[Forty29]

I remember 15 pages once, snow day!

 

[Dai Corner]

I remember 15 pages once, snow day!

Waiting for the right page to come round would be enough to make you miss your train (unless it was delayed)!

 

[SargeNpton]

BR were pioneer users of the Prestel/Viewdata system, devised in the 1970s by the UK Post Office Telephones Research Unit (later British Telecom) in Ipswich, which conceptually was a predecessor of The Web. Operators at BR put the detail in on pages they managed; the development was doubtless seen at the time as an S&T function. Not apparent who at BR entered this, there would have been a limited number. Others connected over phone lines could see this. I believe the BBC would look at the BR pages (and others) on here, and operators would manually type in the information to BBC Ceefax, there being no effective link functionality between them. They possibly moved on to an automated link when this was devised later, firstly for the real-time airport arrivals feeds that got onto Ceefax.

BR's Prestel database was not an S&T function, but part of the Passenger Marketing department. Two clerks (me being one of them between 1984-1993) and a head of section looking after the majority of the static information; with certain travel news pages being editable by the area/regional controls. Unfortunately, when you most needed input from those controls they were too busy trying to fix the disruption - the Prestel pages being seen by many of them as just an inconvenience with that odd looking TV in the corner taking up space.

For Ceefax and Oracle, there were two pages: one for current travel news and one for weekend engineering work. The current travel news page was edited by the Ceefax (BBC)/Oracle (ITV) staff, who logged into the BR videotex database and and re-wrote the content onto their own system. The weekend travel news page was a copy of the Prestel pages cut and pasted by the BR team into Ceefax/Oracle headers, and then uploaded onto the respective systems via a dial-up link.

BR's Prestel involvement came to an end in 1993, though the weekend travel bulletin for Ceefax carried on until Ceefax itself disappeared. On ITV, the involvement came to an end when Oracle was replaced by Teletext UK.