On board LNER 1S14 which is delayed between Doncaster & York (06/02)

[The North Briton]

What is possibly more of a thing is that despite the massive advances in technology, the way disruption is handled seems to be if anything getting worse, which is the opposite to what we’d ordinarily expect. I’m sure staff training is one part of that, and possibly the general reduction in staffing levels generally. I guess a flip side of this coin is there are more trains on the network than a generation ago.

But there has been a significant INCREASE in the staffing levels on the customer information side within Control, with no discernable improvement in the quality of output that I can see.

 

[Seehof]

The train manager on 1S14 (the train that caused the incident and I was stuck on) was very poor in communicating and most of the staff hid away in first class. Only when the QR cafe delivery lady came through did we get patchy information and people were asking so many questions, she accused people of bringing aggressive. I still do not understand why we were stranded for over two hours before a decision was made to evacuate.

The train manager on the rescue train was exceptional. He is a credit to LNER for his constant announcements and actually coming through the train and speaking to every passenger. I wish I had got his name as I want to write to LNER to commend thank and commend him. I can only describe him as being black and having his LNER travel “box” card around his neck! I cannot emphasise how brilliant he was.

At Doncaster, we had to get off and got on a waiting Aberdeen, which went direct to York on the normal line.
1130 departure from Kings Cross and arrived at York sometime after 1900!!
I am sure there will be a high level enquiry into all this on Monday. I understand it is still chaotic today (Saturday).

 

[voyagerdude220]

The train manager on 1S14 (the train that caused the incident and I was stuck on) was very poor in communicating and most of the staff hid away in first class. Only when the QR cafe delivery lady came through did we get patchy information and people were asking so many questions she accused people of bringing aggressive. I still do not understand why we were stranded for over two hours before a decision was made to evacuate.
The train manager on the rescue train was exceptional. Hr is a credit to LNER for his constant announcements and actually coming through the train and speaking to every passenger. I wish I had got his name as I want to write to LNER to commend thank and commend him. I can only describe him as being black and having his LNER travel “box” card around his neck! I cannot emphasise how brilliant he was.
At Doncaster we had to get off and got on a waiting Aberdeen which went direct to York on the normal line.
1130 departure from Kings Cross and arrived at York sometime after 1900!!
I am sure there will be a high level enquiry into all this on Monday. i understand it is still chaotic today (Saturday).

Please contact LNER with feedback on their colleagues. Even without their names, they should be able to see who was working each train. Hopefully they might do something about the not so positive points you've raised as well. I know from personal experience of working on a (not LNER) Station job role how frustrating it can be at times when we're fed either very little or contradictory updates, but I still encourage my colleagues to make regular announcements to keep everyone updated, even if it is the same information as the previous announcement being repeated incase anyone didn't catch it the first time.

I'm not saying it's easy dealing face to face with passengers during disruption, but I think it's fair to say you've seen from your own experience yesterday two contrasting ways of two LNER Train Managers performing their duties- One seemingly failing at the basics (keeping everyone updated via the PA system) and being visible to passengers and the other Train Manager doing all they can to help you.

 

[Seehof]

Thank you for your excellent comments. As a former conductor and train driver I have always found if you keep people informed and deal with passengers face to face as the second train manager did, it works wonders. I have never had a problem with passengers despite many incidents including getting people off a full train, drunks, noise, pizza fights, smoking and many service disruptions. Just speak to people directly even if you know nothing. 99% of people are nice.

 

[Gerald Fiennes]

It felt like a complete meltdown at the South end of the route yesterday evening at Grantham southbound. Short notice cancellations galore, very little in the way of tannoy annoucements and reliance on automated voices instead. Around a 2 hour gap to from Grantham to P'boro coupled with challenging conditions to get from there to Stevenage as Thameslink also fell apart between St. P and Blackfriars (again) in mid-afternoon. Only about 1 in 3 LNERs running Southbound, and rather too many in 5 car formation (ie. coming from Leeds).

A Do Not Travel alert seemed to be issued at about 7pm, would have been better if this had happened sooner as I would stayed put in Boston..

So, there surely must be some kind of pre-arranged contingency plan to deal with train failure between Donny and York, eg. terminate at Donny or Leeds? No sign of a 'Plan B' on the ground, hoever.

The railway's various ECML teams can surely do better than this?!!

 

[Tram203]

Unfortunately it seems to me that the ECML is, and always will be, destined to descend in to chaos at the slightest hiccup.

I remember well, the first day of the Eureka timetable, Sun 22nd May 2011, carnage. Here we are, 15 years and countless meltdowns later at the start of another new timetable having ripped a chunk of capacity out of the remaining 225 sets to save a few seconds here and there, and what's changed?

Nothing.

It works perfectly on a fictional computer programme, but try it in real life, it doesn't work and it never will.

 

[Horizon22]

What is possibly more of a thing is that despite the massive advances in technology, the way disruption is handled seems to be if anything getting worse, which is the opposite to what we’d ordinarily expect. I’m sure staff training is one part of that, and possibly the general reduction in staffing levels generally. I guess a flip side of this coin is there are more trains on the network than a generation ago.

I’d take that maybe less localised staffing across the network in which might may it more difficult to attend to incidents. Also a change in health in safety culture which means you can’t just say evacuate a train if it’s stranded. But on the flip side, probably welfare concerns of a stranded train were taken less seriously in the past.

But I don’t think there’s any way of categorically saying it’s “getting worse” which just seems like rose-tinted glasses. The intensification of service across the last 30-40 years doesn’t help matters.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 7 Feb 2026 ==

But there has been a significant INCREASE in the staffing levels on the customer information side within Control, with no discernable improvement in the quality of output that I can see.

No, I wouldn’t call it significant. In some places, not an increase at all in last 20 years.

 

[35B]

It felt like a complete meltdown at the South end of the route yesterday evening at Grantham southbound. Short notice cancellations galore, very little in the way of tannoy annoucements and reliance on automated voices instead. Around a 2 hour gap to from Grantham to P'boro coupled with challenging conditions to get from there to Stevenage as Thameslink also fell apart between St. P and Blackfriars (again) in mid-afternoon. Only about 1 in 3 LNERs running Southbound, and rather too many in 5 car formation (ie. coming from Leeds).

A Do Not Travel alert seemed to be issued at about 7pm, would have been better if this had happened sooner as I would stayed put in Boston..

So, there surely must be some kind of pre-arranged contingency plan to deal with train failure between Donny and York, eg. terminate at Donny or Leeds? No sign of a 'Plan B' on the ground, hoever.

The railway's various ECML teams can surely do better than this?!!

I was at King’s Cross as the decisions were being taken to call a halt to trains. Information was patchy and staff at Kings Cross weren’t clear whether the problem was only affecting the York line, or also the Leeds line. It combined with a Friday afternoon of people trying to get away from London and a lot of 5 car units, meaning capacity was at a premium.

Those staff I spoke to were excellent and frank about how little they knew - itself an important piece of information.

With a little local knowledge I was able to get a GN service to Peterborough and then travel on by EMR - probably the right choice, rather than waiting 40 minutes to see how many trainloads tried to board the next train (which I couldn’t be sure would run when I made my choice).

 

[D1537]

I think the problem at Grantham in the evening was that trains had stopped being spun at Doncaster and were running through (so there we now no spare trains at Doncaster), however the southbounds should have formed by trains that got spun earlier at Doncaster and therefore weren't in the North. Add to that traincrew being all over the place, and you end up with that situation.

 

[The North Briton]

I’d take that maybe less localised staffing across the network in which might may it more difficult to attend to incidents. Also a change in health in safety culture which means you can’t just say evacuate a train if it’s stranded. But on the flip side, probably welfare concerns of a stranded train were taken less seriously in the past.

But I don’t think there’s any way of categorically saying it’s “getting worse” which just seems like rose-tinted glasses. The intensification of service across the last 30-40 years doesn’t help matters.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 7 Feb 2026 ==



No, I wouldn’t call it significant. In some places, not an increase at all in last 20 years.

I was specifically referring to customer support roles within Control: 6x Duty Customer Info Managers 1x Customer Info Manager and 1x Customer Info Systems Manager does seem to me significant, especially on top of the splitting of Customer Info/Customer Experience roles which took place around five years ago which itself led to a significant increase in headcount (specifically 6x Duty Customer Experienxe Managers - new role).

 

[Segedunum]

I think the problem at Grantham in the evening was that trains had stopped being spun at Doncaster and were running through (so there we now no spare trains at Doncaster), however the southbounds should have formed by trains that got spun earlier at Doncaster and therefore weren't in the North. Add to that traincrew being all over the place, and you end up with that situation.

The service had also been planned to thin out in the evening to keep sets in the north in preparation for engineering works this weekend, which meant fewer trains to choose from in general.

 

[800001]

I was specifically referring to customer support roles within Control: 6x Duty Customer Info Managers 1x Customer Info Manager and 1x Customer Info Systems Manager does seem to me significant, especially on top of the splitting of Customer Info/Customer Experience roles which took place around five years ago which itself led to a significant increase in headcount (specifically 6x Duty Customer Experienxe Managers - new role).

Which company are you referring to?

For LNER you would have on duty during a day time 1 x Duty Customer experience manager and 1 X Customer Information controller (or what ever the title is now).

 

[bramling]

I’d take that maybe less localised staffing across the network in which might may it more difficult to attend to incidents. Also a change in health in safety culture which means you can’t just say evacuate a train if it’s stranded. But on the flip side, probably welfare concerns of a stranded train were taken less seriously in the past.

But I don’t think there’s any way of categorically saying it’s “getting worse” which just seems like rose-tinted glasses.

Just thinking locally to me, disruption definitely happens more often - it’s not rose-tinted glasses. Going back to the 90s and 2000s disruption was comparatively rare, not like now when it seems to be at least once every week, often multiple days.

But in terms of how things are handled, it’s definitely worse, especially in terms of the performance of station staff. I posted a few weeks ago how after a fatality Letchworth station just locked up the station and essentially told everyone to get lost. Elsewhere on GTR it’s essentially the same, zero information, if you’re lucky there might be a frazzled looking member of staff trying to sort taxis, otherwise it’s just pull the shutters down and hide away.

Seems to be the problem is trying to run more trains but without the resources in place to do it. Look at the whole Thameslink Programme for an example of that.

 

[35B]

Just thinking locally to me, disruption definitely happens more often - it’s not rose-tinted glasses. Going back to the 90s and 2000s disruption was comparatively rare, not like now when it seems to be at least once every week, often multiple days.

But in terms of how things are handled, it’s definitely worse, especially in terms of the performance of station staff. I posted a few weeks ago how after a fatality Letchworth station just locked up the station and essentially told everyone to get lost. Elsewhere on GTR it’s essentially the same, zero information, if you’re lucky there might be a frazzled looking member of staff trying to sort taxis, otherwise it’s just pull the shutters down and hide away.

Seems to be the problem is trying to run more trains but without the resources in place to do it. Look at the whole Thameslink Programme for an example of that.

Performance is dipping, putting me in mind of the unreliability of about 15 years ago. I'm not convinced how much this is too many trains - the number of "power failures between Doncaster and York" seems to tell a tale

 

[The North Briton]

Which company are you referring to?

For LNER you would have on duty during a day time 1 x Duty Customer experience manager and 1 X Customer Information controller (or what ever the title is now).

So what are these people doing (taken from a recent FOI request)?

 

[D1537]

Performance is dipping, putting me in mind of the unreliability of about 15 years ago. I'm not convinced how much this is too many trains - the number of "power failures between Doncaster and York" seems to tell a tale

Yesterday's issue wasn't a "power failure" as such though, it was caused by damage to the OHLE involving 1S14.

 

[Dr Hoo]

This thread is usefully exposing what has been a growing issue in many parts of the network.

For example, an expansion from 4 to 5 regular departures per hour by a long distance operator might reasonably be expected to increase the number of on-train staff by around 25%. No doubt it will also be hoped that the number of passengers will increase by around 25% within a few years.

What isn’t always clear is whether there is also a plan to increase customer-facing station staff, controllers and information staff by the same amount. I recognise that some wayside stations like Retford might not actually be seeing an increase in calls but for major nodes like Doncaster, York and Newcastle there is clearly going to be a real step-up in workload.

To the extent that disruption is actually compounded on an already congested system it may well be that there is a disproportionate increase in the severity of problems, say 40%.

So, a genuine question: Have LNER (or other operators in a similar situation) actually increased resilience capability commensurately. There are also possible supplementary questions depending on the answer. E.g. If not, why not? and: What is GBR’s policy on such issues going forward?

(I say this as a former BR local manager who has experienced plenty of cases of having to front-up to hundreds and sometimes thousands of delayed passengers during major problems.)

 

[35B]

Yesterday's issue wasn't a "power failure" as such though, it was caused by damage to the OHLE involving 1S14.

Noted. But as a passenger, the pattern is noticeable.

 

[800001]

So what are these people doing (taken from a recent FOI request)?

Yes, that's total employed! As my post says, 1 on duty at a time. It has been that number for several years.
As for the two Ops manager roles highlighted, they won't be working as a 'control' role, they will be back office/Head Office roles I would imagine.

 

[Seehof]

It also begs the question as to why the infrastructure everywhere is so weak and failures seem to occur regularly. Thameslink has been shocking recently.

 

[800001]

Contingency plans are in place for the whole route. Most definitely a plan is in place for a closure between Doncaster and York.

Contingency is all well and good on paper, until you then look at where Crews are based and what type of trains you have in the area or due to pass.

With only 10/11 bimodes in use that would pass York, you have very very few when needed to divert via Leeds.

All that leaves you is spinning sets at Doncaster and York, again that is all crew permitted.

As for station teams not knowing what is going on with regards incidents. The information is sent to every member of staff, and station teams also get NR incident updates so can clearly see what and where the issue is. The issue is getting chance to read it if you are stood on a platform assisting hundreds of customers who quite rightfully want information about there journey.

Kings Cross for instance the LNER team sit right next to NR staff who most definitely get information about what is happening.

Also add in lack of route knowledge for diversions (how many LNER staff now sign Leeds to York?) and you soon don't have a option to divert many trains.

Should TOCS be braver and say right we will stick a loco on the front of an Azuma at Doncaster and drag it to York? Yes will cause delay. But it's keeps several hundred customers on trains moving, rather than turfing them off on to platforms.

 

[CarrotPie]

Should TOCS be braver and say right we will stick a loco on the front of an Azuma at Doncaster and drag it to York? Yes will cause delay. But it's keeps several hundred customers on trains moving, rather than turfing them off on to platforms.

Assuming there are suitable locos free, then yes, why not?

 

[800001]

Assuming there are suitable locos free, then yes, why not?

NR have the two locos for thunderbird duties at Newark. Fully crewed and ready to go. It should be a priority as soon as they know line is blocked to get them locos to the relevant area to assist.

 

[JonathanH]

NR have the two locos for thunderbird duties at Newark. Fully crewed and ready to go. It should be a priority as soon as they know line is blocked to get them locos to the relevant area to assist.

I think one of them went from Newark to York at about 2.15pm yesterday but it doesn't seem to have then been used.

 

[Seehof]

If that is true, then it shows there was no plan, and they were just making it up as time went by.

To be frank as a passenger on the failed train it was an awful experience to be stuck so long. You should have seen the panic at Doncaster to get to the other platform for the Aberdeen train through the crowds waiting for something to go south.

How much is this going to cost in delay repay in addition to operating costs?!

 

[Dr Hoo]

As for station teams not knowing what is going on with regards incidents. The information is sent to every member of staff, and station teams also get NR incident updates so can clearly see what and where the issue is. The issue is getting chance to read it if you are stood on a platform assisting hundreds of customers who quite rightfully want information about there journey.

So this is even more frustrating. The station teams are in possession of up-to-date information but are so overwhelmed that they are haplessly dispensing out-of-date or incomplete information to anxious stranded passengers because they haven’t had time to read it on their tablet (or whatever).

This really is a training or station management issue. Staff should consciously take regular ‘time-outs’ to update. (I don’t mean hiding in the office with the shutters down for the duration.)

This is nothing new. Over 40 years ago on the Southern a station teleprinter would be chattering out a roll of six-copy paper with cancellations and diversions. It was critical that the messenger was constantly running the latest output to the ticket barrier, booking office and platform ‘foremen’ and so on.

 

[harz99]

NR have the two locos for thunderbird duties at Newark. Fully crewed and ready to go. It should be a priority as soon as they know line is blocked to get them locos to the relevant area to assist.

Agreed, however if the knitting is tangled up in and around the stranded train, the Thunderbird isn't going to be able to do much until that is sorted out.

 

[800001]

Agreed, however if the knitting is tangled up in and around the stranded train, the Thunderbird isn't going to be able to do much until that is sorted out.

I am referring to dragging otter in service trains around on the diversion - eg between York and Doncaster.

 

[harz99]

So this is even more frustrating. The station teams are in possession of up-to-date information but are so overwhelmed that they are haplessly dispensing out-of-date or incomplete information to anxious stranded passengers because they haven’t had time to read it on their tablet (or whatever).

This really is a training or station management issue. Staff should consciously take regular ‘time-outs’ to update. (I don’t mean hiding in the office with the shutters down for the duration.)

This is nothing new. Over 40 years ago on the Southern a station teleprinter would be chattering out a roll of six-copy paper with cancellations and diversions. It was critical that the messenger was constantly running the latest output to the ticket barrier, booking office and platform ‘foremen’ and so on.

It isn't as simple as that, 40 years ago the railway had more staff available at stations than nowadays, be it on the platform or in the booking offices/TEBs, and fewer trains to deal with. Things like train despatch still have to go on in such cases.

At stations like York and Doncaster, there are many other TOC's trains feeding passengers into the system which don't stop doing so when the main line is closed, both those trains and their passengers have to be dealt with at the same time as the disrupted services and so on. Peterborough and Darlington have similar issues to a slightly lesser extent, and even Grantham and Newark do to a much lesser extent.

 

[35B]

So this is even more frustrating. The station teams are in possession of up-to-date information but are so overwhelmed that they are haplessly dispensing out-of-date or incomplete information to anxious stranded passengers because they haven’t had time to read it on their tablet (or whatever).

This really is a training or station management issue. Staff should consciously take regular ‘time-outs’ to update. (I don’t mean hiding in the office with the shutters down for the duration.)

This is nothing new. Over 40 years ago on the Southern a station teleprinter would be chattering out a roll of six-copy paper with cancellations and diversions. It was critical that the messenger was constantly running the latest output to the ticket barrier, booking office and platform ‘foremen’ and so on.

At King's Cross yesterday, the front line station staff did not have information. They knew that the situation was rapidly changing (1N15 was still on some sources as running despite being cancelled), and that the information they could give was unreliable. I respected the guy I spoke to more for saying as much rather than giving false comfort.