Fuel stabilizers can allow it to last longer. You just need a couple of fuel tanks and adequate labeling. Testing your system can deplete it.
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Trains all at a stand in the Manchester area... (Thursday afternoon 06AUG2026)
- Thread starter Mcr Warrior
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Fuel stabilizers can allow it to last longer. You just need a couple of fuel tanks and adequate labeling. Testing your system can deplete it.
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chrissawer
Member
On the other hand Northern seem to have recovered pretty well, at least around Manchester Victoria and the Calder Valley. I travelled from Todmorden to Leeds this morning, got up much earlier than I needed to and had a bus as a backup plan, but everything was running well first thing. The "do not travel before 10am" warning was not necessary in my case.
Many thanks to all staff who worked late and overnight to restore the service, and hopefully the wider network will recover quickly today.
Justin Smith
Established Member
The Times :
Thousands of rail replacement buses set to be pulled from service
Government changes to accessibility rules means many private operator vehicles are no longer eligible
www.thetimes.com
Last edited by a moderator:
I have heard several reports of actual physical damage consequent to the power outage, last on the R4 "Today" programme this morning. Is this actually correct, and if so, what might it be? It was nice to hear some thanks given to the staff who worked to recover the situation too.
Howardh
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If that's true, then a vast number of coaches are out of reach to those that need accessibility - ruling out trips, holidays etc. If they have to use "normal" local buses how many would be available at short notice? Very few I expect!
I suggest if that's the case, they should put on coaches for passengers and specialist taxis for those requiring access by wheelchair.
Spartacus
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That would be the measured response, but in today's world it seems it's 'all or nothing', i.e. all people can travel, or nobody can. It'll have the biggest impact in cases like this, short notice, unplanned inability to run services, where previously it's been simply a case that anything's better than nothing. Planned engineering work can literally be planned for, so shouldn't be badly affected by a lack of buses, if at all, unless say a bus fails and needs short notice replacement, though quality may vary (service buses instead of coaches).
Myself I've not seen any provision of rail replacement either today or yesterday, though there may be some. Just seems to be those barely running like TPE are relying on others like Northern who are.
Hi,
In order for this event to have happened, I would expect two UPSs to have failed. Critical equipment would be expected to be either duplicated (very much preferred) or to be designed to accept two supply inputs at the equipment level (or both!). As described above, less critical equipment is relatively easy to duplicate.
At the extreme level you have two identical facilities, one at each end of the car park and if something bad happens in one all the staff have to walk 300m (pick a distance based on your threat model!) to the other.
Going further than that means you have to duplicate the staff and that is probably difficult to arrange...
Redundancy at a desktop level is easy - just have another desk, fed from a different power supply (you will have 'A' and 'B' power supplies, each protected by their own separate UPS arrangements). That covers for failure of computer, screen, keyboard, power supply, and even the physical desk and chair themselves.
In order for this event to have happened, I would expect two UPSs to have failed. Critical equipment would be expected to be either duplicated (very much preferred) or to be designed to accept two supply inputs at the equipment level (or both!). As described above, less critical equipment is relatively easy to duplicate.
At the extreme level you have two identical facilities, one at each end of the car park and if something bad happens in one all the staff have to walk 300m (pick a distance based on your threat model!) to the other.
Going further than that means you have to duplicate the staff and that is probably difficult to arrange...
You also need to have the lights on and the phones working.
You don't need aircon for the first few minutes and you probably don't want to hit the genny or a UPS with all the aircon compressors trying to start at once so a sequenced recovery may be needed. (I have a whole house solar/battery/UPS and a domestic heat pump. Fortunately it has an inverter drive so no overload on start-up, even so it is all arranged to dump the HP on grid failure.)
We weren't talking about 7am even if it is true that EVERY morning sees that scenario, which I doubt.
The walk is no worse than many others in many cities so long as you are aware of your surroundings, which we all should try to be anyway.
The bus station itself does attract some miscreants, but that's also common around the UK.
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You're more likely to be accosted in the Duck and Drake than the surrounding area
. Some of those music fans are a right rowdy lot.Building 2 instead of 1 won’t even get considered. DfT isn’t interested in paying for any sort of contingency or redundancy.
See my post #261
I'm sure that the exemplary standard of customer care for which Blackpool North is renowned would have saved the day.
This isn't lawful.
This isn't actually correct. The regulations have been in force for quite some time, but some transitional arrangements expired on 31 July 2026.
There has also been guidance that this regulation is coming for at least nine years, and advance sight of the final draft for a smaller number of years.
Going forward, especially now batteries are cheaper than ever (and only continuing to go down in price), wouldn't a sensible future plan be to install battery storage at key locations that means you don't require a UPS to buy time to power up generators, but the batteries can instantly take over - and also step in at any time if the incoming supply fluctuates even for a short period of time.
You could build storage to allow everything to keep going, or just protect key circuits. If the issue is systems messing up if they go offline even for a short time, batteries can ensure this never happens - and obviously the batteries will charge up once the incoming supply is restored (even partly via solar if you have the room).
We are there already. To use batteries effectively you need the means to charge them and also to invert their DC output to usable AC mains. And provide the controls for detecting grid failure and taking over the load mid-cycle.
The combination of all this is what a UPS is.
EYFanatic
Member
Same on the Blackpool services out of Leeds bar a few teething issues
Hey, I'd welcome thatYou're more likely to be accosted in the Duck and Drake than the surrounding area
Question for the moderators - are there rules about lying? j/k
But it sounds like they use a pretty limited UPS for a short period of time, to allow the switching of power to another source (generator). What I'm talking about is a large battery that can switch instantly to another power source - the battery. It has the inverter and UPS functionality, but is essentially the generator but instantly available at any moment (so is as good as having a second mains power supplier). It can also monitor the power to switch if the incoming supply has issues.
More and more people are buying these for their homes (Anker, Ecoflow, Bluetti, Jackery etc) and I'd certainly do that today than buy a standalone UPS that might run things for only a matter of minutes. Of course, if you're just wanting to keep a computer online to allow you to save (or it saves) data then that's fine, but these days people may want to keep the fridge freezer going, or perhaps even power their gas boiler so they can keep heating their home during a power outage.
Big proper UPSes generally have the ability to add additional battery capacity. But you're still dealing with a different order of magnitude power requirement for a house compared to a ROC with dedicated power feeds. Your domestic breakers are rated at 10s of amps, switchgear on a 6.6kV supply is 1000s of amps. Batteries will also eventually run out, no matter what size of installation you have. Whereas a generator can have its tanks topped up whilst running if you get an extended outage.
But it's still not clear whether the failure was with the UPS kicking in at all. No amount of battery will save you if the switching electronics fail.
Mile Post 13
Member
I have not had the chance to read all of this but does NR not now do the "crash Tests" we used to do in BR days which were undertaken to prove the backup systems. These always took place in the early morning on a Sunday during Possessions, sometimes taking out specific areas and sometimes even the whole PSB area. We also had regular tests of the standby generators to prove these were working.
I am aware that a complete failure of a similar nature occurred at the EMCC a couple of years back and the backup supplies did not engage then either.
I am aware that a complete failure of a similar nature occurred at the EMCC a couple of years back and the backup supplies did not engage then either.
TBH the IT industry had this issue decades ago. Many examples of where UPS failed to switch over, under-specified UPS, or fat fingers milliseconds too late, or fuel tanks full of bio growth, etc, etc The only real way to solve it is to insert a permanent battery bank between whatever supplies you have (main grid, generators, whatever) and so if one supply fails then you're already connected to your battery supply so no immediate switching required and you've time to problem-solve. However this costs many £££s and isn't simple to implement or maintain. At the end of the day its another complex cost/benefit/risk analysis to be carried out by very competent bodies (at the operational, business and technical levels).
TheSel
Member
Itr's pretty simple, really.
Building in contingency / redundancy has a cost.
Not having adequate contingency / redundancy has a cost.
Someone, somewhere, made a decision about how much contingency / redundancy was appropriate. Whether that decision was right or wrong depends very much on individual views.
Building in contingency / redundancy has a cost.
Not having adequate contingency / redundancy has a cost.
Someone, somewhere, made a decision about how much contingency / redundancy was appropriate. Whether that decision was right or wrong depends very much on individual views.
But also, nothing is ever 100% reliable. You can build massively redundant systems, but sometimes things fail in a way that the standby doesn't kick in. From what has been said in this thread, the ROC appears to have reasonable redundancy (multiple feeds, UPS, generator), but for some reason it hasn't worked.
I am sure it's a lot cheaper and easier today than even a few years ago. Grid scale battery storage is growing in use all over the country (doing away with the need to have some power stations on standby, and to balance the grid), and obviously the needs here would be far smaller - but still have the same benefits. Given the national roll out, there's likely a lot more expertise in this field and more people training in these solutions as time goes on.
For something the size of the railway, it would even make sense for Network Rail or the DfT to be doing the work itself than outsourcing.
It isn't that expensive to install 30-60kWh of battery storage with emergency power switching in a home, so I would be surprised if more and more commercial businesses aren't going to do this in the future. Sodium based batteries are even cheaper, more resilient and while there are some issues with the voltage ranges and lower energy density, it's all manageable and the size isn't so important for home/office/industry storage compared to, say, a car or e-bike.
Perhaps someone put the UPS into bypass mode (e.g. during maintenance) and didn't switch it back when they'd finished what they were doing.
One massive problem is that you have to take a long-term view. You can only design, build, install & maintain whats available today. You can't rip it all out and replace every year or so as technology steps forward - the risks and costs would be stupidly high. You also can't implement the latest technology as it appears - you have to implement a mature tested solution (which in the NR case appears to have failed the swiss cheese test).
As for doing it in-house that would be crazy - where would you get the experts from and what do you do with them once implemented? There are companies that specialise in this (as in other fields), have all the expensive resources (technical and personnel) to hand and you make use of their expertise. Let them carry out the testing and risks of new technologies.
As others have said comparing heavy industrial supplies and backup to domestic scenarios simply isn't valid and seriously too many people grab snippets of info off the 'net and think that they're fit for the real world. They're not by a long shot.
Justin Smith
Established Member
Whatever the truth of the matter this is a classic case of the law of unintended consequences. I remember when regulations were introduced that every train with a toilet must have one which is disabled accessible. The latter are bigger and more expensive, so it just encouragd some train companies (on shorter routes) to take out the toilets completely.... A similar thing probably applies to footbridges, if they say all footbridges must be disabled accessible (much bigger and way more expensive) it must decrease the number of footbridges they'll put in.....
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Very true, and this applies to much else in society these days. I remember that that classic campaign that playpark equipment that cannot be used by disabled kids should be removed. My lad was very unhappy about that one.
I see that as simply a pretty standard quote for the press rather than an appraisal.
What's likely to happen? I'd guess at very little. Something went wrong, but we're used to something going wrong, and the story will drop out of the news and website front pages by Monday.
68000
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The outage incident in Edinburgh a couple of years ago was this, there was a wiring error and the UPS was in bypass mode.
Well in the extreme you would have a battery that could take the whole load for several hours. But at current prices and certainly when the ROC was equipped it is/was much cheaper to have a diesel generator to switch over to once its output is stable, then you only need a UPS/battery rated for minutes not hours.
Yes I have one, a Victron 5kW (pk) but it and the Pylontech battery take up quite a lot of space in our rear lobby, the parts cost alone was many £k even though I installed it myself. Main purpose was to make best use of solar generation, the UPS functionality came free. Mains reliabilty is good enough without it IMO, even in the sticks we get outages of less than half an hour a few times a year, usually when the DNO is making new connections. We have an AGA and oil lamps if necessary, and a freezer will last for a day or so if you keep the door shut.
Important loads (fridge, freezer, router, phones) will autostart on re-application of power. Time switches and alarm have internal battery backup lasting many hours. The only manual intervention required is to reset the clock on the cooker.
This.