All cross country services suspended 23/08/26

[GoneSouth]

The staff and unions don’t like it, it’s purely a management idea to increase productivity. It has actually been recognised as causing problems and said management has coined the trendy phrase of ‘over optimisation of diagrams’ for it. Nothing changes though, who wants to be the manager who makes diagrams less efficient?

There’s always a spin, maybe they could sell it as increased reliability, thus winning them a management contract under GBR!

Most things I’ve read about the XC management fill me with horror, both as a customer and for their staff.

 

[AlterEgo]

What?!? I'm surprised anyone would notice that, let alone think it was significant. There are variances between different apps' display of e-tickets that are far worse than that anyway...

Just someone finding an excuse to make their own job more difficult. Many such cases.

 

[Haywain]

Would stripping the operator of the contract make much difference to reliability of the operation, or alter the day-to-day providers of the services, or resolve any insufficency of drivers?

Not in the short term, no. It takes long time to acquire new rolling stock or to get new drivers on stream.

 

[AlterEgo]

For everyone wondering about Disaster Recovery/Business Continunity, this sort of stuff in IT can cost some serious money not only to impliment but also the need for regular testing along with upgrades for time to time - how much extra are you willing to pay for your ticket to cover the cost?

And each senario will have been considered on a likely hood of happening v cost of implimenting a DR/BC for it v cost of not having it.

In this case (from reading the thread) it appears to have been a power failure in a building shared with other businesses. Sharing a building will restrict your options and you will mostly likely be faced with a dead building (power wise) with no lighting, air conditioning, working lifts, facilities etc. To maintain normal operation you will need *another* building somewhere that is linked to your IT setup in the first building - nothing else would work in this senario.

So you have a duplicate facility, maybe sitting there gathering dust until needed (yes you can rent places but there is still an ongoing cost and it takes longer to get going), or you can use both. But now you have 2 buildings to pay for, 2 sets of IT kit to upgrade/patch (you must keep them in sync) not to mention regular DR testing.

Against this how many times as XC suffered from this outage? My reading of the thread suggests it is the first time, so that is X years of duplicated kit. So I would have expected the Management assesment being something along the lines of "it will cost far more than we would loose if it happened, and the chances are minimal" and here we are today.
On DR/BC part has worked however - the twitter feeds are working just fine, so they can tick that box (until it goes TITSUP of course).

The railway has lots of shared use buildings like ROCs which are vastly more resilient and can co-locate teams. XC Control being where it is is an anachronism; many Control functions are in ROCs already.

 

[Dfatcontroller]

So what conclusions should we draw from this in terms of GC vs Cross Country's ability to operate?

Driver availability I'm lead to believe.

 

[AdamWW]

For everyone wondering about Disaster Recovery/Business Continunity, this sort of stuff in IT can cost some serious money not only to impliment but also the need for regular testing along with upgrades for time to time - how much extra are you willing to pay for your ticket to cover the cost?

Surely you need to offset that against the losses caused by shutting down.

 

[Highlander1]

The social media team (who i believe are also based our of the control room unless things have changed in the past couple of years) are responding as normal. It says a lot that theyve put more thought into being able to respond on X in the event of failure than in being able to run a train service.

Probably working from home. Access to X doesnt need a control room

 

[Dave61]

The railway has lots of shared use buildings like ROCs which are vastly more resilient and can co-locate teams. XC Control being where it is is an anachronism; many Control functions are in ROCs already.

I did not say it was impossible, just a lot of difficult and expensive, it also depends on how the building was built with having resilience in mind.

 

[SuspectUsual]

In this case (from reading the thread) it appears to have been a power failure in a building shared with other businesses. Sharing a building will restrict your options and you will mostly likely be faced with a dead building (power wise) with no lighting, air conditioning, working lifts, facilities etc

Yes, but sharing a building isn’t a constraint, it’s a choice

 

[Dave61]

Surely you need to offset that against the losses caused by shutting down.

Easy calculation: X years of operating/maintaining the facilities v cost of one event. I was just trying to put things as seen from the minds of the management and bean counters.

 

[sharpley]

According to a reply by Xcountry on Facebook just before today's shambles, they are experiencing significant delays in processing delay repay claims. So even getting a refund could take weeks. At what point does the government take the contract back? Trains are still regularly cancelled because of a lack of drivers.

I put a delay repay claim in mid June and it got paid out last week

 

[Dave61]

Yes, but sharing a building isn’t a constraint, it’s a choice

Indeed, so factor in the cost of a new building just for you......

 

[NCT]

Surely you need to offset that against the losses caused by shutting down.

Paying for a second office location forever vs a once-in-thirty-year shut-down event ...

 

[AlterEgo]

I did not say it was impossible, just a lot of difficult and expensive, it also depends on how the building was built with having resilience in mind.

It's not difficult to move a Control function into a ROC, this is really a natural place for it. The only difficulty is with staffing. There's been talk of Rugby ROC before. Suggesting it'll all cost money and add to the farebox is way off; these places offer economies of scale.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Sunday at 18:40 ==

Paying for a second office location forever vs a once-in-thirty-year shut-down event ...

It has happened before.

 

[Falcon1200]

Didn't "control" used to be the regulator in a PSB? Replaced by Network Rails control and each TOCs control? Efficient then, going through many people to make a decision.

Operations Control Offices, remote from signalboxes, have existed for a long time, ever since, IIRC, the Midland Railway established the very first at Rotherham. My own Control career started under BR in 1984. Having said that, privatisation did cause a degree of fragmentation.

 

[45Fox]

Just between Derby and Birmingham it seems to be

That would make sense as EMR are running pretty normally between Derby and Nottingham; concentrating available resources between Birmingham and Derby, where XC is the sole service provider, is sensible.


It does appear that tentative plans are in place now to operate the remainder of today's advertised services between Birmingham and Leicester; XX52 departures from Birmingham (last one at 21.52) & XX20 departures from Leicester (last one at 22.20). [There are no XX22 departures from Birmingham and XX50 from Leicester booked this weekend due to scheduled engineering works].

 

[Iron_Duke]

It's not difficult to move a Control function into a ROC, this is really a natural place for it. The only difficulty is with staffing. There's been talk of Rugby ROC before. Suggesting it'll all cost money and add to the farebox is way off; these places offer economies of scale.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Sunday at 18:40 ==


It has happened before.

Realistically XC and AWC should be up at Saltley with NR and WMT. There was some talk of creating more space on the mezzanine level years ago to accommodate additional desks and it's a natural place for all parts of the Control family to work from in the West Midlands.

 

[AdamWW]

Paying for a second office location forever vs a once-in-thirty-year shut-down event ...

Assuming that doing this is the only possible way of providing sufficient resiliance to continue some form of operations.

Following that logic, few businesses would bother with any kind of resilience and I do not think that is the case.

 

[Richardr]

For everyone wondering about Disaster Recovery/Business Continunity, this sort of stuff in IT can cost some serious money not only to impliment but also the need for regular testing along with upgrades for time to time - how much extra are you willing to pay for your ticket to cover the cost?

And each senario will have been considered on a likely hood of happening v cost of implimenting a DR/BC for it v cost of not having it.

In this case (from reading the thread) it appears to have been a power failure in a building shared with other businesses. Sharing a building will restrict your options and you will mostly likely be faced with a dead building (power wise) with no lighting, air conditioning, working lifts, facilities etc. To maintain normal operation you will need *another* building somewhere that is linked to your IT setup in the first building - nothing else would work in this senario.

So you have a duplicate facility, maybe sitting there gathering dust until needed (yes you can rent places but there is still an ongoing cost and it takes longer to get going), or you can use both. But now you have 2 buildings to pay for, 2 sets of IT kit to upgrade/patch (you must keep them in sync) not to mention regular DR testing.

Against this how many times as XC suffered from this outage? My reading of the thread suggests it is the first time, so that is X years of duplicated kit. So I would have expected the Management assesment being something along the lines of "it will cost far more than we would loose if it happened, and the chances are minimal" and here we are today.
On DR/BC part has worked however - the twitter feeds are working just fine, so they can tick that box (until it goes TITSUP of course).

That's true, but relying on just one building can't possibly be acceptable for a public service. Say it was a bomb / explosion or such like that puts the building out of action either permanently or even for longer than a day. Can there really be zero resilience and the service be impossible to recover for some time?

 

[GoneSouth]

Paying for a second office location forever vs a once-in-thirty-year shut-down event ...

Or do you think this is like one of those once in a hundred year weather events that we see every 2 years now

 

[EYFanatic]

Aye, and there’s also the IT related power station problem recently.

Without going 100% tinfoil hat, is there some outside interference linking these issues?

I have to admit my first thought was Iran... Given their recent shut down of a power station, its not impossible

 

[AlterEgo]

I have to admit my first thought was Iran... Given their recent shut down of a power station, its not impossible

Making not a single XC Voyager move today would be a great PR win for them

 

[GoneSouth]

That's true, but relying on just one building can't possibly be acceptable for a public service. Say it was a bomb / explosion or such like that puts the building out of action either permanently or even for longer than a day. Can there really be zero resilience and the service be impossible to recover for some time?

Quite agree, and using a shared building in itself adds unknown risk

 

[Highlander1]

If real time trains are accurate it looks like Scotrail are covering 1S45 and it's return 1B61 between Edinburgh and Aberdeen.

https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:09557/2026-08-23#allox_id=0

 

[6Gman]

That system only really works if a crew stays together for the whole journey. A train from Plymouth to Edinburgh could well have 5 or 6 crew changes enroute, and also some overlapping sections where (for example) a driver works from Plymouth to Bristol and is then relieved, but the Train Manager continues to Birmingham and the caterer to Derby. Keeping track of all those movements across an entire network of trains without a computer would be exceptionally difficult.

We used to manage it quite competently.

I suspect it's the loss of single comprehensive authority at individual locations that has contributed to this.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Sunday at 18:59 ==

Wow, that’s bonkers. surely that can be simplified. Or are unions involved?

It's partly down to different conditions of employment, rules on continuous work, breaks etc.

 

[blimmo]

Coventry gateline: seemed to have no idea what was going on/why I had mentioned I was supposed to be on a CrossCountry service towards Leeds and now wasn't. Told me to scan my (Leamington origin) ticket, and the gateline opened fine (??! I am unconvinced this is because of break of journey). Suggested I take a train back to Leamington.

I have never had any staff at Coventry station know what they are talking about. If you're lucky you get someone disinterested.

I have regularly had canley origin tickets rejected so I guess the gate line just flips a coin for each ticket

 

[1D53]

If real time trains are accurate it looks like Scotrail are covering 1S45 and it's return 1B61 between Edinburgh and Aberdeen.

https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:09557/2026-08-23#allox_id=0

They also ran 1V66 with a 158 - https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:09562/2026-08-23/detailed

 

[Highlander1]

They also ran 1V66 with a 158 - https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:09562/2026-08-23/detailed

That would be a tight squeeze

 

[Kite159]

I did see SWR running a pair of 450s on some additional Basingstoke - Bournemouth services in the paths of the XC services. Luxurious 3+2 seating

 

[GoneSouth]

Will there be any consequences for XC for being unable to run a service because of poor business decisions?

No, thought not