All cross country services suspended 23/08/26

AndrewE said:

Don't most people have company laptops and phones nowadays?

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I'll let people who actually work in control answer that regarding laptops. Phones they probably have but they'll be set to the individual's number not the control desk number

Haywain said:

I'll let people who actually work in control answer that regarding laptops. Phones they probably have but they'll be set to the individual's number not the control desk number

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There will be a generic laptop (possibly), but it will need access to the server to be useful.

AndrewE said:

to put together a skeleton hourly service, say between Bristol and York fitting in with what resources GWR and LNER could lend? Don't you think it's appalling that in modern Britain they just abandoned train services on that axis? I suppose that it being a Sunday might have made it more difficult to get something running, but all the crew and rolling stock was ready to go, and GWR and LNER might have had resources available.

Don't most people have company laptops and phones nowadays? and maybe you didn't see my comment


== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Friday at 13:36 ==


if you decide you are not going to run any trains, then by definition all the crew are spare!

What a tragedy. The railway I worked in had people who wanted it to succeed, and I bet a skeleton service could still have been manned.

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The railway you worked in hadn't spent the best part of three years demonising traincrews in their pet media or encouraging it in social media, and trying to destroy what little conditions they have left. The damage has been done and I'm not sure it can ever be repaired. Goodwill is easily destroyed and very difficult to get back again.

Hairyspotter said:

The railway you worked in hadn't spent the best part of three years demonising traincrews in their pet media or encouraging it in social media, and trying to destroy what little conditions they have left. The damage has been done and I'm not sure it can ever be repaired. Goodwill is easily destroyed and very difficult to get back again.

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Would those 'little conditions they have left' be the good pay, good pension and rostering conditions those working in the Road Transport industry can only dream of?

RT4038 said:

Would those 'little conditions they have left' be the good pay, good pension and rostering conditions those working in the Road Transport industry can only dream of?

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More than likely. Due to unions that tend to look after the interests of their members. An Act of Parliament that protected pension conditions during privatisation.
I wouldn’t say that rostering conditions are better than they were in BR days though - the extra pay provides some compensation for that.

Hairyspotter said:

The railway you worked in hadn't spent the best part of three years demonising traincrews in their pet media or encouraging it in social media, and trying to destroy what little conditions they have left. The damage has been done and I'm not sure it can ever be repaired. Goodwill is easily destroyed and very difficult to get back again.

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That will be the same rail industry that created a shortage of drivers by recruiting from other TOCs rather than from outside. Let's not pretend that the grade hasn't benefitted hugely from privatisation.

NeakPed said:

More than likely. Due to unions that tend to look after the interests of their members. An Act of Parliament that protected pension conditions during privatisation.

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Sadly the provisions of that act have proven illusory to the many members supposedly protected at companies formed out of BR at privatisation (Jarvis, Carillion and other companies as their pensions were found to be NOT protected at all.

AndrewE said:

to put together a skeleton hourly service, say between Bristol and York fitting in with what resources GWR and LNER could lend? Don't you think it's appalling that in modern Britain they just abandoned train services on that axis? I suppose that it being a Sunday might have made it more difficult to get something running, but all the crew and rolling stock was ready to go, and GWR and LNER might have had resources available.

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Clearly I am misunderstanding what happened then, surely all the diagrams and rosters for that Sunday were already known? Why would they suddenly need to be rewritten?

The Planner said:

Clearly I am misunderstanding what happened then, surely all the diagrams and rosters for that Sunday were already known? Why would they suddenly need to be rewritten?

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I take it (from the company's decision to lock up and walk away) that their operation is so widespread and complex that they couldn't possibly try to run it without their whole Control and Management suite being operational. Hence my suggestion of trying to run a skeleton service on the trunk route where they are the only operator so that passengers aren't just abandoned. Juggling half a dozen traincrews working to pencil-drawn robust diagrams and communicating by phone shouldn't be beyond the wit of man.

Having said that, the industrial relations seem to be so poisoned that there is no chance of such a thing happening.

AndrewE said:

I take it (from the company's decision to lock up and walk away) that their operation is so widespread and complex that they couldn't possibly try to run it without their whole Control and Management suite being operational. Hence my suggestion of trying to run a skeleton service on the trunk route where they are the only operator so that passengers aren't just abandoned. Juggling half a dozen traincrews working to pencil-drawn robust diagrams and communicating by phone shouldn't be beyond the wit of man.

Having said that, the industrial relations seem to be so poisoned that there is no chance of such a thing happening.

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My former, very crappy and low tier at the time (before we turned it around!) London Borough had a set of diesel generators outside the main office which would occasionally spark up for tests or when an inevitable power cut occurred due to over excited development crews digging up roads nearby.

Took a couple of minutes for us to be operational. All city firms of repute have substantial contingency plans, some including out of London offices sitting in wait.

They could even pay a relatively small sum for a London Borough to keep a floor ready for all TOC's in case something hits the fan

Where I work is 24hr security, high speed internet, and fully resilient. There is even a whole large floor empty which could very easily be placed on readiness for something like this.

jagardner1984 said:

The bit that confuses me. Obviously there was a fault in one location, potentially wiping out the local backup.

But wouldn’t a simple solution, given presumably a lot of these systems are cloud based or have cloud backup, for ALL of the TOCs, or different bits of GBR in the future, be to effectively have empty computers / desk space at another location, like a ROC or a reciprocal arrangement with another neighbouring TOC, to allow staff to connect to some systems from another secure, railway location ?

Not suggesting it is easy or free, but can’t imagine delay repay for tens of thousands of people is particularly cheap either.

I suppose the bigger fear is that as GBR potentially eyes up more “efficiency savings” - that you potentially have more control function affected by a single or single location point of failure.

I suspect resilience - not just in transport but health, education, banking - will become an increasingly active topic as the vulnerability of those services is a route to causing major economic harm. Which of course some other countries will have a definite interest in, as being rather a more convenient way of causing harm than sending operatives to Salisbury to explore some historical tourist hotspots.

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Resilience is I suspect becoming more difficult as we rely more and more on the cloud. Even to the point where the old copper based phone lines are being replaced with VOIP phones over fibre.....

It was interesting to see how popular Starlink became in deepest west Wales in the wake of Storm Darragh. Because something like a Jackery or Ecoflow powerstation, a solar panel and a Starlink dish provides that basic link to the outside world when the fibre goes down and the already-poor mobile signal fails as the one cell tower has only a couple of hours battery backup when power fails.

AndrewE said:

it depends on how you see railways (which to my mind are an essential part of UK infrastructure for all people travelling long distances other than by car - pace road coaches - in a low-carbon way) and whether you think the state should be ensuring that it is reliable as a way to wean people out of cars?
I do, and any/every collapse of the railway jeopardises that objective.

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All mainline train operators are classed as Level 2 responders under the Civil Contingencies Act. As a result, the terms of being granted a Safety Certificate require adequate emergency plans to cover forseeable situations that could impact service delivery. They also have to follow instructions issued under the Railways Act 1993 Sections 119 to 121. So all train companies SHOULD have had an adequate contingency for a power outage, phones down or building evacuation- it happens, and typically the contingency works.

However, the devil is always in the detail. Senior management types in most sectors (not just rail) are very keen to be told what they want to hear ("yeah its all good we pay a few peanuts to shiney provider X and they do it all"), whilst appraising contingency plan effectiveness properly needs assurance/compliance staff who tell the senior bods what they NEED to hear (errrrr.... we think there's some plausible scenarios you've not fully considered). Unfortunately, the latter scenarion can be career inhibiting especially for employed staff (those of us who do contract compliance work have it a bit easier, but you cannot assume that audit findings are always fully acted upon...... ).

One of my standard audit questions for a few years was "so what happens to your cloud systems if for some reason there's a bank glitch and the monthly payment doesn't go through?" Given how often supplier payment glitches happen with most organisations, its a fair question- and typically produced a look of horror as it had not been considered...... (it is typically not a disaster, but not considering it is a good indication of inadequate consideration of failure points in the underpinning systems architecture, it's a handy auditors starter question to flush this out).

TPO

TPO said:

All mainline train operators are classed as Level 2 responders under the Civil Contingencies Act. As a result, the terms of being granted a Safety Certificate require adequate emergency plans to cover forseeable situations that could impact service delivery. They also have to follow instructions issued under the Railways Act 1993 Sections 119 to 121. So all train companies SHOULD have had an adequate contingency for a power outage, phones down or building evacuation- it happens, and typically the contingency works.

However, the devil is always in the detail. Senior management types in most sectors (not just rail) are very keen to be told what they want to hear ("yeah its all good we pay a few peanuts to shiney provider X and they do it all"), whilst appraising contingency plan effectiveness properly needs assurance/compliance staff who tell the senior bods what they NEED to hear (errrrr.... we think there's some plausible scenarios you've not fully considered). Unfortunately, the latter scenarion can be career inhibiting especially for employed staff (those of us who do contract compliance work have it a bit easier, but you cannot assume that audit findings are always fully acted upon...... ).

One of my standard audit questions for a few years was "so what happens to your cloud systems if for some reason there's a bank glitch and the monthly payment doesn't go through?" Given how often supplier payment glitches happen with most organisations, its a fair question- and typically produced a look of horror as it had not been considered...... (it is typically not a disaster, but not considering it is a good indication of inadequate consideration of failure points in the underpinning systems architecture, it's a handy auditors starter question to flush this out).

TPO

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So Cross Country shouldn't have a safety certificate given they clearly dont comply with the regulations. Who is the enforcement agency?

Nicholas Lewis said:

So Cross Country shouldn't have a safety certificate given they clearly dont comply with the regulations. Who is the enforcement agency?

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Though as noted with the Network Rail outage, you can have redundant systems but that doesn’t stop all failures occurring. Just because XC had an outage doesn’t mean they didn’t have contingency plans.

Nicholas Lewis said:

So Cross Country shouldn't have a safety certificate given they clearly dont comply with the regulations.

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Presumably they did comply but extremely rare circumstances conspired against them.

JamesT said:

Just because XC had an outage doesn’t mean they didn’t have contingency plans.

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Indeed. Should (does?) every Train Operator have a fully-equipped contingency Control Office in the event their normal Office goes down (and presumably Network Rail should have the same, for signalling as well as Control)? In my 38 years on the railway I cannot recall another such total failure occurring.

So one week on from Sunday 23 August 2026

The big question is have XC managed to run full service following week
...... the answer taken from their website

3 early cancellations
22 cancellations
3 accessibility updates
3 station updates
13 formation updates
11 catering updates

Ignoring the station and accessibility which aren't in their control, it's not really very good is it


although does appear they are being creative, eg sit in rear 5

• Facilities on the 09:36 Newcastle to Plymouth due 17:48.
• Will be formed of 9 coaches.
• Additional Facilities Information:The front four coaches on this train are not in passenger use between Newcastle and Derby.
• Passengers should travel in the rear five coaches only.

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JamesT said:

Though as noted with the Network Rail outage, you can have redundant systems but that doesn’t stop all failures occurring. Just because XC had an outage doesn’t mean they didn’t have contingency plans.

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The "Redundant Systems" still failed. As they were evident to not be sufficiently or properly tested and checked to be functioning.

You can have a spare car on the drive, but if it's not regularly serviced, used and tested to function, it exists in a continual state of Schrodinger's Backup.

Nicholas Lewis said:

So Cross Country shouldn't have a safety certificate given they clearly dont comply with the regulations. Who is the enforcement agency?

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XC did have back up plans, which also failed. They also likely had a back up to the back up. and a back up to that.

But, at some point XC's back up plan becomes "Dont run services because we cannot do so safely. Passengers will have to use other operators"

mrcheek said:

XC did have back up plans, which also failed. They also likely had a back up to the back up. and a back up to that.

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Did they? they've actually been rather coy about what their arrangements were and like the Ardwick ROC debacle so were Network rail.

mrcheek said:

But, at some point XC's back up plan becomes "Dont run services because we cannot do so safely. Passengers will have to use other operators"

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Wheres the safety issue? My understanding it was more to do with everything but everything for the XC operations runs through the control centre so they didnt know what train crew had even booked on so a train could head off from A get to B and there is no train crew. Thus they have no idea what they can actually run hence the above outcome which is fair enough given the circumstances.

If I was Heidi Alexander I would be tasking GBR to take a wider review of how todays railway is run and learn lessons from it to inform policy for the future.