Bi Directional running in the core... & other GTR problems

[David Sinnett]

Can't believe there's no gripes about this already....

The delayed 17.54, a 12 coach 377 died.

I know there's a cross-over south of the station but the driver told me it can't be used when a 12 coach train is in the station. Is that correct?
There were many times when the southbound line was vacant for a longish spell. How difficult would it be to bring the trapped north bound trains in wrong line?
The platform staff were saying the whole of the north bound Thameslink service was at a stand. Would it have been better to turn some round at Farringdon or St.P?
The platform staff also stated that tickets would be accepted on buses, underground and any other reasonable train service without suggesting where to go to make the connections. I know I could have walked to Farringdon, got the tube and then EMT to Bedford. Instead I waited to see how it developed. There was an elderly chap there with a suitcase who was travelling by train for the first time in years. Don't think he'll be back in a hurry!
In short there seemed a lack of back-up plans and decent, useful information.

Can we send the 377s up north and keep our 319s?

 

[NSE]

I don't know about the crossover, but imagine how it's gonna be when the Great Northern services are going through too :L I'm
Not a fan of TL and this is why. When one thing stops it all grinds to a halt.

 

[DY444]

I don't know about the crossover, but imagine how it's gonna be when the Great Northern services are going through too :L I'm
Not a fan of TL and this is why. When one thing stops it all grinds to a halt.

That is not unique to TL. It is essentially true of any busy line.

Something sits down across the Waterloo throat in the evening peak. SWT fall apart.

A 350 hits a location cabinet door in Watford tunnel. LM and Virgin fall apart.

Points fail at Windmill Bridge. Southern fall apart.

Trespass at New St. Half the services in the country fall apart

blah blah blah.

 

[Bishopstone]

Standard procedure whenever there's a problem in the Thameslink core: stop the job and tell people to go away and use Southern/EMT etc, for the rest of the evening.

This won't change in the brave new world of 2018, except that by then the alternative travel options will be thinned-out.

I accept it's a personal hobby-horse of mine, but what they should have done is either:

i) Quadruple the core OR

ii) Abandon through-running in whole or part, and build two stations of ten platforms each, under the City: one facing north and the other facing south, and potentially linked by travelator.

I work within a five minute walk of City Thameslink, but gave up trying to commute to or from it. If the service through the core hadn't collapsed entirely (twice a week), the trains would be seriously late, short-formed or both. It's generally easier to walk to London Bridge and catch something starting there, than play the Thameslink lottery.

 

[rdwarr]

I was on the (4-car) 18:14 at Blackfriars (which finally left at 19:14).
Staff there were great but seemed to be getting no useful information through from City Thameslink. We were told it was a problem with the doors but nobody could understand why it took an hour to resolve.
Clearly if I'd known it would take so long then I would have got a bus to King's Cross but, as I had a seat on the train and was in "any minute now" mode, I stayed put.
When we did finally get going I was surprised to find City Thameslink and Farringdon almost empty.

 

[Bald Rick]

It was mentioned in the Cricklewood fatality thread. Bad day for TL yesterday, 4 or 5 separate train failures.

A 12 car train in the northbound platform at City does not prevent the crossover south of the station being used, assuming the train is fully in the platform. However there are significant crowd control issues with using the 'opposite' platform for departures in both directions. Last night the biggest gap between southbound trains was 10 minutes, which is just about enough to get one or two trains through on the wrong line and stopped at the relevant station(s). It would have helped, but not much, and lessons learned from the past is that it tends to confuse passengers - a lot more people get on the wrong trains which then spreads delay elsewhere.

The train itself was being particularly truculent, and was expected to move a number of times before it actually did.

 

[W230]

It went wrong all day. There were OLE issues at Cricklewood first thing, then a breakdown in the core and a PHBT at Cricklewood.

When i started around 1530 my first train was already late. It got later round the loop, while holding up more and more Southern services. By the time I got back to Elephant i was in a queue to get through the core due to the further breakdown at City Thameslink. Then more hold ups at St Albans as a result of a queue of trains waiting to go into the centre sidings.

By the time I finished nearer midnight there were still cancellations and delays. Caranage!

Where's that post chronicling TL performance...

 

[David Sinnett]

At one time, the driver was called to the southern end of the train, having been told that the trains behind him had reversed, in order to take the train back out to Blackfriars. As the platform announcer was broadcasting this, the driver and fitter made their way back to the northern end!

When the train did move, empty, northbound, the announcer said the next train in was only 4 coach. Joy! It did turn out to be 8 coaches which managed to take those from City and Farringdon that hadn't taken staff advice and found other routes. St.P was a different matter and many were left behind.

For the future, they're going to have to find a way to quickly remove a dead train, or work round it. 5 minutes to fix or shunt it into the sidings? 08 on standby?

 

[Bald Rick]

I work within a five minute walk of City Thameslink, but gave up trying to commute to or from it. If the service through the core hadn't collapsed entirely (twice a week), the trains would be seriously late, short-formed or both. It's generally easier to walk to London Bridge and catch something starting there, than play the Thameslink lottery.

You must be very unlucky. I find the service normally very good. I have been using it for 11 years, and the number of times it has 'collapsed' for any reason, snow, storms, overtime bans, wires down, failed trains, signalling failures etc is on average about 4-5 times a year in that time.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

For the future, they're going to have to find a way to quickly remove a dead train, or work round it. 5 minutes to fix or shunt it into the sidings? 08 on standby?

New trains. This one had computers in the 3 units that wouldn't talk to each other. Fortunately, the 700 only has to talk to itself.

Besides the sidings at Smithfield aren't long enough, and if the brakes won't come off, it doesn't matter what is there to help, the train isn't moving.

 

[W230]

You must be very unlucky. I find the service normally very good. I have been using it for 11 years, and the number of times it has 'collapsed' for any reason, snow, storms, overtime bans, wires down, failed trains, signalling failures etc is on average about 4-5 times a year in that time.

Have to agree with you there. Ive been driving the route for 21 months and its the first time I've been involved in disruption of this level.

 

[The Box Photter]

I was on the failed train. IW90 was about 13 mins late departing Blackfriars, coasted down the bank into City Thameslink and the driver then attempted switchover from DC to AC. Lights dimmed and nothing happened.

We got two announcements during the following 20 or so minutes that the train sat at the platform, gradually filling up with passengers.

Eventually, thew driver announced the train was being cancelled and everybody off.

I spoke to the rather stressed but very courteous station manager on the platform who explained that the fron unit of the 12-car train wasn't recognising the other eight cars and wouldn't release the brakes. Because of this, the train would most likely be taken out of service and either proceed north or south empty. A fitter was in attendance.

Interestingly, the service was a combination of 377/2 and 377/5, with the errant unit being the 377/2. Unit reliability seems to have taken a nosedive since they started mix and match between 377/2 and 377/5 units. Is there a glitch in the software that causes the units' computers to fail to respond to each other? This seems plausible because the units power down for a short time during the traction current switchover.

Any ideas?

 

[W230]

Interestingly, the service was a combination of 377/2 and 377/5, with the errant unit being the 377/2. Unit reliability seems to have taken a nosedive since they started mix and match between 377/2 and 377/5 units. Is there a glitch in the software that causes the units' computers to fail to respond to each other? This seems plausible because the units power down for a short time during the traction current switchover.

Any ideas?

I think (if I remember my traction training correctly) that the 377/2 and 377/5 use different versions of Windows OS on MITRAC. I want to say the /2's are Windows 98 but its surely not that old (though it is Bombardier... ).

Anyway, either way the software on the /2's works slower than the /5's. That much I do know though we were told all the glitches had been ironed out. Apparently not it seems.

 

[Bald Rick]

Quite plausible.

To be fair, the whole fleet is having a rough time at present, which I guess is because it is being worked flat out as units have disappeared up north and some are presumably out having wheel flats sorted.

 

[user15681]

Ah, the infamous 1W90.

A bit of a hectic evening all round!

 

[Taunton]

At least we didn't get the Kentish Town fiasco of a couple of years ago, with a crush-loaded 377 broken down mid-section and the passengers essentially left to their own devices.

In the Bad Old Days of BR, things like service resilience when things go wrong would be the ultimate responsibility of one person, the General Manager. Who, with the fortunes (£5 bn?) which have been spent on the Thameslink rebuild (with, I feel, surprisingly little to show for it), would have pretty certainly put in scissors crossovers at each end of each core station, and full bi-di signalling, plus a refuge siding somewhere around Farringdon for a pilot loco.

This didn't get done on the initial Thameslink in 1988 because that was all done on a shoestring, when £5bn would have been beyond the wildest dreams. But we seem to have got far more for the money then (including, it seems, some fairly rudimentary rolling stock in the shape of the 319s that are still, a quarter of a century later, regarded better than their Wunderkind recent successors and supposed replacements.

Nowadays the responsibilities are split. That would not be an issue if the separate parties actually worked together, but as they don't, and are unlikely to ever do so, all the integrated bits get ignored. If there is an infrastructure failure the operator probably still gets to pocket all the revenue for the day but has a big financial claim against NR as well. Oh goody. Train manufacture is split from operator, with a ROSCO with a third set of technical staff in between. The actual operational staff are engaged by the HR department not on the basis of how good they are at managing passengers, staff and trains (notice the order of importance I use), but on whether they have got ticks in boxes for attending the right number of HR-invented courses. The overall designer doesn't put in resilience because that is actually only for the benefit of the operator of the week, whoever that may be. The operator doesn't care because all the infrastructure problems can be stuck back on Network Rail. Notably in the aforementioned Kentish Town incident far more management effort by the operator was put into sticking it back on to Network Rail due to foliage overhanging the lines and damaging the pantograph, than was given to the trapped and near-to-collapse passengers, and it took the RAIB to point them otherwise.

 

[carriageline]

Ah, the infamous 1W90.



A bit of a hectic evening all round!

If your talking about Kentish Town, you mean 1W95 [emoji3]? I think it's been changed to
1W90 so maybe that's what you meant


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[SAPhil]

I spoke to the rather stressed but very courteous station manager on the platform who explained that the fron unit of the 12-car train wasn't recognising the other eight cars and wouldn't release the brakes. Because of this, the train would most likely be taken out of service and either proceed north or south empty. A fitter was in attendance.

Any ideas?

Excuse the naive question, but why could they not decouple the dodgy 4-car section, dump it in the sidings and run the remaining 8-car section?

 

[Bald Rick]

Excuse the naive question, but why could they not decouple the dodgy 4-car section, dump it in the sidings and run the remaining 8-car section?

That would take about 20-30 mins or so to complete, including the time it takes for the driver to get back from the siding, and that assumes it would be ok to leave the remainder of the train on an open line without a driver. Which it isn't.

Normally, it is much quicker to just reboot the units (works 95% of the time), or failing that tip everyone off, raise the emergency brake, and skidaddle (works 4.5% of the remainder). Unfortunately this was the 0.5% where nothing worked. Not quite sure how it was fixed in the end.

 

[Trainfan344]

You'd need a second driver.

 

[westcoaster]

That would take about 20-30 mins or so to complete, including the time it takes for the driver to get back from the siding, and that assumes it would be ok to leave the remainder of the train on an open line without a driver. Which it isn't.

Normally, it is much quicker to just reboot the units (works 95% of the time), or failing that tip everyone off, raise the emergency brake, and skidaddle (works 4.5% of the remainder). Unfortunately this was the 0.5% where nothing worked. Not quite sure how it was fixed in the end.

Maybe killing mitrac. Isolate it and check brake continuaty through the train before going. That seems to be where the trouble is, could also have been a vcu failure if the front unit fails to detect the rear 8.

 

[Bald Rick]

In the Bad Old Days of BR, things like service resilience when things go wrong would be the ultimate responsibility of one person, the General Manager. Who, with the fortunes (£5 bn?) which have been spent on the Thameslink rebuild (with, I feel, surprisingly little to show for it), would have pretty certainly put in scissors crossovers at each end of each core station, and full bi-di signalling, plus a refuge siding somewhere around Farringdon for a pilot loco.

This didn't get done on the initial Thameslink in 1988 because that was all done on a shoestring, when £5bn would have been beyond the wildest dreams. But we seem to have got far more for the money then (including, it seems, some fairly rudimentary rolling stock in the shape of the 319s that are still, a quarter of a century later, regarded better than their Wunderkind recent successors and supposed replacements.

Nowadays the responsibilities are split. That would not be an issue if the separate parties actually worked together, but as they don't, and are unlikely to ever do so, all the integrated bits get ignored. If there is an infrastructure failure the operator probably still gets to pocket all the revenue for the day but has a big financial claim against NR as well. Oh goody. Train manufacture is split from operator, with a ROSCO with a third set of technical staff in between. The actual operational staff are engaged by the HR department not on the basis of how good they are at managing passengers, staff and trains (notice the order of importance I use), but on whether they have got ticks in boxes for attending the right number of HR-invented courses. The overall designer doesn't put in resilience because that is actually only for the benefit of the operator of the week, whoever that may be. The operator doesn't care because all the infrastructure problems can be stuck back on Network Rail. Notably in the aforementioned Kentish Town incident far more management effort by the operator was put into sticking it back on to Network Rail due to foliage overhanging the lines and damaging the pantograph, than was given to the trapped and near-to-collapse passengers, and it took the RAIB to point them otherwise.

Oh dear, you did get out of bed the wrong side this morning.

I don't know where to start, so will leave it as:

1) There is full bidi throughout the core
2) There are crossovers both ways either side of every core station, some shared, and in one case in one direction only simply because there was no space to get the other one in
3) The operators and train supplier are a fundamental part of the Thameslink Programme, and have been involved in and agreed to the specification throughout
4) more cash has been spent on resilience by the Thameslink Programme than any other rail project in this country, ever, both for the during and post construction periods. Well into 9 figures.

 

[Taunton]

4) more cash has been spent on resilience by the Thameslink Programme than any other rail project in this country, ever, both for the during and post construction periods. Well into 9 figures.

So why does it never get used then. Why do we hear, from regular users above, things like

Standard procedure whenever there's a problem in the Thameslink core: stop the job and tell people to go away and use Southern/EMT etc, for the rest of the evening......... I work within a five minute walk of City Thameslink, but gave up trying to commute to or from it. If the service through the core hadn't collapsed entirely (twice a week), the trains would be seriously late, short-formed or both.

or even

Bad day for TL yesterday, 4 or 5 separate train failures.

That's not very resilient. Something tells me that Crossrail is going to be way better than this.

 

[user15681]

If your talking about Kentish Town, you mean 1W95 [emoji3]? I think it's been changed to
1W90 so maybe that's what you meant


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Sorry, I should have been clearer. 16:30 BTN to BDM, was 1W95 when the Kentish Town incident happened, now 1W90. Same service, that's what I meant, apologies.

 

[Bald Rick]

So why does it never get used then.

It gets used all the time, but guess what, because it prevents problems there's no delays because of it, so nobody notices.

For example the Proceed on Sight Aspects on all the signals, which has reduced the delays caused by signal and track circuit failures in the core by 99%.

Or the auto-reconfigurable power supply, which has eliminated signalling power supply failures.

Or the specially treated high performance rail, which has reduced rail defects to a fraction of what they were, eliminating the need for emergency / temporary speed restrictions. (Of which there were many a few years ago).

Et cetera.

 

[DelayRepay]

1) There is full bidi throughout the core
2) There are crossovers both ways either side of every core station, some shared, and in one case in one direction only simply because there was no space to get the other one in
3) The operators and train supplier are a fundamental part of the Thameslink Programme, and have been involved in and agreed to the specification throughout
4) more cash has been spent on resilience by the Thameslink Programme than any other rail project in this country, ever, both for the during and post construction periods. Well into 9 figures.

And despite all this, one broken down train still causes chaos and delays thousand of people getting home. More money might have been spent on this project than any other, but one must question whether it was money spend wisely?

It was absolute chaos when I got to St Pancras. It was so bad I had to go to the pub to wait for things to calm down. Do you think I can claim for my 3 pints as an out of pocket expense alongside my Delay Repay?

 

[Bald Rick]

And despite all this, one broken down train still causes chaos and delays thousand of people getting home. More money might have been spent on this project than any other, but one must question whether it was money spend wisely?

It was absolute chaos when I got to St Pancras. It was so bad I had to go to the pub to wait for things to calm down. Do you think I can claim for my 3 pints as an out of pocket expense alongside my Delay Repay?

Actually, there were 5 broken down trains yesterday, 6 if you count that 1W90 / 5W90 failed twice. And the two most serious happened within a couple of hours of each other. Plus the non-fatality. I'd defy any rail line to cope with that in a day.

 

[Taunton]

It gets used all the time, but guess what, because it prevents problems there's no delays because of it, so nobody notices.

I hadn't noticed the total crossover provision, so will pay attention to this. If they are being used, and if there are issues with passengers on the opposite platform, it might be appropriate for the wrong-line workings to non-stop the station, those alighting being told to work back from the next station. This sort of thing is standard stuff in some Continental countries.

If 95% of logic issues are fixed by a reboot then you have got a major software problem which the train supplier should have addressed long ago. Does the frequency of problems differ between the two train types?

Is it correct that the target train length is 12-car and the siding at Farringdon can only hold 8?

 

[The Box Photter]

Maybe killing mitrac. Isolate it and check brake continuaty through the train before going. That seems to be where the trouble is, could also have been a vcu failure if the front unit fails to detect the rear 8.

In the end, I think this is what was done simply to move the ensemble north. Judging by the very slow speed the unit was able to muster away from the platform and the fact that neither pan on the two 377/5s was extended, it seems like the front unit was the only one under power.

I did ask the manager at the time whether the errant 377/2 could have been uncoupled and put into Smithfield. He intimated that was not possible without a second driver to stay with the remaining units on the line.

All in all, it wasn't fun and doesn't bode well for the introduction of the 387s next month, which presumably are running a slightly different version of the software (Windows Vista anyone?).

 

[DelayRepay]

Actually, there were 5 broken down trains yesterday, 6 if you count that 1W90 / 5W90 failed twice. And the two most serious happened within a couple of hours of each other. Plus the non-fatality. I'd defy any rail line to cope with that in a day.

Point taken - I can only hope that when the new trains finally arrive, they're more reliable.

I am not going to claim that the line is a disaster every day, most days it's fine. But I do think the delays have got worse over the last few months. I worry that when the route is operating at full capacity it won't be able to cope. I hope I'm wrong but...

A genuine question - the increase in delays seems to coincide with the new franchise. If there were 6 failed trains yesterday, how did that happen? Have they stopped carrying out maintenance, or did FCC hide all the spare parts in an act of sabotage? To have six trains fail in a day is not a very impressive statistic.

 

[williamn]

As ever communication was dire.

There was chaos at St P - I was going South which was fine, but it was almost impossible to get through the crowds as they were keeping all the gates shut - we had to force out way through.

On the platforms at around 7pm Northbound passengers were being told that there was no chance of a train for at least an hour. 15 minutes later trains were running North bound again.