Broken Down Train at Blackfriars

[Bald Rick]

Seriously, three problems arising from this incident
1. The non-use of the bays at Blackfriars to turn trains from the South this morning (even after power had been resored)

Bay platform 4 is under possession except for a couple of hours each night; this was given up as soon as practical - by about 0830. Besides, the northbound through line was open and live except for a 30 minute period. And in any event the bays were used.

The main issue was drivers being in the wrong place. I gather that a few extra were called in.

Aside from the trapped train, almost all trains were got to a platform relatively quickly, and only moved forward when it was reasonably sure there would be another platform for them to go to. And use of the bi-di kept things moving.

 

[Furrball]

Certainly the terminating of services at Cricklewood seemed strange - West Hampstead and Kentish Town being much better options.

The lack of any form of shuttle service from the North to Kentish Town seemed strange - we have 4 platforms here and as far as I know they are all bi-directional - passengers then at least have the option of tube (which would be busy!), bus or a walk to the Overground.

 

[Bald Rick]

Certainly the terminating of services at Cricklewood seemed strange - West Hampstead and Kentish Town being much better options.

The lack of any form of shuttle service from the North to Kentish Town seemed strange - we have 4 platforms here and as far as I know they are all bi-directional - passengers then at least have the option of tube (which would be busy!), bus or a walk to the Overground.

Tube station was temporarily closed within about 10 mins of the first train terminating there. I saw people queueing for 15 mins just to get on to the footbridge to exit the MML station.

 

[jon0844]

I must say though that things seem to have steadily improved since around 2008 (don't know if this coincided with the departure of Elaine Holt) to the extent that it would no longer bother me if they retained the franchise.

Funny as I see it being better under her watch, and whoever it was who followed, then going downhill afterwards.

Providing information seemed better then, with older equipment and less technology (like staff having a BlackBerry etc) and there was a solid plan of improvements and investment - that did happen when Elaine said it would.

As time has gone on, we've had this nonsense with the new Atos system - and Hatfield losing its zonal announcements, and two years on still not having a working speaker on platforms 2/3 - and you say that on the 'Meet the directors' forum and they say they'll look into it - and do sod all.

Back in 2006-8, you'd say something to them and they'd get in touch with you to ask for more information and actually DO something.

 

[Richardr]

Certainly the terminating of services at Cricklewood seemed strange - West Hampstead and Kentish Town being much better options.

The lack of any form of shuttle service from the North to Kentish Town seemed strange - we have 4 platforms here and as far as I know they are all bi-directional - passengers then at least have the option of tube (which would be busy!), bus or a walk to the Overground.

I was dumped off at Cricklewood - a swift walk to Kilburn for the Jubilee line wasn't the end of the world - about a mile away. A colleague was well in front of me at Kentish Town, but couldn't leave the station due to the tube being closed, and the number of people trying to get out / to the tube. I arrived well before her.

 

[12CSVT]

Power had to be turned off for about 30 minutes at Blackfriars to enable a fitter and a driver manager to isolate the shoe gear on the failed unit.

 

[tsr]

Tube station was temporarily closed within about 10 mins of the first train terminating there. I saw people queueing for 15 mins just to get on to the footbridge to exit the MML station.

A colleague was well in front of me at Kentish Town, but couldn't leave the station due to the tube being closed, and the number of people trying to get out / to the tube. I arrived well before her.

This raises serious concerns in my mind for the wellbeing of passengers in the event of a fire alert at Kentish Town (or, indeed, a security incident) during severe FCC or Tube service disruption.

What if a traumatic incident occurred, such as a person getting hit by a train? What if a terrorist started shooting? What if a train caught fire? These things are unlikely, but they happen. How on earth would you get the passengers out if they were crowded down the platforms and the rest of the station?

 

[transmanche]

If train crew try to stop them they go down the 'you always say that' route and choose not to listen as train driving is easy, a trained chimp can do it and being that they work in the city they are far cleverer and more important than them and being that the customer is always right they will leave the train.

I think that's a bit unfair.

However, as you suggested, passengers will be aware of press reports of it taking two or three hours for passengers to be rescued from a failed train. In fact negativity bias means it may seem to them that it happens every couple of weeks. So yes, it will be hard to persuade them that walking on the track is dangerous when they can see the next station - especially if they have been caught in a similar situation before.

What the railway needs to do is to improve the procedures to rescue passengers on a failed train, so that situations like this do not happen.

In short, the message to the railway is; don't blame the passengers for the railways failings - sort the problem out.

 

[Firestarter]

When FCC took over they were told not to worry about the gn as it looks after itself and to concentrate on the TL. Unfortunately lately the gn has been dragged down to the level of the TL.

Week in week out there is more disruption on the GN side than TL

 

[tsr]

I think that's a bit unfair.

However, as you suggested, passengers will be aware of press reports of it taking two or three hours for passengers to be rescued from a failed train. In fact negativity bias means it may seem to them that it happens every couple of weeks. So yes, it will be hard to persuade them that walking on the track is dangerous when they can see the next station - especially if they have been caught in a similar situation before.

What the railway needs to do is to improve the procedures to rescue passengers on a failed train, so that situations like this do not happen.

In short, the message to the railway is; don't blame the passengers for the railways failings - sort the problem out.

In addition, why is it that a NR line with an exceptionally high service frequency is not subject to a similarly-enforced mandatory level of announcements as an LU line would be? I do not mean that the content or frequency should be the same, but, given that a PA is perhaps one of the most effective and reassuring ways of assisting a train full of people, if used correctly (and is pretty much the only way on a stranded DOO 319), why are there no rigidly enforced standards?

 

[Bald Rick]

This raises serious concerns in my mind for the wellbeing of passengers in the event of a fire alert at Kentish Town (or, indeed, a security incident) during severe FCC or Tube service disruption.

What if a traumatic incident occurred, such as a person getting hit by a train? What if a terrorist started shooting? What if a train caught fire? These things are unlikely, but they happen. How on earth would you get the passengers out if they were crowded down the platforms and the rest of the station?

I think you're lining up the holes of a lot of slices of Swiss cheese.

The queues were because
a) 2000 people arrived at the station in the space of 10 mins, and,
b) almost all of them tried to get on to the Northern line at the height of the peak.

In the event of an incident of the type you mention during disruption I would contend that most sane people would try and get away from the scene, rather than queue up to get on to the Northern line.

There are far worse locations for queuing to get off platforms under disrupted conditions; St Albans platform 2 in the evening peak when successive crush loaded 12 cars arrive is interesting to say the least. No doubt there are many similar examples.

 

[tsr]

I think you're lining up the holes of a lot of slices of Swiss cheese.

The queues were because
a) 2000 people arrived at the station in the space of 10 mins, and,
b) almost all of them tried to get on to the Northern line at the height of the peak.

In the event of an incident of the type you mention during disruption I would contend that most sane people would try and get away from the scene, rather than queue up to get on to the Northern line.

There are far worse locations for queuing to get off platforms under disrupted conditions; St Albans platform 2 in the evening peak when successive crush loaded 12 cars arrive is interesting to say the least. No doubt there are many similar examples.

But my point is that those sorts of eventualities are exactly the sorts of ones which need to be considered by contingency planners, but, in this case, clearly have not been.

I have been at Kentish Town station and know its layout. Even if those 2,000 people headed to the exits, you'd still be getting emotional trauma victims, attack victims or smoke inhalation victims.

Are you aware how much public panic occurs when two simultaneous major incidents take place? Of course you will be. The images going through our heads will not be pretty.

This can be applied to a number of station interchanges throughout London.

 

[ushawk]

But my point is that those sorts of eventualities are exactly the sorts of ones which need to be considered by contingency planners, but, in this case, clearly have not been.

I have been at Kentish Town station and know its layout. Even if those 2,000 people headed to the exits, you'd still be getting emotional trauma victims, attack victims or smoke inhalation victims.

Are you aware how much public panic occurs when two simultaneous major incidents take place? Of course you will be. The images going through our heads will not be pretty.

This can be applied to a number of station interchanges throughout London.

So what do you suggest ? Small intermediate stations arent designed to cope with 2,000 people exiting at once. Today the reason why it took forever as most people were probably trying to get to the Tube, which was shut - causing a backlog which went back to the NR station. Had it of been open - i would have thought it would have flowed a lot easier.

And if there was panic, people would move quicker, so people would be out the area quicker and with it being London, a lot of the 99 services would probably be on scene within 5 minutes.

 

[Keith Jarrett]

Bay platform 4 is under possession except for a couple of hours each night; this was given up as soon as practical - by about 0830. Besides, the northbound through line was open and live except for a 30 minute period. And in any event the bays were used.

The main issue was drivers being in the wrong place. I gather that a few extra were called in.

Aside from the trapped train, almost all trains were got to a platform relatively quickly, and only moved forward when it was reasonably sure there would be another platform for them to go to. And use of the bi-di kept things moving.

The bi-di facility appeared to be used for a while until the attempt to batter the errant 319008 when everything was suspended. In restrospect, rather than have two bays at Blackfriars, surely four through platforms would have given extra operational flexibility but it's too late now for common sense like that.

So if both bays were available from 08:30 why were all northbound trains at a stand for anything up to an hour with absolutely nothing moving for 30 minutes? When I arrived at Blackfriars at 09:39 (vice 08:32), I would have expected to see both bays full but no, both were empty. So if they were used, which services went into the bays?

Back to what I said earlier, FCC do not outwardly appear to have a realistic recovery plan in the event of things going belly up.

 

[Bald Rick]

Err, nothing moved northbound for 30 mins because both through lines were blocked for 30 mins, and the power was off all lines.

Northbound trains were up to 60 late because the whole service was running on one track in both directions for nearly 2 hours.

If you arrived Blackfriars at 0939 I think you were on the train that should have terminated there, but did so at City instead. The one 2 behind you did terminate at Blackfriars. There is no point terminating one there if the driver is due to finish at Bedford and there isn't a spare diver to the train back south.

 

[Keith Jarrett]

Still does not explain why no use was made of the bays - one of the selling points was to allow services from the south to turn back in times of disruption.

And 2O10 was the service I was on which realtraintimes shows as running through to Luton where it arrived 67 late.

 

[transmanche]

I see from OpenTrainTime's stats page; that out of 902 FCC services (so far) today, 259 were 'late' (5-30 mins late) and 130 were 'very late' (30+ mins) or cancelled. An overall PPM of 71%.

Bearing in mind that's for both TL & GN, it was obviously a very bad day for TL.

 

[YorkshireBear]

If all the stock had been the same type and the one behind could have just butted up to the one infront and push it along would the delays have been significantly reduced?

What could actually be done to improve response to delays because broken down trains arnt that uncommon and surely there must be better plans for it than this.

 

[A-driver]

If all the stock had been the same type and the one behind could have just butted up to the one infront and push it along would the delays have been significantly reduced?

What could actually be done to improve response to delays because broken down trains arnt that uncommon and surely there must be better plans for it than this.

That depends on what the fault was (and I don't know as I havnt been in work to read the control log yet).

If it was causing power problems then they may find that the train is causing tripping of the conductor rail. Therefore they couldn't run another train up. Also some traction motor faults, brake problems etc often mean the train can't be moved-not even pushed/pulled until a fitter has managed to fix that particular fault. That may still require getting the line blocked and getting a fitter to the site (they do sometimes place fitters at strategic locations for the peaks but I don't know where on the TL-I know we have a fitter who sits on the platform at Drayton park during the peaks incase of changeover issues-at a guess that's the same with Farringdon.) but if they had to get a fitter through central London at that time in the morning from Hornsey then it may have taken a while to.

But if they had been able to attach the train behind or infront then it would have reduced problems as it would have shifted the train but as I say I don't know if that woud have been possible with the fault. Also, if the failed train was blocking the platform and the one behind wasn't in a platform then there would be a few problems with getting the passengers off the rescue train safely.

 

[12CSVT]

Still does not explain why no use was made of the bays - one of the selling points was to allow services from the south to turn back in times of disruption.

If all the stock had been the same type and the one behind could have just butted up to the one infront and push it along would the delays have been significantly reduced?

In both cases it isn't as simple as that. There are daytime possessions on platform 4 from around 07:00 to 20:00 due to ongoing building work. The nature of the fault on the failed unit (319008) meant that the unit it was coupled to (319001) also tripped out, hence the reason why the shoe gear on 319008 had to be isolated before it could be moved. If the train behind it (which was also 8 car) had attempted to couple to it then it is likely these units would have tripped out as well, and there would have only been 2 or 3 coaches of the second train in the platform, so it wouldn't have been safe to release the doors.