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Broken down train at Broxbourne (10 April)
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F Great Eastern
Established Member
15:36 Liverpool Street to Stansted Airport blocked everything at Broxbourne with a brake fault This completely stopped all services running on the West Anglia end pretty much ever since.
Rescue train is being coupled up last I heard about half an hour ago to drag it back to Norwich.
Can only imagine the amount of people who missed their flight.
Also very noticeable that there is not a single rail replacement bus running on any part of the routes, including to Stansted Airport. Whenever I've seen similar happen in the past pre nationalisation, normally they at least try and get a limited bus service up and running. Are the DfT trying to save money?
Rescue train is being coupled up last I heard about half an hour ago to drag it back to Norwich.
Can only imagine the amount of people who missed their flight.
Also very noticeable that there is not a single rail replacement bus running on any part of the routes, including to Stansted Airport. Whenever I've seen similar happen in the past pre nationalisation, normally they at least try and get a limited bus service up and running. Are the DfT trying to save money?
Crithylum
Member
In my personal experience, the reliability of the WAML has fallen off a cliff since nationalisation. Pre-nationalisation, I've had dozens of journeys, at most 2 minutes late. Post nationalisation, at least 10% of my journeys have been delayed over an hour.
leonie13
Member
A rather bizarre evening, I was stuck on 2H42 (two trains behind the failure) for over four hours.
It seemed the first priority was to rescue the passengers stranded on 1B88 - the defective train - via a cross-transfer, rather than prioritise the vast majority of affected passengers across the rest of the network. That cross-transfer took some time.
Once a rescue train arrived to couple up, that also had difficulties so now it has to wait for a fitter.
As I type, the defective train is still there…
It seemed the first priority was to rescue the passengers stranded on 1B88 - the defective train - via a cross-transfer, rather than prioritise the vast majority of affected passengers across the rest of the network. That cross-transfer took some time.
Once a rescue train arrived to couple up, that also had difficulties so now it has to wait for a fitter.
As I type, the defective train is still there…
Waiting for air pressure to build up. Split air pipe was the issue which I assume is related to the brakes, I'm not super well-versed in that technical side.
F Great Eastern
Established Member
leonie13
Member
Well the rescue train coupled up to the defective train approx 19:30 (judging by the announcements from the driver of my train).
Considering the failed train STILL hasn’t moved (21:56), that’s a lot time to build up air.
F Great Eastern
Established Member
I have a friend who is now caught up with this.
There is not a lot of information on the ground and the common theme is everyone is being told to make their own arrangements and non committal about whether taxi fares are going to be reimbursed or not.
Generally the approach on X seems to be pretty much the same. Everyone is waiting for the line to be reopened and almost nothing is being done to try and move passengers other than hope that people at stations simply move on as they get fed up of waiting.
God knows what is going to happen to them by the end of the night because soon enough they are going to need to do something about this as it's looking like this could be the case until end of service as things are still not moving and nobody has been able to give any updates for the last two hours and nobody seems to know anything.
Staff are seemingly being instructed to tell everyone to wait and see. That's fine, but it's been going on for the last 6 hours. At this point the company should be paying for taxis to get people home as they normally would.
This is not the GA I used to know from being caught up in disruption in the past on West Anglia, but I haven't been involved in any disruption since they were nationalised.
There is not a lot of information on the ground and the common theme is everyone is being told to make their own arrangements and non committal about whether taxi fares are going to be reimbursed or not.
Generally the approach on X seems to be pretty much the same. Everyone is waiting for the line to be reopened and almost nothing is being done to try and move passengers other than hope that people at stations simply move on as they get fed up of waiting.
God knows what is going to happen to them by the end of the night because soon enough they are going to need to do something about this as it's looking like this could be the case until end of service as things are still not moving and nobody has been able to give any updates for the last two hours and nobody seems to know anything.
Staff are seemingly being instructed to tell everyone to wait and see. That's fine, but it's been going on for the last 6 hours. At this point the company should be paying for taxis to get people home as they normally would.
This is not the GA I used to know from being caught up in disruption in the past on West Anglia, but I haven't been involved in any disruption since they were nationalised.
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leonie13
Member
That accurately reflects my experience this evening. There’s a sense of “shrug shoulders” and “what can we do?” to every aspect of interaction with GA staff - on and offline.
I’ll never criticise operational staff, particularly those on-shift tonight, who are doing the best they can.
But serious questions need to be asked of the senior leadership teams who guide and set policies for the on-shift teams, their plans regarding operational resilience, and the decisions operational day-to-day staff are allowed to make in such scenarios.
The stranded train is still there, according to OpenTrainTimes
I’ll never criticise operational staff, particularly those on-shift tonight, who are doing the best they can.
But serious questions need to be asked of the senior leadership teams who guide and set policies for the on-shift teams, their plans regarding operational resilience, and the decisions operational day-to-day staff are allowed to make in such scenarios.
The stranded train is still there, according to OpenTrainTimes
F Great Eastern
Established Member
I just don't understand why it's happening the way it is tonight, it's just at odds with what I've seen before during disruption on GA who normally handle it exceptionally well.
If this is what nationalisation is going to bring and is a sign of things to come, then I guess buying that electric car is looking more attractive by the day. I had enough with this ridiculous carry on in the National Express East Anglia days, that made me give up my season ticket. I'm not going through that again.
There's just been a ridiculous response to a customer on X where GA have replied to a customer telling them that if they want to know if they will get reimbursed they need to fill in the contact form basically. It should be something that could be answered there and then. I would guess the answer would be no but they don't want to say that and they don't want to say yes either, so you have these ridicolous amigibious answers that show absolutely no care in the world about people.
Then there is this reply to someone else asking the same thing
If this is what nationalisation is going to bring and is a sign of things to come, then I guess buying that electric car is looking more attractive by the day. I had enough with this ridiculous carry on in the National Express East Anglia days, that made me give up my season ticket. I'm not going through that again.
There's just been a ridiculous response to a customer on X where GA have replied to a customer telling them that if they want to know if they will get reimbursed they need to fill in the contact form basically. It should be something that could be answered there and then. I would guess the answer would be no but they don't want to say that and they don't want to say yes either, so you have these ridicolous amigibious answers that show absolutely no care in the world about people.
Then there is this reply to someone else asking the same thing
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Compare and contrast with SWR who i frequently use and taxi authorisation is usually issued as soon as there is a major issue.
Telling people to make their own arrangements then dodging the specific question about reimbursement was shameful by GA tonight
Telling people to make their own arrangements then dodging the specific question about reimbursement was shameful by GA tonight
F Great Eastern
Established Member
Yeah, they seem to be putting this out now.
Also I see they just updated Journeycheck at 23:04 (previous update was at 21:08), the only thing that changed is the last updated time, literally nothing else has changed.
leonie13
Member
Precisely what I was hinting at in my last post.
Every response from GA on X regarding reimbursement for taxis has been met with a non-committal response of “email us”, leaving a stranded customer with no way of knowing whether their expensive taxi will be reimbursed.
Someone’s in for a very very slow journey back to Crown Point tonight.
Peter Mugridge
Veteran Member
The use of the "grin" smiley in that tweet from Greater Anglia strikes me as wholly inappropriate - it comes across as saying "sort yourself out - ha ha ha, not our problem".
Doesn’t look like it’s going to happen now, to be repaired at scene and try again later.
GA normally handle problems rather well but seems that they have dropped the ball this time, obviously I don’t think anyone was expecting a train to sit down for this long but always better to start a plan early rather than later
Unless it is hauled by a bi-mode it won’t be getting back to Crown Point until Monday as the line between Ipswich and Norwich is closed this weekend for engineering works. it does seem that the Stadlers are much more unreliable on the Stansted’s than they are on the GEML or the branches, I wonder what the actual stats are?
These seem like odd comments and about 30 years old. The second one seems like some serious rose-tinted glasses! 10% of your journeys taking longer than 1 hour?? That would make you deeply deeply, unlucky. Unless you're talking about the move from GA to public ownership?
If the line is blocked, the line is blocked. You could argue it's longer than usual to recover a train but it also sounds like an unusual failure.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Sometimes there is nothing to update if the circumstances remain identical. But there is mandate to keep it ticking over.
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aron2smith
Member
Went up to Suffolk and back today, I had no idea about this incident at all but something told me to come back via Liverpool Street instead of Cambridge. I'm very glad I did as being stuck at Kings Lynn a while back is still scary to think about. I found the only services moving anywhere were the Overground services, not even the Hertford East services. Only 2 platforms out of platforms 1 to 10 at Liverpool Street had any services at all, everything else sitting out of service. It was quite something.
Thankfully not long for a Cheshunt bound Overground service but even the 10:13pm service was packed and a lot of us going the whole journey. This is why it really bothers me how poor the local bus services are. In the daytime, buses can provide somewhat of an alternative for various rail sections like to Harlow and Hertford but at night, there's nothing. The local taxis appeared under serious strain and the interesting thing is a staff presence exists at Cheshunt far later now than before (till 11pm since January), but the staff appeared to be of little help.
The lack of resilience in our transport system the very moment it's outside London is shocking. We really deserve better.
Also it's clear maintenance needs to be done a lot more often.
Thankfully not long for a Cheshunt bound Overground service but even the 10:13pm service was packed and a lot of us going the whole journey. This is why it really bothers me how poor the local bus services are. In the daytime, buses can provide somewhat of an alternative for various rail sections like to Harlow and Hertford but at night, there's nothing. The local taxis appeared under serious strain and the interesting thing is a staff presence exists at Cheshunt far later now than before (till 11pm since January), but the staff appeared to be of little help.
The lack of resilience in our transport system the very moment it's outside London is shocking. We really deserve better.
Also it's clear maintenance needs to be done a lot more often.
Crithylum
Member
I've just checked my records, and out of my 23 journeys post nationalisation, I've had delays of: 176. 60, 26, and 8 minutes.
In the year pre-nationalisation, I reckon I made about 2 dozen journeys (I can't be bothered to go through my bank statements month by month), and 2 minutes was genuinely my largest delay.
Seeing as practically zilch has changed with infrastructure, rolling stock or staffing since then, that's just bad luck.
F Great Eastern
Established Member
The update has been saying that the 'fleet technicians are now coupling up a rescue train to move the train off of the line.' for many hours now, it has clearly moved on from that, as some people in this thread have said a while ago and an update should be given about that but it isn't. People don't expect to be given chapter and verse, but if you give people even an update to say that it's taking longer than normal and there were complications (it doesn't need to be technical) they at least are going to feel like the organisation cares a bit more.
Also the refusal/inability of GA staff both on stations and on social media to answer straight questions about compensation and the general lack of any kind of proper customer care/service that we have seen tonight has been utterly shameful. My friend has literally just had to spend over £160 on an Uber as they have no way of getting home and not a hint of a taxi or bus even attempting to being provided. This is not the GA I have travelled with for the past few years. They used to be very good with this kind of thing.
I also feel sorry for the front line staff since the way the fact that we're seeing the same approach going out from staff on the ground that is via social media, suggests they are simply following instructions that they are given. The way they have evaded answering any kind of question on reimbursement tonight is utterly shameful.
If anyone is defending GA on the way they have handled tonight, then one would have to argue if their dream of nationalisation and their ideological biases have created a massive blind spot in their judgement to a point where they cannot see the wood from the trees. Personally I don't care who runs the trains, as long as the are run well, but I understand that some people care more about ideology than customer welfare.
It's being hauled by a locomotive AIUI, so it would be able to be driven to Crown Point once the brakes work.
Failed Unit
Established Member
I was actually at Stansted last night. The queue for the coaches was really bad.
Someone asked me about getting to Central London. I pointed them towards a train to Norwich and Changing at Cambridge for Kings Cross.
The coach may not be a bad idea but I suspect at that time of day (1700 Friday evening) not a quick one but neither was the Cambridge detour I suggested.
The other option was to sit it out. However, although no-one knew that would be a bad choice. I have done that myself in the past. Sometimes the line reopens others I need to take the detour anyway.
I assume they need to release the brakes on the failed unit which takes the time. As running the train to a loop I assume was the first objective to clear the line?
Someone asked me about getting to Central London. I pointed them towards a train to Norwich and Changing at Cambridge for Kings Cross.
The coach may not be a bad idea but I suspect at that time of day (1700 Friday evening) not a quick one but neither was the Cambridge detour I suggested.
The other option was to sit it out. However, although no-one knew that would be a bad choice. I have done that myself in the past. Sometimes the line reopens others I need to take the detour anyway.
I assume they need to release the brakes on the failed unit which takes the time. As running the train to a loop I assume was the first objective to clear the line?
F Great Eastern
Established Member
More fun this morning.
Points failure caused a number of cancellations on Stansted services coupled with several more due to train crew shortages probably as a result of yesterday.
Meanwhile a broken down freight train is causing disruption at bury.
Points failure caused a number of cancellations on Stansted services coupled with several more due to train crew shortages probably as a result of yesterday.
Meanwhile a broken down freight train is causing disruption at bury.
dk1
Veteran Member
Turns out the freight train at Bury/Chippenham Jcn isn’t really broken down
It never rains & all that.
bananas
Member
I was planning to go to Cambridge North but the GA website only advertised ticket acceptance on Great Northern as far as Cambridge. Was I really expected to wait for the 1tph GA Stansted Airport to Norwich, one of which was cancelled, with the last two being at 2126 and 2255?
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