I do like how whenever an opinion or alternative plan is suggested, the typical responses go straight to misreading comments and thinking that it applies as a blanket thing. The comments made for Cross Country and West Midlands Railway were different. I always accept that disruption can happen and with such a place to be blocked, taking into account route knowledge, it was inevitable that it would cause huge disruption. I do not dispute that one single bit. What I do dispute though is the ways in which Cross Country and West Midlands tried to recover services (and managed it in such a shambolic way)
There simply isn't the capacity for every train to avoid Birmingham New Street. Trying to do so would lead to delays poisoning the entire country as trains turned up late at Bristol, Reading, Rugby, Leicester, Derby, Stafford, Shrewsbury, etc. Drivers would end up out of hours in random places, units would end up being dumped in platforms, etc.
Turning services either side of Birmingham is necessary, but if a Bristol driver gets sent back towards Derby you're going to have a headache later on getting them home.
Your comments need splitting into the 2 mainly affected operators. XC and WMR could not have taken the exact same approach, as you say, it wouldn't have gone down well.
Cross Country:
I think that their main issue was probably route knowledge and choosing not to take some basic diversions that other TOCs did. Mostly aimed at using via Bescot and Aston between Wolverhampton and International (avoiding New Street). This approach was taken by Avanti and it seemed to work for them. That would have kept Manchester - Readings going in some form rather than that service falling apart.
Leicester/Cambridge runs seemed to go ok considering. Minor delays heading through the evening, I guess somewhat expected though.
Nottinghams already seemed to be awful due to the shortage, this didn't help (at worst case, get people to Derby and there are other trains from there to Nottingham).
The longer distance Cross Country stuff, some of this should have surely avoided New Street or had more services turning early.
Instead, XC kept running it seems as much as possible into New Street as I don't think anything diverted at all and instead everything got into Birmingham and then trains ended up 2 hours late while they sorted everything when the line reopened rather than trying to prevent some delays. If the Depot, Route and Traction cards in the Jobs and Careers part of the forum are anything to go by, I think that some of this works back to Cross Countrys route knowledge which seems to be only into Birmingham New Street with few crew from the outer depots knowing anything beyond New Street (in their respective direction) and so now it's hit the fan, staff generally don't know beyond New Street.
West Midlands Railway
There aren't really any diversions that could have been taken to avoid disruption. All roads lead to New Street. That is why I suggest a shuttle services in the more extreme areas. You significantly reduce the amount of staff that you are looking for and so then any staff which do remain can be focussed on longer distance trains in the area. The shuttles then cease as/when there becomes sufficient staffing to run a near normal service. As my examples highlighted, what would be 5 trains, cut down to 1 single train. Huge difference when trying to find enough staff to run a service.
As others have said, if a line is closed, the reaction to that should NOT be, Lets send all trains that way and get everyone stuck in a queue so all of the drivers lose hours sat in traffic. Instead, it should be, how can we make best use of the resources that we do have. In this instance, Throw shuttles onto the extremities and focus on the longer distance, important services (Londons, Liverpools Herefords etc). It's easier to get additional stops onto a distance train than it is to find another set of crew to do a stopping service and it's much easier for people who are closer into Birmingham to find alternative travel using the ticket acceptance on the buses and trams. For people heading towards the West Coast Mainline too, that could have been a potential alternative for passengers to make their journey going completely out of the way. Instead, no one could get anywhere because of the controllers at WMR who it seems could run a party in a brewery.
When the line reopened, all it did was mean that because of earlier actions taken, West Midlands and Cross Country blocked the station while they dumped trains and tried to get staff to resume the service. This meant that other train operators and some other routes suffered delays sitting outside New Street waiting for platforms which were being taken up by trains dumped by 2 other firms who seemingly can't cope with larger scale disruption.
There's only so much you can ask of people when a major node gets shut down. You've got fleet, crew and signallers all trying to manage as best they could. Similar chaos has been observed when the WCML gets shut south of Watford, or when the Signalling at Windmill Bridge Jn went down a couple of years ago. Considering how much Control do right on a daily basis to keep people moving, if you ever meet them in person you should buy them a drink instead of telling them they're rubbish.
TFW and Avanti managed it well so I'd be thanking them. Just Cross Country and WMR who failed to provide any sort of service and instead found it easier to bury their heads in the sand, keep sending trains towards New Street then seemingly decided to scramble last minute to reopen the services.
There could hardly be a worse place for an entire station to be closed than Birmingham New Street, with quite literally hundreds of trains affected.
Couldn't agree more. It's then how someone deals with such disruption that's the issue.
Something that rarely seems to be considered after an incident like this is that, when it started, no-one had any idea how long it would last for (what if the grenade had been real?), so to keep sending trains towards Birmingham would be crazy!
Which is specifically why I say a shuttle in the outer areas for West Midlands Railway instead, they kept sending trains towards Birmingham to join the queue of trains waiting to enter New Street. A comment that you have just said "would be crazy".
Yes, there are diversionary routes, but not for all services, eg the Cross-City electrics, and maintaining knowledge of such routes, for all the Traincrew operating through New St, would be a massive and probably unachievable task.
Cross City Electrics could have ran shuttles from Barnt Green to Redditch to connect to/from the few Hereford services which were running. Similarly Rugeley Trent Valley to Walsall and Lichfield Trent Valley to Four Oaks. Given this would have been a significant reduction in the overall service level, there will have been more than enough staff to cover it. I've highlighted above. Redditch line normally uses 5 diagrams. The shuttle uses 1 diagram.
It is not the planners who handle times of disruption but Controllers
Planners aren't there to deal with disruption. They write timetables and crew diagrams, working typical office hours to do so
I will take onboard these comments. Sorry for wrongly saying planners. It was not meant to wrongly direct the criticism.
Typical railway response. Completely ignoring the points and facts raised. No one gets held accountable and then we plod on letting the same mistakes happen time and time again. Keep backing up your own, one day it will all fall apart. God help us if this ever happens again, the only trains that will run will be Avanti and TFW who somehow, despite previous criticism, were the only 2 firms to have their act together on the day!
even if it was years ago. But yes absolutely right, so much work goes unnoticed.
