Distruption between Peterborough and Ely - 26/02/2016

[The Rattler]

Evening all,

I travelled from Peterborough to Norwich this morning. I was booked on the 0736 from Peterborough.

I was aware of the disruption before I left home and was quite impressed to get a tweet straight back from East Midlands Trains at 0640 to tell me a bus would be leaving Peterborough at 0740. Sure enough get to Peterborough and bus leaves (full) at 0740 which was equally impressive.

On arrival at March we were quickly told there would be a train at 0830 (we arrived about 0815) to Ely, Cambridge and Stansted. So everyone got off the bus and joined the train. Again impressed about the communication. The bus also turned back and took the waiting March passengers to Peterborough. The train I guess arrived from Stansted and pretty much turned straight back.

So here comes my question....

Whilst waiting at March two container trains came through. One east and one west which intrigued me. What would cause the line to be shut to passenger traffic but not freight traffic. Perhaps something to do with drives running out of working hours, however just a guess.

All in all I thought everything worked as well as it could this morning and there seemed to be some fluid communication going on to try and sustain some service between Ely, March and Peterborough. So well done all...

Now for the irony. The bus which took me from Peterborough to March hailed from a small village in Lincolnshire. I could have walked to the end of my road to catch it to Peterborough and saved myself £7.50 on parking . Hindsight is a wonderful thing. No idea how I would have got home tonight thoug

 

[Trainfan344]

Quick RTT Search appears to show them stuck between Peterborough and March overnight.

 

[TheEdge]

The signal failure began at about 0200 - 0300 when there are no passenger services but plenty of freight passing along there, subsequently lots of freights got trapped up there. Temporary block working was used to get the trapped freights out and as many through as possible. All stems from the fact that there are only so many loops and they really start to impact other services (still managed to cancel some Ipswich - Felixstowes due to congestion) when they are as late as they were, some were passing Haughley Junction (near Stowmarket) well over 400 minutes late.

It wasn't practical to send passenger services as it was taking 30m to pass through the affected section so EMT and AGA services all turned at Ely and XC provided a March - Stansted shuttle with a big fleet of buses hired by all three TOCs providing the passenger service.

 

[TheBigD]

Signalling was lost around 0115... Level crossings manned from around 0245... Modified Ticket Working was implemented from 0700 through to 1320 allowing 2 trains an hour in each direction, with trains taking around 20 minutes to pass through the affected section... Freight trains cleared first then East Midlands resumed through services at 1200, XC from 1415 and Greater Anglia from 1500...

 

[SpacePhoenix]

Signalling was lost around 0115... Level crossings manned from around 0245... Modified Ticket Working was implemented from 0700 through to 1320 allowing 2 trains an hour in each direction, with trains taking around 20 minutes to pass through the affected section... Freight trains cleared first then East Midlands resumed through services at 1200, XC from 1415 and Greater Anglia from 1500...

Is "Modified Ticket Working" a variation of Temporary Block Working?

 

[TheBigD]

Yes, as the affected section included absolute block signalling...