ECML disruption (29/07)

[55002]

Only a 1F33 left London to travel via Cambridge, other LNER services that were stuck south of Hitchin, 1D28, 1D29 and 1S31 all now returning to Kings Cross.

Sounds a bad one this normally cleared up after 3 hours…

 

[Tram203]

Do we know if efforts are being made to get as many of the thousands of affected passengers as possible home by other means, or are they spending the night in or around King's Cross station?

 

[43066]

Sounds a bad one this normally cleared up after 3 hours…

Unfortunately suspicious circumstances in this instance mean things will be much slower than a “straightforward” fatality cleanup, which generally aims to get trains moving again within an hour and a half.

Sadly we do seem to be in the middle of a bad patch network wide, including on my bit of the network, which comes after a period where many of us observed that there had been fewer than usual.

 

[Banham7]

Appears lines have just been handed back at Hitchin. 1E86 is on the move after being held at St Neots for a considerable amount of time.

 

[55002]

Appears lines have just been handed back at Hitchin. 1E86 is on the move after being held at St Neots for a considerable amount of time.

Looks likes that’s just moving to Sandy and 1A69 going to Biggleswade. I assume they hoping to have lines back in not too distant future. Still chaos at Peterborough With all hotels booked, no buses or taxis

 

[Horizon22]

Deemed unexplained and suspicious. BTP awaiting attendance of SOCOs.

Yeah that will be out for almost the remainder of the day then.

 

[Banham7]

Looks likes that’s just moving to Sandy and 1A69 going to Biggleswade. I assume they hoping to have lines back in not too distant future. Still chaos at Peterborough With all hotels booked, no buses or taxis

Back on the fast lines now after a brief stop at Sandy. 1C73 also on Hitchin P1 now.

 

[55002]

All lines reopened 0025ish

 

[Minstral25]

No trains from London Bridge to Coulsdon South, Merstham and Redhill after 7:30pm last night, at least they had the Victoria service running. No trains at all from London Bridge to Earlswood, Salfords and Horley except one at 11:30pm. Understand te sad reason but an absolute nightmare for everyone trying to get home after 7:30pm.

North of river many problems but the lines between London Bridge and Redhill route were fully open, yet Thameslink could not organise any trains to turn round at London Bridge for 4 hours. Why are there no contingency plans for these unfortunate events?

Just to add - they were cancelling four trains per hour, why out of 4 trains cancelled (and some would have been south of river, especially as major depots at Three Bridges and Horsham) could they not run an hourly shuttle?

 

[Surreytraveller]

North of river many problems but the lines between London Bridge and Redhill route were fully open, yet Thameslink could not organise any trains to turn round at London Bridge for 4 hours. Why are there no contingency plans for these unfortunate events?

Just to add - they were cancelling four trains per hour, why out of 4 trains cancelled (and some would have been south of river, especially as major depots at Three Bridges and Horsham) could they not run an hourly shuttle?

Plans exist, but they're impossible to implement. There simply aren't the staff to organise setting up these plans

 

[Jan Mayen]

Perhaps it would be wise to permanently cut one of the two Horsham Thameslink services to run as shuttle to London Bridge only?

 

[transportphoto]

Thameslink need to declare code Black as well as whole service has pretty well gone through the core and as usual the whole South side is just abandoned nothing being spun at London Bridge despite all the signalling to do so. Just as well its a Monday.

I believe they had done by this point? I remember reading something at the time from GTR advising not to travel on pretty much their entire Thameslink/Great Northern network.

 

[Surreytraveller]

Thameslink need to declare code Black as well as whole service has pretty well gone through the core and as usual the whole South side is just abandoned nothing being spun at London Bridge despite all the signalling to do so. Just as well its a Monday.

Code black was declared shortly after the second incident.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 30 Jul 2024 ==

I believe they had done by this point? I remember reading something at the time from GTR advising not to travel on pretty much their entire Thameslink/Great Northern network.

Correct, they had done. Very shortly after the fatality

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

Code black was declared shortly after the second incident.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 30 Jul 2024 ==


Correct, they had done. Very shortly after the fatality

At least on the Nth side they put in a W.Hampsted to Bedford shuttle not much they could do on ECML with an all lines blocked situation initially but South of the river the service just evaporates to a few E.Croydon to Brighton shuttles when they could use L.Bdge ctl side (which they do when engineering works are on so its not a route knowledge issue). Anyhow all credit to GTR who have got it largely all back together today.

 

[Surreytraveller]

At least on the Nth side they put in a W.Hampsted to Bedford shuttle not much they could do on ECML with an all lines blocked situation initially but South of the river the service just evaporates to a few E.Croydon to Brighton shuttles when they could use L.Bdge ctl side (which they do when engineering works are on so its not a route knowledge issue). Anyhow all credit to GTR who have got it largely all back together today.

The trouble with London Bridge, there isn't the room to run additional Thameslinks from the Central Side. That's probably why they turn them at East Croydon

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

The trouble with London Bridge, there isn't the room to run additional Thameslinks from the Central Side. That's probably why they turn them at East Croydon

P15 is rarely used except for a couple of extras in the rush hour. Yes i know it won't hold a 700/1 but rest of Southerns services could go into it freeing up a 12 car platform which could then be used to run an all stns via Redhill to Horsham service which they do on weekends when the core is shut. The South side service is disrupted by the North side on at least 3:1 basis but if suffers a disproportionately higher level of disruption as a result. Where as on the GN side they quickly move to diverting into KX which is also tight for capacity but collectively NR and TOC manage it. The South side has no equivalent contingency plan or will to do the same.

 

[justin1123]

I had friends caught up in these evening lner problems yesterday. Stuck at KX with no trains to Newcastle all evening.
Is there a policy for hotels etc in this case? Lner as usual put out lots of information about not travelling, refunding, travelling next day etc but no mention of what the likely thousands of passengers who could not travel should do that evening.

 

[HBP]

I had friends caught up in these evening lner problems yesterday. Stuck at KX with no trains to Newcastle all evening.
Is there a policy for hotels etc in this case? Lner as usual put out lots of information about not travelling, refunding, travelling next day etc but no mention of what the likely thousands of passengers who could not travel should do that evening.

In fairness they did mention this on social media. Not sure about other channels.

‘Customers with Taxi & Hotel receipts please send these to:

customers@|ner.co.uk and subject this as
'Disruption - Monday 29th July" in the subject line.

Do include hotel receipt/ invoice and travel documentation.
Hotel costs can be reimbursed up to £250.

 

[800001]

I had friends caught up in these evening lner problems yesterday. Stuck at KX with no trains to Newcastle all evening.
Is there a policy for hotels etc in this case? Lner as usual put out lots of information about not travelling, refunding, travelling next day etc but no mention of what the likely thousands of passengers who could not travel should do that evening.

I was on 1S31 held at Stevenage for several hours before it returned to Kings Cross.

Train manager very helpful with constant announcements, advising people they could book own hotels and claim back cost of hotel/taxi from LNER.

Also the catering team when asked by customers were also advising the same

 

[driverd]

In fairness they did mention this on social media. Not sure about other channels.

‘Customers with Taxi & Hotel receipts please send these to:

customers@|ner.co.uk and subject this as
'Disruption - Monday 29th July" in the subject line.

Do include hotel receipt/ invoice and travel documentation.
Hotel costs can be reimbursed up to £250.

I appreciate that early news suggests this was a particularly tragic incident, and the railway will inevitably struggle to get back to something like normal operations later the same evening, but that response from LNER is nothing short of woeful.

The advice when I was travelling yesterday evening (circa 0130 in Yorkshire), was to travel as far north as possible (which was initially Leeds, then York by connection), then await the 0630 to the north for anyone heading further afield. Hotels/taxis at your own expense does very little for customers who can't afford upwards of £150, and telling everyone to just casually spend 4 hours in York between 0230 and 0630 is, frankly, appalling.

The strategy of "book at your own expense, claim back and we'll repay in a time frame that suits us" simply doesn't cut it. Even the likes of easyjet wouldn't treat you like this (speaking from first hand experience - they were excellent at sourcing hotels and supporting passengers along with communicating information - and this was on a domestic flight). If you have the means to pay and casually forget about 200 or so quid, fab. If you don't, you're essentially left high and dry. Yesterday I witnessed a pregnant woman, travelling solo, crying at Leeds at 0230 with LNER essentially making her jump through hoops to actually get back to home. There was a similar story for a lady with a child in a pushchair, a blind person and a young family. The annoying thing is that the company will provide taxis etc - it just requires frontline staff to push back against the party line control are peddling incredibly hard - that, to my mind, is unacceptable - these customers are only asking the operator to provide what they are expected to honour based on the conditions of travel.

Around 10 years ago I was in a frontline customer service delivery role - we would never have treated customers like this. I worked at a smaller, more regional TOC at the time and we would always make huge efforts to get people home.

What has changed? We had a contract job with coach companies to provide vehicles at short notice - this was highly effective and we would rarely see people waiting more than 30 mins from ordering vehicles to the first arriving, and almost always there would be far more vehicles than demand required. Coordinators would also be mobilised and we would quickly (1-2 hours) have a reasonably effective looking rail replacement service running. The only real exceptions were during flooding etc.

In the very recent past, I found it reassuring to work in an industry that seemed to care and genuinely do it's best for the customer. It's so disheartening to see how indifferent we seem to have become.

 

[bramling]

P15 is rarely used except for a couple of extras in the rush hour. Yes i know it won't hold a 700/1 but rest of Southerns services could go into it freeing up a 12 car platform which could then be used to run an all stns via Redhill to Horsham service which they do on weekends when the core is shut. The South side service is disrupted by the North side on at least 3:1 basis but if suffers a disproportionately higher level of disruption as a result. Where as on the GN side they quickly move to diverting into KX which is also tight for capacity but collectively NR and TOC manage it. The South side has no equivalent contingency plan or will to do the same.

The Hitchin to Peterborough section can be just as bad when there’s problems south of the river, quite common to get gaps of 2 hours or more. Essentially if it isn’t one of the periods when the KX extras are running then north of Hitchin gets screwed over.

Cambridge at least has the stopping service, albeit with considerable extra journey time as a result.

 

[800001]

I appreciate that early news suggests this was a particularly tragic incident, and the railway will inevitably struggle to get back to something like normal operations later the same evening, but that response from LNER is nothing short of woeful.

The advice when I was travelling yesterday evening (circa 0130 in Yorkshire), was to travel as far north as possible (which was initially Leeds, then York by connection), then await the 0630 to the north for anyone heading further afield. Hotels/taxis at your own expense does very little for customers who can't afford upwards of £150, and telling everyone to just casually spend 4 hours in York between 0230 and 0630 is, frankly, appalling.

The strategy of "book at your own expense, claim back and we'll repay in a time frame that suits us" simply doesn't cut it. Even the likes of easyjet wouldn't treat you like this (speaking from first hand experience - they were excellent at sourcing hotels and supporting passengers along with communicating information - and this was on a domestic flight). If you have the means to pay and casually forget about 200 or so quid, fab. If you don't, you're essentially left high and dry. Yesterday I witnessed a pregnant woman, travelling solo, crying at Leeds at 0230 with LNER essentially making her jump through hoops to actually get back to home. There was a similar story for a lady with a child in a pushchair, a blind person and a young family. The annoying thing is that the company will provide taxis etc - it just requires frontline staff to push back against the party line control are peddling incredibly hard - that, to my mind, is unacceptable - these customers are only asking the operator to provide what they are expected to honour based on the conditions of travel.

Around 10 years ago I was in a frontline customer service delivery role - we would never have treated customers like this. I worked at a smaller, more regional TOC at the time and we would always make huge efforts to get people home.

What has changed? We had a contract job with coach companies to provide vehicles at short notice - this was highly effective and we would rarely see people waiting more than 30 mins from ordering vehicles to the first arriving, and almost always there would be far more vehicles than demand required. Coordinators would also be mobilised and we would quickly (1-2 hours) have a reasonably effective looking rail replacement service running. The only real exceptions were during flooding etc.

In the very recent past, I found it reassuring to work in an industry that seemed to care and genuinely do it's best for the customer. It's so disheartening to see how indifferent we seem to have become.

All station staff are empowered to book taxis for any customers requiring onward transport, they do not need it authorising by control or any other manager.

All station staff have access to the taxi booking portal on there company mobiles and it takes a matter of minutes to book, as soon as it’s booked customer gets a text to there phone.

If any station team was ‘refusing’ to get a taxi, there either was none available (all doing other jobs) or the staff were just being lazy.

 

[MikeWM]

The Hitchin to Peterborough section can be just as bad when there’s problems south of the river, quite common to get gaps of 2 hours or more. Essentially if it isn’t one of the periods when the KX extras are running then north of Hitchin gets screwed over.

Cambridge at least has the stopping service, albeit with considerable extra journey time as a result.

North of Cambridge doesn't do terribly well though - eg. in recent experience both with the fatality on the southern ECML last week and the one the week before. GN claim to set up a shuttle between Cambridge and Kings Lynn but from my experience in the evening rush hours on both these recent occasions it doesn't seem to materialise as such, what appears to happen instead is that the drivers are all over the place and so trains get abandoned, sometimes for hours, blocking platforms at Cambridge and/or Ely, which doesn't help anything that is still running get into the stations.

At least those of us trying to get between Cambridge and Ely have alternatives, those on the Kings Lynn branch regularly get very poor service in such circumstances.

 

[driverd]

All station staff are empowered to book taxis for any customers requiring onward transport, they do not need it authorising by control or any other manager.

All station staff have access to the taxi booking portal on there company mobiles and it takes a matter of minutes to book, as soon as it’s booked customer gets a text to there phone.

If any station team was ‘refusing’ to get a taxi, there either was none available (all doing other jobs) or the staff were just being lazy.

I wasn't aware LNER had that policy - that's great to hear.

The information being given was that on the train, I'm guessing train crew don't have access to the same system?

Hopefully swiftly resolved when the station staff got to the customers then.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 30 Jul 2024 ==

All station staff are empowered to book taxis for any customers requiring onward transport, they do not need it authorising by control or any other manager.

All station staff have access to the taxi booking portal on there company mobiles and it takes a matter of minutes to book, as soon as it’s booked customer gets a text to there phone.

If any station team was ‘refusing’ to get a taxi, there either was none available (all doing other jobs) or the staff were just being lazy.

I wasn't aware LNER had that policy - that's great to hear.

The information being given was that on the train, I'm guessing train crew don't have access to the same system?

Hopefully swiftly resolved when the station staff got to the customers then.

 

[Surreytraveller]

P15 is rarely used except for a couple of extras in the rush hour. Yes i know it won't hold a 700/1 but rest of Southerns services could go into it freeing up a 12 car platform which could then be used to run an all stns via Redhill to Horsham service which they do on weekends when the core is shut. The South side service is disrupted by the North side on at least 3:1 basis but if suffers a disproportionately higher level of disruption as a result. Where as on the GN side they quickly move to diverting into KX which is also tight for capacity but collectively NR and TOC manage it. The South side has no equivalent contingency plan or will to do the same.

Once you get to 8pm, there are Southern trains booked to sit at London Bridge for several hours. Not sure why the planners do that, as it leaves very little wiggle room

 

[Steve Harris]

One minor feature is that Open Train Times suggests that down Cambridge line trains are using the flat junction not the flyover.

I think it's quite a bit quicker to do that but they don't usually because it gets in the way

Yes the flyover is slower but better for service reliability

The reason why the flat junction vice flyover was used last night was because using the flyover would of ment trains passing the incident (which was on the Up Fast just north of the flat junction).

Well done to whoever took the decision to use the flat junction, otherwise the services to Cambridge would of no doubt been stopped too !!

 

[SE%Traveller]

Could they not have turned round trains at Platforms 1 and 2 Blackfriars given the circumstances?