S101
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All trains at a standstill. Marylebone Signal Box evacuated as is the station.
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Marylebone Fire 28th Aug 26
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voyagerdude220
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Nationalrail infers there are two seperate fires:
www.nationalrail.co.uk
Incident: Harrow-on-the-Hill | National Rail
Disruption between London Marylebone and Harrow-on-the-Hill expected until 14:00. Find details of all current incidents on National Rail Enquiries.
S101
Member
Saw that from the train, big fire at a waste recycling place.Nationalrail infers there are two seperate fires:
Incident: Harrow-on-the-Hill | National Rail
Disruption between London Marylebone and Harrow-on-the-Hill expected until 14:00. Find details of all current incidents on National Rail Enquiries.
I would to be fair suspect their control is extremely overworked and very short of crew and units given the Marylebone chaos. Running a short shuttle will not be high on their priorities.
At the same time as the Met lines were shut, Marylebone and its signallers were evacuated.
Nothing was able to move nor plans established.
Try to consider the need to restart a full joint/ main line service after having stranded trains before you start to think about starting another potential failure in the met line.
Has the traction been turn off?
Would amerham be able to accept the traffic?
Nothing was able to move nor plans established.
Try to consider the need to restart a full joint/ main line service after having stranded trains before you start to think about starting another potential failure in the met line.
Has the traction been turn off?
Would amerham be able to accept the traffic?
150219
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Apart from this thread is talking about something unrelated to the fire at Wembley. Trying to operate a service with the signalbox closed is a little difficult.
Nicholas Lewis
Established Member
Trains appear to be moving according to signalmaps
WolvertonWorks
Member
There were four concurrent incidents affecting Chiltern.
Three on going, one resolved with residual delays.
Linesinde Fire, Neasden / Wembley area as per the BBC.
Station fire alarm activation and subsequent station (andASC IECC Marylebone) evacuation.
Track defect at Claverdon.
(And my personal favourite as I'm stuck in it) Signal / Trackcircuit failure at Leamington Spa. Talking past two signals, I believe.
Happy bank holiday weekend folks!
Three on going, one resolved with residual delays.
Linesinde Fire, Neasden / Wembley area as per the BBC.
Station fire alarm activation and subsequent station (and
Track defect at Claverdon.
(And my personal favourite as I'm stuck in it) Signal / Trackcircuit failure at Leamington Spa. Talking past two signals, I believe.
Happy bank holiday weekend folks!
Elecman
Established Member
None
The Planner
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There will be a contingency plan but no other signal box can control it, as you probably already knew.
Yep, as demonstrated to the travelling public on previous fail days.
Do you feel services should have still operated from Marylebone?, What would be your priority and how would you activate such a plan?
No. I was just confirming that from previous failure scenarios there is no resilience for the Marylebone signalling cabin. When it's down, it's down, and nothing is going to move until it's back up in service.
I would suggest it would be sensible for Network Rail to build in some resilience for Marylebone, and the priorities for any service operated in a resilience scenario needs to be informed by the capability of the resilience, plans to fail over and fail back, and any operating procedures that are tested and agreed.
High Dyke
Established Member
Where or how would you suggest that resilience resource to be sited?
In regards the larger control centres like York, there was a suggestion that it could be easy for another centre to take over running their area during such a scenario. Imagine someone in Derby or Edinburgh trying to operate trains in/out of King's Cross (as an example). On paper it sounds easy, but the reality is far more complex and unachievable.
Bringing the discussion back to the incidents today. The two main things were the fire alarm activation at Marylebone Station (affecting the signalling centre), which prevented services operating over the wider network, and the fire in a premises adjacent to the railway. The industrial unit affected is at the point where the Chiltern line (via Wembley) and Metropolitan/Chiltern route diverges; so it was highly likely services wouldn't be operating past that location.
I think you might have picked up some of the commentary around the Cross Country control centre and run a bit far with it. A TOC control centre is very broadly speaking a load of desks with computers and a decent connection to the internet.
Providing a disaster recovery solution for that isn't incredibly complex.
A signalling centre is full of relatively specialist highly certified equipment, with (non-internet-connected) linkage to all the the interlockings and level crossings. Casually keeping a backup lying around, and maintaining certification on i,t would be maybe 3 orders of magnitude more complex and expensive. it isn't going to happen
No signalbox or control centre has a backup site. There's a lot of engineering resilience built into the system, however: Duplicated power feeders, uninterruptible supplies for the main systems, twin diversely routed trackside datalink cables, etc, but none of that can help in an evacuation.
Older relay-based remote interlockings often had local emergency panels that could be used, though this was typically operated by an agent under the direction of the signaller when the remote telemetry wasn't working as there were no train describer, signal post telephone or train radio facilities at the remote site. SSI, with all interlocking usually housed within the control centre, doesn't support such local panels. Perhaps within a station is not the best location for a major control centre covering a wide area.
Yep and yep. So if all day its another Cross Country scenario.
Yet another 'don't put all your eggs in one basket' scenario. Like software on trains that fails the whole unit for some minor fault that doesn't physically prevent the train running, except the computer says no. Like Cross Country a few days ago. Like banks, supermarkets and airports having a failure that stops everything. Progress is supposed to improve things and make them more resilient to problems, not less so.
The Planner
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But what is new here? Its been the case since the 60s with the addition of PSBs etc.
Except there is no realistic alternate option in many of these cases. These costs of these alternatives, particularly in something safety critical like signalling, would be extraordinary, both in initial installation and in maintenance.
Not to mention there are few buildings a fire can in for the signal box to close, there are tens of thousands that can be on fire next to the railway and have the same effect. How do you sort that?
Manual signal box problems were just for that box. The section would bypass that box until it was fixed. Older diesels could have problems that didn't disable it, although sometimes there were total failures of course. Mechanical ones, not IT having a fit over a dirty windscreen or something equally trivial. Clean it and carry on. If they had had air con in the first place, it could fail without knocking out the whole loco, as seems to happen now. Dawlish waves didn't knock out whole trains as they do the delicate little darlings that are modern units. Even less so in steam days. the crew got wet, but they carried on.
Keep Calm and Carry On as it used to be. Now it is stop everything and panic. The passenger comes last in the priorities.
Keep Calm and Carry On as it used to be. Now it is stop everything and panic. The passenger comes last in the priorities.
What units have you been on that an aircon fault has knocked them out? Discounting when they are taken out of service because the temperature is unsafe.
If Marylebone was a manual signal box you'd have the exact same issue, there is nowhere to turn as many trains are there are without severe disruption.