Northern issue DO NOT TRAVEL message (23/08)

[GRALISTAIR]

Really is a "damned if you, damned if you don't" for these forums!

Sadly that is the truth!

 

[Horizon22]

To be fair, I'm not sure Carmont is compatible.

"Do not travel" is for the passengers but the industry decides what trains run !

I didn't say it was, I just said the guidance stems from that incident.

 

[yorksrob]

I didn't say it was, I just said the guidance stems from that incident.

Fair point.

To be honest, I had to rearrange my plans today due to the weather.

It was the "your train is cancelled" for the next two hours, over any "do not travel" that had the effect

 

[Horizon22]

It was the "your train is cancelled" for the next two hours, over any "do not travel" that had the effect

Same general point though - most people faced with a 2 hour delay (and probably more as disruption timings tend to be optimistic) would see that as "oh not travelling today then".

 

[CaptainHaddock]

Same general point though - most people faced with a 2 hour delay (and probably more as disruption timings tend to be optimistic) would see that as "oh not travelling today then".

True, but the decision on whether to travel or not should be the passenger's, not the train company's.

Northern could have run a service on several lines today but it autocratically decided not to, which is what many of us find so annoying.

 

[Horizon22]

True, but the decision on whether to travel or not should be the passenger's, not the train company's.

Northern could have run a service on several lines today but it autocratically decided not to, which is what many of us find so annoying.

But if the company knows it is going to be very difficult to provide such a service with the privileged information that it has (and a passenger does not) is it not under a responsibility to do so? People often complain the railway is not good at providing information, but I refer to my previous post that when it does stick its neck out, people here are quick to complain it is rash and unhelpful.

Bare in mind it is not being done "autocratically" and Network Rail will also have a considerable say on what is being run not to mention the availablity of the infrastructure can change at relatively short notice whilst mobilising crews and stock cannot be just done with the click of a finger.

 

[bramling]

To be fair, I'm not sure Carmont is compatible.

"Do not travel" is for the passengers but the industry decides what trains run !

The problem is the two things are linked. If trains don’t run then clearly there aren’t the trains to move people from A to B. But what’s worse is if you end up with a situation where people have been carried from A to B, but there isn’t the capability to get them home again, or even worse they get stranded mid-journey.

Unfortunately experience shows many people are extremely poor at exercising their own individual judgement on this, and if anything increasingly so. If people can’t be trusted to make a sensible decision despite being given plenty of clear advice, then the only option is to go with a harder message.

What’s worse, it’s often the self-same people that make a silly journey in the first place, that are then the first to panic when they do find themselves stranded and having to rely on their own initiative.

 

[plugwash]

I'm heading from my local station in greater Manchester to Cambridge north later today (24th)? does anyone know if there is still disruption due to this weather event or if things are pretty much back to normal? I recall Manchester to Stoke was blocked yesterday morning, is that cleared now?

 

[AlastairFraser]

I'm heading from my local station in greater Manchester to Cambridge north later today (24th)? does anyone know if there is still disruption due to this weather event or if things are pretty much back to normal? I recall Manchester to Stoke was blocked yesterday morning, is that cleared now?

No remaining disruption alerts on NRE, so it looks all cleared.

 

[trainophile]

Well I don't think I got one of my six Advance booked trains yesterday, except maybe the first one, and that was only by coincidence as the departing timing coincided with it, although it had started off as a two hours earlier one. Was very grateful that all the trains I used had charging points, I was on my phone almost constantly trying to keep up and work out my options. Luckily ticket checks weren't happening, and TPE at least seemed to have a policy of anything goes with ticket acceptance, without which I wouldn't have got back last night.

WMR did their usual trick and cancelled the last Birmingham to Hereford, also the one two before it that I should have caught had I stayed on my booked train from Wigan, so I would have had over an hour to kill and not got home until 21:00, and I was dubious that the remaining one might get cancelled as well at the last minute. Made a snap decision to bail at Crewe and *just* managed to get an e-ticket for the 17:10 TfW as I disembarked and dashed over the bridge, the purchase went through as I reached the platform, about four minutes before it would have been too late! There's no mobile signal (not on my network anyway) on the southbound approach to Crewe from about 15 minutes out, and the "unsecure" on train wifi wouldn't connect to a site that involves payments.

The bonus was that 1st Class was cheaper than Standard as there was still an Advance ticket for 1st (yes, 10 minutes before departure), but it still cost me £25 (railcard price). Worth it though, I'd had enough by then, and the 1st Class experience on TfW is wonderful. That cup of tea was nectar after the day I'd had!

As I actually got back an hour earlier than originally booked, I'm in two minds whether to let delay repay go as it wasn't the railway's fault, and put the £25 down to a small price to pay for getting home. I wonder how many people did end up stranded. I must say the railway handled things pretty well in exceptional circumstances, all credit to the on platform and on train staff.

 

[dk1]

Tree blocking the line between Wigan NW and Liverpool this morning.

 

[Howardh]

Tree blocking the line between Wigan NW and Liverpool this morning.

Is there a rail map that the public can access showing blockages like that in real time? If you are on the road then sites like Traffic England and even Google Maps can show where the latest incidents are; so is there one for the railways?

 

[dk1]

Is there a rail map that the public can access showing blockages like that in real time? If you are on the road then sites like Traffic England and even Google Maps can show where the latest incidents are; so is there one for the railways?

Possibly but I doubt it. There would be no reason to.

 

[Skymonster]

Disruption? What disruption? I travelled on six trains throughout the day yesterday across the Midlands and the Northwest. Admittedly not Northern; I used East Midlands Railway, Transport for Wales and Avanti West Coast. For once, all of the trains actually ran spot on time. Except for one Avanti Train Manager saying “apologies for this train being busier than usual due to lines being blocked by fallen trees” I would have not been aware of any issues on the railway - there were certainly no other announcements either on train or at the stations I used.

 

[trainophile]

Disruption? What disruption? I travelled on six trains throughout the day yesterday across the Midlands and the Northwest. Admittedly not Northern; I used East Midlands Railway, Transport for Wales and Avanti West Coast. For once, all of the trains actually ran spot on time. Except for one Avanti Train Manager saying “apologies for this train being busier than usual due to lines being blocked by fallen trees” I would have not been aware of any issues on the railway - there were certainly no other announcements either on train or at the stations I used.

I think it was the East that had the worst of it. You were lucky!

 

[alistairlees]

Possibly but I doubt it. There would be no reason to.

Sounds like a great, customer-focused idea to me.

 

[dk1]

Sounds like a great, customer-focused idea to me.

But why? All the public needs to know is that a tree is blocking the line between A and B.

 

[D6130]

Disruption? What disruption? I travelled on six trains throughout the day yesterday across the Midlands and the Northwest. Admittedly not Northern; I used East Midlands Railway, Transport for Wales and Avanti West Coast. For once, all of the trains actually ran spot on time. Except for one Avanti Train Manager saying “apologies for this train being busier than usual due to lines being blocked by fallen trees” I would have not been aware of any issues on the railway - there were certainly no other announcements either on train or at the stations I used.

You were clearly travelling outside of the storm zone. Storm Lilian travelled very quickly West-East across the country affecting a comparatively narrow band very roughly North of a line from Liverpool to Hull and South of a line from Carlisle to Newcastle.

The winds - constantly at 50-60 mph, but with frequent gusts of up to 75 mph (hurricane force) - intensified over the Pennines....and then slowly died down across the relatively flat areas of East Yorkshire.

There were widespread power outages in West Yorkshire....some of which affected the railway's signalling systems. The village on the hill above us had no power from about 02 00 till about 23 00 last night. Cue a large number of freezer claims.

In addition - as already discussed in numerous other posts in this thread - a large number of trees and other debris fell across several different railway lines, causing absolute havoc.

You were luckier than many other travellers. Our next-door-but-one neighbour was trying to travel from Hebden Bridge to London early in the morning for a job interview, which she missed after having been stranded at Halifax for over three hours.

 

[CaptainHaddock]

Sounds like a great, customer-focused idea to me.

Yes, all you'd need to do is attach a GPS device to every lineside tree in the country and monitor them constantly for signs of movement. Shouldn't be too expensive or laborious for something that happens once or twice a year at most.

 

[alistairlees]

To plan alternate routes, get an idea of generally how things are, be reassured that other routes are running well etc. TfL have this sort of thing.

 

[noddingdonkey]

I think people are overthing this - a network map where the lines change colour (with some alternative for accessibility purposes) to indicate the average delay to services over the next hour should not be impossible to produce from existing data.

 

[Howardh]

But why? All the public needs to know is that a tree is blocking the line between A and B.

Little use if A and B are unknown to you! If I were from the south, and travelling between Manchester and Liverpool, and a Northern alert came up (say on Twitter) that the line was blocked between Westhoughton and Hindley - I'd be wondering "is that my line? How do I get round it if it is?". A live map would clearly show it's not on your line.

Such an obstruction could be available on Signalbox if they knew where it was?

Think I'll put something in "Suggestions/Speculation"! Here -

Should/Could we have a live map of rail obstructions?

I use signalbox, not the absolute most accurate app of where trains are, but can't find anything better. In times where some lines are obstructed, would be really useful to know exactly where on a map, so one can work away round it possibly. A TOC simply saying "line obstruction between A and...

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[dk1]

Little use if A and B are unknown to you! If I were from the south, and travelling between Manchester and Liverpool, and a Northern alert came up (say on Twitter) that the line was blocked between Westhoughton and Hindley - I'd be wondering "is that my line? How do I get round it if it is?". A live map would clearly show it's not on your line.

Such an obstruction could be available on Signalbox if they knew where it was?

Think I'll put something in "Suggestions/Speculation"!

But X and other options are available from the train operators and National Rail to indicate what diversionary routes and/or rail replacement buses are available. Nobody apart from Network Rail needs to know the exact location of the fallen tree.

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Very occasionally the public are treated to a photograph of it if NR pass that onto the operators then they choose to post it.

 

[The exile]

Does

I can see the point about "Do Not Travel" being a bit melodramatic. It ought to be possible to get the message across in a clear logical manner which allows people to rearrange their plans/transport based on the expectation of severe delays in places.

"Due to strong winds across northern England today, large parts of the network are suffering severe delays and cancellations due to fallen trees blocking lines. You are advised to check your journey in advance and be prepared for significant disruption if you wish to travel. Delays of up to two hours are possible locally."

Maybe that is a bit long but it gets the point across, be prepared for a long wait if you are unlucky.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Aug 2024 ==


The problem currently is that this storm has come through in August when deciduous trees are still in full leaf which makes them much more vulnerable to blow-down. How could Network Rail deal with precarious-looking trees that are on private land?

altering the "if you wish to travel" to "if you need to travel" would probably help send the message as well.

 

[Vexed]

There is already a live network map which updates automatically with what I presume is Darwin data, though it's only for the GTR area though it does should delays for all/most operators nearby as far as I can tell (it's currently showing delays for GA & LNER).

https://livemap.thameslinkrailway.com/#/TL/mapview

It's defiantly live or "dynamic" as they call it in the press release as it shows minor delays in seemingly random areas. Right now there are minor delays between Luton and Flitwick but normal between Flitwick and Bedford even through everything stopping at Flitwick will have had Bedford as the previous or next call! Or severe delays between Hitchin and Arlesey (one stop) but the rest of the line has minor delays.

Planned closures are also shown. Open the key on the left as it's a very confusing map with similar colours.

Press release from 2021

 

[Dr Hoo]

The limitation on many rail routes is that what may seen like a little local difficulty with a tree on the line at Garstang (between Preston and Lancaster) can also wipe out services north of Carlisle for the rest of the day. A blockage on the M6 at that point wouldn’t take out the M74 in the same way.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

A blockage on the M6 at that point wouldn’t take out the M74 in the same way.

No, but it would likely prevent any road traffic on the M6 in Central Lancashire from getting up as far as the M74. Obviously, such traffic can, in theory, be diverted, but there are pinch points on the motorway system where, if there is a closure, everything then tends to grind to a halt.

 

[alistairlees]

There is already a live network map which updates automatically with what I presume is Darwin data, though it's only for the GTR area though it does should delays for all/most operators nearby as far as I can tell (it's currently showing delays for GA & LNER).

https://livemap.thameslinkrailway.com/#/TL/mapview

It's defiantly live or "dynamic" as they call it in the press release as it shows minor delays in seemingly random areas. Right now there are minor delays between Luton and Flitwick but normal between Flitwick and Bedford even through everything stopping at Flitwick will have had Bedford as the previous or next call! Or severe delays between Hitchin and Arlesey (one stop) but the rest of the line has minor delays.

Planned closures are also shown. Open the key on the left as it's a very confusing map with similar colours.

Press release from 2021

There’s also a southeastern version

 

[janb]

But X and other options are available from the train operators and National Rail to indicate what diversionary routes and/or rail replacement buses are available. Nobody apart from Network Rail needs to know the exact location of the fallen tree.

It actually would be helpful to both customers and customer facing staff. Yesterday the only info we had was "multiple trees on multiple lines" and a not necessarily complete list of impacted lines (some actually had trains running and others not mentioned didn't).

A handy map with either traffic style shading (green/amber/red) and/or icons of a tree or spanner or similar in the relevant locations that are disrupted would have been helpful when trying to work out which rerouting would be most sensible.

 

[185]

The one I took exception with was an ambiguous Do Not Travel between X and Y, two places 100 miles apart passing through various cities, with multiple combinations of routes and train operators included in that warning. Only 1/3 of the routes were blocked, trains were operating (not too badly) in the remainder and at other TOCs.

There is a tendency now, for example to advertise a fatality eg "between WICK and LOOE" rather than usefully give the location, or in some cases, even which line is blocked. The geographical & railway knowledge of at least two operators 'Social Media Executives' has been found to be seriously inadequate on multiple occasions.