Reduced Christmas Eve Service

[HST Power]

I was very suprised to hear that First Capital Connect and Chiltern are running limited services today. According to the BBC, they say that their is still a lot of snow on the rails?!
Many trains are being cancelled, and the trains that do run will be packed. This has suprised me greatly, as Christmas Eve is probably one of the biggest (if not the biggest) time to get passengers and high ticket sales.

What are your opinions?

 

[northwichcat]

Northern Rail are also doing reduced services:

Because of poor weather conditions, Northern Rail services on many routes are subject to delay and cancellation. The following alterations will apply on Friday 24 December:

*A reduced train service will run between Liverpool Lime Street and Warrington Bank Quay.
*A reduced service will run between Leeds and Sheffield via Barnsley.
*Trains between Newcastle and Chathill will only run between Newcastle and Morpeth
*Trains between York and Sheffield via Pontefract will not run
*Trains between York and Hull will be diverted via Sherburn-in-Elmet
* Early morning trains between Doncaster and Selby will not run

On other routes a normal weekday service will run, but trains will be finishing earlier than usual (services will start to be withdrawn after approximately 19:00)

 

[38Cto15E]

Poor Rail conditions ,poor road conditions etc etc that covers many things.
A guy on BBC said this morning that TOCs were not worried, more people on less trains means MORE PROFIT.
Happy Christmas All

 

[Aictos]

I was very suprised to hear that First Capital Connect and Chiltern are running limited services today. According to the BBC, they say that their is still a lot of snow on the rails?!
Many trains are being cancelled, and the trains that do run will be packed. This has suprised me greatly, as Christmas Eve is probably one of the biggest (if not the biggest) time to get passengers and high ticket sales.

What are your opinions?

FCC has been running a reduced service for most of this week on the Thameslink and over yesterday and today on on the Great Northern which has been discussed in a number of threads here, I for one posted a thread which has everything regarding FCC: http://railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=39532

Note, I've also kindly left links for both Thameslink and Great Northern timetables for today in my opening post there as well.

 

[175001]

*A reduced train service will run between Liverpool Lime Street and Warrington Bank Quay.
*A reduced service will run between Leeds and Sheffield via Barnsley.
*Trains between Newcastle and Chathill will only run between Newcastle and Morpeth
*Trains between York and Sheffield via Pontefract will not run
*Trains between York and Hull will be diverted via Sherburn-in-Elmet
* Early morning trains between Doncaster and Selby will not run

This has been the case since the 21st, due to a number of DMU's unavailabe to cover diagrams

 

[bengley]

Chiltern have been skipping all stations south of Gerrards Cross for days now!

Completely stupid if you ask me!

 

[bradders1983]

I don't undersand the reduced service between Sheffield and Leeds. There has been no fresh snow in this part of Yorkshire for weeks.

Methinks it is a handy excuse rather than saying "we don't have the staff".

 

[Daniel]

The one which is annoying me at the moment is National Express, who're completely cancelling some services and short forming others. No fresh snow has fallen recently in the suburban areas of the WAML, yet Hertford East services are short formed and Stratford to Stansted services totally cancelled.

 

[ukrob]

I don't undersand the reduced service between Sheffield and Leeds. There has been no fresh snow in this part of Yorkshire for weeks.

Methinks it is a handy excuse rather than saying "we don't have the staff".

It is a lack of available units caused by the recent weather, not todays weather itself.

 

[Greenback]

Although we have had no fresh snow, temperatures are still struggling to rise above freezing, and I assume this creates its own problems for the maintenace of units?

 

[HST Power]

Although we have had no fresh snow, temperatures are still struggling to rise above freezing, and I assume this creates its own problems for the maintenace of units?

It certainly is. The snow is all freezing up creating some quite dangerous ice. I've seen many hobbling around on crutches.
Parts on the trains can also freeze up, as with the planes. Its certainly not helping to get things back on track.
However, the roads seem a lot better. Highways Agency say they expect it to stay clear.

 

[bradders1983]

It is a lack of available units caused by the recent weather, not todays weather itself.

Funny, they all seemed to be available yesterday and I am unaware of any extreme weather in the Northern service area yesterday or today.

I'll stick to my original theory!

 

[Greenback]

Funny, they all seemed to be available yesterday and I am unaware of any extreme weather in the Northern service area yesterday or today.

I'll stick to my original theory!

I assume there was a full service between Sheffield and Leeds with no short forming yesterday then?

 

[ukrob]

Funny, they all seemed to be available yesterday and I am unaware of any extreme weather in the Northern service area yesterday or today.

I'll stick to my original theory!

You can stick to your theory if you want, but you are actually wrong. There have been line cancellations for many days.

 

[Failed Unit]

You should think about Scotland. The service has been a shambles north of the boarder since the snow came 1 month ago. Turbo's + cold weather = failed units. Scotrail now have buses at many stations just in case the train can't take the strain. Reduced frequency + short trains = passengers physically unable to board.

 

[prod_pep]

No mention yet for Merseyrail, who are and have been operating a very poor service for several days now. Just 2 tph for all lines with a majority of workings 6-cars on the Northern Line, although on the Wirral Line there is a gross over-provision of 6-car services on the Chester/E. Port line and no strengthened workings at all on the New Brighton/West Kirby side. Until FCC decided to condemn the Great Northern to a similar frequency timetable, this was possibly the worst service in the country. Ironic given their boasting last time we caught the ice and snow about how much better than the other TOCs they were at dealing with it.

Failures have been alarmingly commonplace, causing significant delays several times daily. This is despite operating 507/8 EMUs, part of a family of trains which elsewhere in the country, not least Glasgow where the snow is far worse than Liverpool, have been the best performers!

Kudos to Southern though, who I think have done an impressive job of dealing with things. While FCC operated a vastly reduced timetable on their London - Brighton route yesterday, Southern were running a full service with no significant delays to my knowledge and all services at least eight cars long.

 

[Z12XE]

The one which is annoying me at the moment is National Express, who're completely cancelling some services and short forming others.

It's a lack of available trains, a large number of EMUs have been damaged by the snow and low temperatures, therefore there simply aren't the number of units available which are required to run the full timetable.

 

[175001]

Funny, they all seemed to be available yesterday and I am unaware of any extreme weather in the Northern service area yesterday or today.

I'll stick to my original theory!

You stick to it, but its not the immediate weather thats to blame, its the weather we had over the weekend which has knackered our DMU's and 323's. Couplings are frozen, heating systems failing etc, which means 19 DMU diagrams are uncovered today, there were 23 diagrams uncovered on Monday

 

[Failed Unit]

I must admit merseyrail last year were the self procliamed best operator at running third rail in the snow. If merseyrail can why can't Southeastern etc. Pride and fall etc.

 

[Clip]

I must admit merseyrail last year were the self procliamed best operator at running third rail in the snow. If merseyrail can why can't Southeastern etc. Pride and fall etc.

See i was thinking about this the other day.. now even though MR trains are shorter are they not heavier thus creating more pressure between the show and the conductor rail and able to break the ice/snow when switching between rail whereas in the SE they are a bit lighter and thus unable to create the same pressure.

I dont remember the slam door stock ever having this much trouble with it.

P.S just a theory and probably wrong

 

[ainsworth74]

Well the rough per car weight of the Class 507 is 35 tonnes whilst the 450 is roughly 43 and the 377 is roughly 44. So I would say that surely the southern units would exert more pressure between conductor rail and shoe?

 

[Hydro]

Juice shoes are sprung, the unit weight wouldn't really come into it.

 

[ainsworth74]

Ahh well never mind then!

 

[Clip]

Juice shoes are sprung, the unit weight wouldn't really come into it.

ahh well never mind..

 

[Hydro]

A lot of the problems seem to be from snow ingressing into the units vital parts and causing shut downs, rather than primarily from iced conductor rails. That's not to say frozen juice rails aren't a problem, they do require de-icing, and do cause a problem sometimes. Modern units tend to be more sensitive to snow, as they are a lot more "drive-by-wire" orientated than the old SR slammers. Any ingress can play havoc with sensors and block cooling ports and ducts, leading to overheating and pre-emptive shut downs from the computer systems.

Slammers weren't constrained by TMS computers, and would just keep going...at the risk of catching fire when the traction equipment couldn't get air for cooling due to snow or ice. They also had a rather nifty advantage of being able to be hooked up to any kind of diesel and treated as loco hauled stock in a pinch, I'm sure we've all seen the photo of a 56 hauling a dead slammer in the snow from days gone by, in service.