Rugby ROC Evacuated - 18/09/18 Evening

[Tio Terry]

Is there a source for that or is it baseless speculation? All the internal info about the evacuation has referred exclusively to an actual confirmed fire in the IT server room.

Yes. See about 9 comments up from this one.

 

[Highlandspring]

Yes. See about 9 comments up from this one.

That appears to be complete nonsense.

 

[QueensCurve]

So it's finally happened... all signallers evacuated from a Rail Operating Centre due to an actual fire/smoke which can't be contained all that quickly.

"Luckily" (on the scale of it) tonight's incident is Rugby's turn, which currently has diversionary routes around at least part of its present area of control, meaning that some WCML services can still move, albeit with delays. VTWC departures are, however, gradually being suspended at Euston as the fallout is realised.

Several services have been stranded or moving extremely slowly for quite some time now, and it looks like there was vastly insufficient time to make sure all services had reached platforms. In some cases, queues of trains have been stood signal-to-signal at locations away from stations. From my experience, design of such buildings means the signallers and other crucial safety staff are kept on duty for as long as possible within the tolerances of the evacuation system, with gradual warnings about how soon they need to go... so to have trains stood away from platforms indefinitely means the evacuation process can't have been ideal in this case.

As for some passenger info - various buses are now running in the Stafford/Stoke area at least, trying to connect diversionary routes and stations presently without a service.

There is an important lesson from this.

HMS Warspite suffered a fire which took out all the control and instrumentation for the reactor. The lesson was that a secondary control station needed to be provided complexly independent of the main systems.

The railway may fail to safety, buy the disruption that would occur if a fire destroyed interlockings on the scale of a ROC would be enormous in both space and time.

 

[edwin_m]

There is an important lesson from this.

HMS Warspite suffered a fire which took out all the control and instrumentation for the reactor. The lesson was that a secondary control station needed to be provided complexly independent of the main systems.

The railway may fail to safety, buy the disruption that would occur if a fire destroyed interlockings on the scale of a ROC would be enormous in both space and time.

It would be far more so with the older relay interlockings. With a computer-based interlocking you just have to find another similar unit, load the data and connect it up. Nothing in signalling is ever straightforward but it's a lot easier than locating and wiring up thousands of relays. There was a relay interlocking fire or something similar in Kentish Town a few years back and it was ages before they got all the routes back. Computer-based interlockings also have relatively fewer cables so cable fires are more easily reinstated.

 

[Highlandspring]

There is an important lesson from this.

HMS Warspite suffered a fire which took out all the control and instrumentation for the reactor. The lesson was that a secondary control station needed to be provided complexly independent of the main systems.

As a trivial aside there’s an interesting railway connection with Royal Navy nuclear submarines; the old Resolution and current Vanguard class bombers had (and perhaps still have) a relay based interlocking system for controlling certain functions of the reactor, designed by Westinghouse in Chippenham and using standard railway BR930 relays.

 

[Elecman]

Fire was definately in the server room, non server equipment failure was the cause