Thameslink/ Class 700 Progress

[Hadders]

They've only had about a decade or two to get this done... Yep, a well-planned project. It's farces like this which make it easy to see why there is scepticism about the whole concept, and those designing and implementing it.

Plenty of space to build the additional platform, contractors are on site building platform extensions for the Azuma trains,it would make sense to get them to construct the new platform while they are on site but that's too simple.

Track and signalling would still need to be sorted though...

The local (Conservative) MP is blaming the Labour controlled Borough Council for the failure to get the new platform built :roll:

 

[Max]

More issues this morning caused by failure of 700 on 1E65 Bromley South-Bedford. Train was terminated at Blackfriars due to a 'train fault', so we were de-trained. It then took another 5 minutes to despatch for some reason. Passengers then boarded the late running 0850 service (ex-Brighton) and the failed train then suffered more problems at City Thameslink, thus further delaying all trains behind! In all honesty, if there's a genuine train fault, why doesn't the stricken train terminate in one of the bay platforms at Blackfriars, so it at least doesn't cause further delays? It does seem like GTR remain woefully poor at dealing with disruption.

 

[Deepgreen]

Bathtub curve. Totally acceptable.

I've not used that one; is it anywhere near Cable Junction?!

 

[Alteran Ancient]

More issues this morning caused by failure of 700 on 1E65 Bromley South-Bedford. Train was terminated at Blackfriars due to a 'train fault', so we were de-trained. It then took another 5 minutes to despatch for some reason. Passengers then boarded the late running 0850 service (ex-Brighton) and the failed train then suffered more problems at City Thameslink, thus further delaying all trains behind! In all honesty, if there's a genuine train fault, why doesn't the stricken train terminate in one of the bay platforms at Blackfriars, so it at least doesn't cause further delays? It does seem like GTR remain woefully poor at dealing with disruption.

They managed to park a Southeastern terminator in Platform 2 a few weeks ago. That set the rest of the morning rush back by about half an hour.

I spoke to the NR rep at the manager's session a week later, and they were far too interested in trying to lay blame on the signaller and/or driver, whilst totally ignoring my point that there should be a recovery mechanic in place to begin with, e.g. keeping the Southbound points clear when the platform is occupied.

Stuff goes wrong, accidents happen etc. It's just an unwillingness to mitigate or otherwise learn from these accidents that means it keeps happening.

 

[Kite159]

More issues this morning caused by failure of 700 on 1E65 Bromley South-Bedford. Train was terminated at Blackfriars due to a 'train fault', so we were de-trained. It then took another 5 minutes to despatch for some reason. Passengers then boarded the late running 0850 service (ex-Brighton) and the failed train then suffered more problems at City Thameslink, thus further delaying all trains behind! In all honesty, if there's a genuine train fault, why doesn't the stricken train terminate in one of the bay platforms at Blackfriars, so it at least doesn't cause further delays? It does seem like GTR remain woefully poor at dealing with disruption.

Because that is far too logical, but makes perfect sense [assuming the bays are available].

 

[louis97]

They managed to park a Southeastern terminator in Platform 2 a few weeks ago. That set the rest of the morning rush back by about half an hour.

I spoke to the NR rep at the manager's session a week later, and they were far too interested in trying to lay blame on the signaller and/or driver, whilst totally ignoring my point that there should be a recovery mechanic in place to begin with, e.g. keeping the Southbound points clear when the platform is occupied.

Keeping the south end points clear isn't really an option when the new timetable starts, especially in peak with trains departing from the platform and the next stopping in the platform within 90 seconds.

Although in the future all trains through the core will run with Class 9 headcodes, so it should be more obviously what can and cannot go into the core.

 

[J-2739]

I wonder if it would get to the point where the 700s will be taken out of service and other units will be sourced from Southern? Like what they did with the 458s.?

 

[AM9]

I wonder if it would get to the point where the 700s will be taken out of service and other units will be sourced from Southern? Like what they did with the 458s.?

1) Is the actual failure rate of the class 700s anywhere near as bad as the class 458s?
2) Is there a type of train available to replace the class 700s with sufficient performance and capacity, and in sufficient quantity?

Until the answer to both of those questions is (or ever becomes) yes, then no it won't.

 

[Sunset route]

Although in the future all trains through the core will run with Class 9 headcodes, so it should be more obviously what can and cannot go into the core.

That's going to work well with the ELL trains already running as class 9s on the Forest HIll corridor. The amount of times that we send main line trains over the up London Bridge slow/ up Suusex slow and vice versa in the down direction, nothing like adding a potential wrong routes into the Thameslink mix, to improve the performance.

 

[louis97]

That's going to work well with the ELL trains already running as class 9s on the Forest HIll corridor. The amount of times that we send main line trains over the up London Bridge slow/ up Suusex slow and vice versa in the down direction, nothing like adding a potential wrong routes into the Thameslink mix, to improve the performance.

Exactly what I thought when I first heard about it!

Although there won't be any duplicated letters, London Overground trains will be 9A-9H (with one exception 9M for trains to/from Battersea Park), and Thameslink 9J-9Y (with 9Q and 9X not used).

Trains to and from Clapham Junction get the headcodes re-lettered from 9N to 9G and 9M to 9H respectively.

 

[Sunset route]

Exactly what I thought when I first heard about it!

Although there won't be any duplicated letters, London Overground trains will be 9A-9H (with one exception 9M for trains to/from Battersea Park), and Thameslink 9J-9Y (with 9Q and 9X not used).

Trains to and from Clapham Junction get the headcodes re-lettered from 9N to 9G and 9M to 9H respectively.

I can't wait for the chaos to start, how long to the first class 700 ends up on the up ELL at New Cross Gate lol

 

[AM9]

I can't wait for the chaos to start, how long to the first class 700 ends up on the up ELL at New Cross Gate lol

Why would that be any more likely with 9s as the first digit rather than 1s or 2s?

 

[ComUtoR]

Why would that be any more likely with 9s as the first digit rather than 1s or 2s?

Seems obvious to me and has already been mentioned.

nothing like adding a potential wrong routes into the Thameslink mix, to improve the performance.

 

[AM9]

Seems obvious to me and has already been mentioned.

So those responsible for determining the eventual routing of trains on our system can't tell the difference between a 9 followed by certain letters from those 9s with other letters, yet they have been coping for 20 years, (up until the blockade) not regularly sending Thameslink 1's and 2's trains intended for passage through the core into London Bridge terminal platforms, Cannon Street or Charing Cross by mistake despite the all those destinations as well as Thameslink schedules having trains with 1 & 2 prefixes and arriving via the fast BML lines, - unlike the future situation where generally the LO trains will be on the locals and not the fasts.
It seems like Sunset route's lust for more schadenfreude is affecting his/her judgement of train routing reliability

 

[ComUtoR]

It seems like Sunset route's lust for more schadenfreude is affecting his/her judgement of train routing reliability

I think that a Signaller is showing an honest opinion of the stupidity of having routing numbers suddenly change to be too similar as to be almost indistinguishable.

I also think that its shockingly obvious that it will happen and that things like this is an underlying cause of wrong routes given.

I also know from direct experience of how wrong routes happen and that there is lots of evidence to support Sunset's honest and realistic opinion. Any railway professional who works directly with signals/trains will know and deeply understand the problems with routing.

There is a blind acceptance that everything is perfect and nothing goes wrong. There sheer ignorance to not be able to accept that people are human and mistakes will happen. Something that has happened day in, day out for numerous years that suddenly changes leads to error. There is even a specific term for it.

If the industry knows the risk then why can't others accept that this is a genuine concern.

Nobody wants it to go wrong but we all know it can and will.

If anyone wants to understand the basics of errors then feel free to take the Group Bourdon dots test. Just got to cross off groups of 4 dots. Should be easy....

 

[Deepgreen]

I think that a Signaller is showing an honest opinion of the stupidity of having routing numbers suddenly change to be too similar as to be almost indistinguishable.

I also think that its shockingly obvious that it will happen and that things like this is an underlying cause of wrong routes given.

I also know from direct experience of how wrong routes happen and that there is lots of evidence to support Sunset's honest and realistic opinion. Any railway professional who works directly with signals/trains will know and deeply understand the problems with routing.

There is a blind acceptance that everything is perfect and nothing goes wrong. There sheer ignorance to not be able to accept that people are human and mistakes will happen. Something that has happened day in, day out for numerous years that suddenly changes leads to error. There is even a specific term for it.

If the industry knows the risk then why can't others accept that this is a genuine concern.

Nobody wants it to go wrong but we all know it can and will.

If anyone wants to understand the basics of errors then feel free to take the Group Bourdon dots test. Just got to cross off groups of 4 dots. Should be easy....

Quite so.

 

[spark001uk]

I think what we need to remember here is that even when a signaller looked out of his window and read the headcodes off the front of the train it wasn't without its faults!

 

[AM9]

I think that a Signaller is showing an honest opinion of the stupidity of having routing numbers suddenly change to be too similar as to be almost indistinguishable. ...

I was commenting on this:

I can't wait for the chaos to start,

- which looks to me like schadenfreude. Why would a signaller want there to be problems?

 

[J-2739]

I was commenting on this:



- which looks to me like schadenfreude. Why would a signaller want there to be problems?

Think it was a sarcastic comment.

 

[AM9]

Think it was a sarcastic comment.

There are a few on here who seem to be willing failure on Thameslink, but I'll accept that to some maybe it's 'entertaining'.

 

[ComUtoR]

There are a few on here who seem to be willing failure on Thameslink, but I'll accept that to some maybe it's 'entertaining'.

I have no desire to see it fail. When it does; I will laugh my head off. Not for any for of laughing at the misfortune of others as no doubt I will be caught up in it too. However after all these years, I just find it funny that things are still going wrong over and over again.

All those saying how great it's going to be and how perfect it will all run are in fir a shock and I'll be laughing at their misplaced optimism too.

 

[bramling]

There are a few on here who seem to be willing failure on Thameslink, but I'll accept that to some maybe it's 'entertaining'.

The only thing entertaining will be watching how the "it will be fine" brigade react. But we see that already with some of the increasingly pathetic attempts to defend this grossly unreliable service.

I already have mitigations in place, namely using another mode of transport to make my journey just as quickly, so personally I don't really care how bad it gets. It's frustrating however, because my current arrangements work perfectly well and I'd be more than happy for them to remain.

At this stage the railway should be running reliably. Reality is far from that. The big issue for 2018/19 will be for how long the railway can tolerate an unacceptable level of disruption before it becomes politically untenable.

 

[Sunset route]

There are a few on here who seem to be willing failure on Thameslink, but I'll accept that to some maybe it's 'entertaining'.

I don't think you will find many who want it to fail as too many of us (including myself) need it to work to get to and from work. But there are not many who believe this Thameslink experiment is actually going to work day in day out.

In less than 18months your going to have trained all the GTR TL, SN & GN pus SE drivers to such a high standard that inline failures of class 700s won't have a huge knock on effect on train service. Not to mention getting these class 700 cattle trucks working reliably as well.

At great expense we have tha most modern 2 1/2 miles of state of the art signalling and about 4miles of totally rebuilt railway controlled from a state of the art signalling centre, being fed by 70mile radial approach routes from the four corners of the old NSE land that are relying on 1970s/80s signalling and technology. As much I hate to say this, this has Virgin's "operation princess" written all over it.

The ECML Keeps having wires down effecting that part of the world, the MML seams to be the suicide capital of the world when it's not being effected by either signalling or overhead wire problems and the BML can't run reliably now. There is nothing in the great December 2018tt change that is going to improve those facts.

But as this is a class 700 thread, I have no doubt in the end that they will prove to be a near totally reliable train, I'm just not sure when that will be.

We live in a world now (and I'm talking about more than just the railways) where project managers believe their own hype, senior managers/directors don't know enough about their current vocation to know if what they are being sold I'd workable or not, before they themselves move on.

We employ consultants to fill the knowledge vacuum and then have to employ more to ensure as to have a second opinion, as there is no knowledge within industries to cross check anymore. Lower and middle managers are no longer employed having to know what the department or industry they work in as actually about, just as long as they can sort of manage people and have some basic accounting & budget skills that will do. Then they move on up within or go outside to the next available higher paid job as quick as you can, which promotes a merry go round of basically untrained mangers in what every industry we work in.

 

[Verulamius]

The daily Thameslink performance report can give an indication of how well the class 700s are performing.

For example yesterday, the right time performance (i.e. to the minute not 5 minute) was best on Thameslink compared with the other GTR services. This supports an improvement in 700 performance. See below:

The daily report

Every day by noon we publish our performance statistics for the previous day. We report two figures:

PPM – the percentage of trains arriving at their destination within 5 minutes of schedule
Right time– the percentage of trains arriving at their scheduled time
Monday 7th August 2017

Route PPM Right Time
Thameslink 89.4% 72.7%
Southern Mainline 81.9% 51.7%
Southern Coastway 90.8% 64.6%
Southern Metro 82.7% 51.6%
Gatwick Express 71.7% 44.9%
Great Northern 85.7% 63.4%
Total 83.7% 58.1%

 

[physics34]

I don't think you will find many who want it to fail as too many of us (including myself) need it to work to get to and from work. But there are not many who believe this Thameslink experiment is actually going to work day in day out.

In less than 18months your going to have trained all the GTR TL, SN & GN pus SE drivers to such a high standard that inline failures of class 700s won't have a huge knock on effect on train service. Not to mention getting theses class 700 cattle trucks working reliably as well.

At great expense we have tha most modern 2 1/2 miles of state of the art signalling and about 4miles of totally rebuilt railway controlled from a state of the art signalling centre, being fed by 70mile radial approach routes from the four corners of the old NSE land that are relying on 1970s/80s signalling and technology. As much I hate to say this, this has Virgin's "operation princess" written all over it.

The ECML Keeps having wires down effecting that part of the world, the MML seams to be the suicide capital of the world when it's not being effected by either signalling or overhead wire problems and the BML can't run reliably now. There is nothing in the great December 2018tt change that is going to improve those facts.

But as this is a class 700 thread, I have no doubt in the end that they will prove to be a near totally reliable train, I'm just not sure when that will be.

We live in a world now (and I'm talking about more than just the railways) where project managers believe their own hype, senior managers/directors don't know enough about their current vocation to know if what they are being sold I'd workable or not, before they themselves move on.

We employ consultants to fill the knowledge vacuum and then have to employ more to ensure as to have a second opinion, as there is no knowledge within industries to cross check anymore. Lower and middle managers are no longer employed having to know what the department or industry they work in as actually about, just as long as they can sort of manage people and have some basic accounting & budget skills that will do. Then they move on up within or go outside to the next available higher paid job as quick as you can, which promotes a merry go round of basically untrained mangers in what every industry we work in.

couldnt have summed it up better myself.!

 

[bramling]

The daily Thameslink performance report can give an indication of how well the class 700s are performing.

For example yesterday, the right time performance (i.e. to the minute not 5 minute) was best on Thameslink compared with the other GTR services. This supports an improvement in 700 performance. See below:

The daily report

Every day by noon we publish our performance statistics for the previous day. We report two figures:

PPM – the percentage of trains arriving at their destination within 5 minutes of schedule
Right time– the percentage of trains arriving at their scheduled time
Monday 7th August 2017

Route PPM Right Time
Thameslink 89.4% 72.7%
Southern Mainline 81.9% 51.7%
Southern Coastway 90.8% 64.6%
Southern Metro 82.7% 51.6%
Gatwick Express 71.7% 44.9%
Great Northern 85.7% 63.4%
Total 83.7% 58.1%

Whichever way one looks at it, this is a dire set of figures all round. It certainly doesn't inspire confidence that any further mixing of these services will have anything other than an extremely negative outcome.

By contrast, more self-contained networks like c2c and Chiltern perform much better.

What I would say is that the GN figures, at least, are certainly not representative of my daily experience. GN is pretty dependable most of the time, especially in the down direction - however delays do multiply quickly as soon as something goes wrong. Thameslink will create a big issue as it will inject these little delays into the service, which will quickly multiply to the point where at times the timetable will fall apart very quickly when a chain reaction develops all the way fro London outwards as far as Kings Lynn, and then back towards London again.

 

[physics34]

Whichever way one looks at it, this is a dire set of figures all round. It certainly doesn't inspire confidence that any further mixing of these services will have anything other than an extremely negative outcome.

By contrast, more self-contained networks like c2c and Chiltern perform much better.

What I would say is that the GN figures, at least, are certainly not representative of my daily experience. GN is pretty dependable most of the time, especially in the down direction - however delays do multiply quickly as soon as something goes wrong. Thameslink will create a big issue as it will inject these little delays into the service, which will quickly multiply to the point where at times the timetable will fall apart very quickly when a chain reaction develops all the way fro London outwards as far as Kings Lynn, and then back towards London again.

should see a pretty big improvement when the work is complete.......SHOULD being the word here!

i thing general running will go reasonably well, its just that when things go wrong they will go dramatically wrong.

 

[AM9]

should see a pretty big improvement when the work is complete.......SHOULD being the word here!

i thing general running will go reasonably well, its just that when things go wrong they will go dramatically wrong.

You are probably right in terms of initial full-service problems, but I imagine that control will work out various strategies for emegency operation, especially in peak hours, to clear the majority of passengers fairly quickly.
Looking at the 12 month reports, it seems that the reliability is improving as the bugs are cleared from the new trains. The drag through Tulse Hill and Herne Hill is clearly hurting the service but the new route from Blackfriars to London Bridge and East Croydon should settle down soon after opening.
However, as this thread is about the class 700 (as rolling stock) it seems that the new trains aren't the major cause of PPM and late arrivals, so they must have fixed most of their teething troubles. If the incidence of faults stays lower with new sets being delivered monthly, it also looks like the defect fixes are being applied in production.
Provided enough running on GN service routes is completed, it is probably mainly system incompatibilities unique to those routes that will drive the figures down initially.
Interestingly, the TL north figures are better than the Brighton Line ones for the same period by a fairly consistent 20% so it will be useful to watch if that gap starts falling after 2018.

 

[physics34]

You are probably right in terms of initial full-service problems, but I imagine that control will work out various strategies for emegency operation, especially in peak hours, to clear the majority of passengers fairly quickly.
Looking at the 12 month reports, it seems that the reliability is improving as the bugs are cleared from the new trains. The drag through Tulse Hill and Herne Hill is clearly hurting the service but the new route from Blackfriars to London Bridge and East Croydon should settle down soon after opening.
However, as this thread is about the class 700 (as rolling stock) it seems that the new trains aren't the major cause of PPM and late arrivals, so they must have fixed most of their teething troubles. If the incidence of faults stays lower with new sets being delivered monthly, it also looks like the defect fixes are being applied in production.
Provided enough running on GN service routes is completed, it is probably mainly system incompatibilities unique to those routes that will drive the figures down initially.
Interestingly, the TL north figures are better than the Brighton Line ones for the same period by a fairly consistent 20% so it will be useful to watch if that gap starts falling after 2018.

You would hope the gap will fall...... am i right in thinking the core actually opens in May 2018 but the new timetable will commence in december? If this is the case then i presume the Bedfords via Tulse Hill will be routed via London Bridge then, which should help.

quick turnarounds etc during disruption will be so important and will only work properly with spare drivers at various locations....which of course wont be available. Can see big problems if there is a line blockage in the core.

 

[bramling]

I imagine that control will work out various strategies for emegency operation, especially in peak hours, to clear the majority of passengers fairly quickly.

Fresh from the armchair again - you make it sound so easy running a railway.

Many people seem to have an utterly unrealistic view of what 'control' can actually do during a disruption. So much depends on where the resources, trains and crews, happen to find themselves, and when. We're talking about a few people with a few telephones dealing with hundreds of people all wanting to know what's happening to *them*. All the while hundreds of people continue to pour into the network leading to crowding at places like Farringdon with its narrow platforms. Imagine on if you really think disruption will be cleared by magic at the drop of a hat, it's simply not like that, even on a simple railway.