Three Bridges signalling centre evacuated due to fire alarm

[infobleep]

I see that the Three Bridge signalling centre has been evacuated due to a fire alert.

 

[Bald Rick]

They are back in now. Expect delays for rest of the morning though.

 

[Super Sprinter]

Trains at Purley are in chaos. BTP advising people of delays of many hours! Just as he said that a train showed up, but the situation is not looking good!

 

[ushawk]

It's good the entire regions signalling hasn't been transferred to Three Bridges yet otherwise it would affected a large chunk of the South !!

 

[bravesirrobin]

It's good the entire regions signalling hasn't been transferred to Three Bridges yet otherwise it would affected a large chunk of the South !!

Glad I spotted the disruption on the way to the station -- was able to head back and work from home.

I have been wondering as a result, now that there are (or soon will be) large single-points-of-failure, if there are actually contingencies for this kind of disruption given the much wider impact than, say, the fire at Preston Park just before Christmas.

Curious from an engineering standpoint, as I spend quite a bit of my time designing single-points-of-failure out of large-scale software systems.

 

[infobleep]

There are many pros to having large signalling centres and when they work I'm sure it's great but this is one of the cons. I doubt it outweighs the pros though.

Apparently there was actually fire, so they were saying at Clapham Junction at least. The TFL screen at Harrow reported it as a line side fire.

I made the mistake of getting out at Clapham Junction and forgetting to check my train was actually running. Even though it's the west London line to Milton Kynes, and it comes from Watford Junction, it wasn't running, due to lack of staff being able to get there. The 6.39 from Clapham Junction to Milton Kynes was in on the platform with the doors open but going no where.

I'm sure it will affect all services until next of service. Unlike South West Trains, Southern haven't yet implemented and system where by only the trains running are displayed. Saying that some cancelled trains had been cleared. The next train list was the 8.16 to East Croydon. When another train was due to come in they updated it to show that.

However going north to Victoria, it was showing much earlier trains and saying they were on time.

 

[zoneking]

Congrats to Southern staff who did the best they could at Purley and ECR. I made it to CLJ ok.

 

[RichJF]

I got on at Redhill this morning and the Reading/Gatwick Airport trains are late but okay. The London-bound trains were arriving but about 45mins late (mine was 12 car & empty)!! Things are okay until you hit East Croydon.

The early morning class 455 was still stuck in the old parcels platform & that's due to leave about 5:30am!

I imagine the delays will slowly start going down & the service will just about have recovered by the evening peak, although I do expect short forming and missing out stations most of the day!

 

[tsr]

Unlike South West Trains, Southern haven't yet implemented and system where by only the trains running are displayed. Saying that some cancelled trains had been cleared. The next train list was the 8.16 to East Croydon. When another train was due to come in they updated it to show that.

However going north to Victoria, it was showing much earlier trains and saying they were on time.

The system has been implemented, but I believe it may actually be monitored from Three Bridges (someone will be along to correct me if I'm wrong). Hence the various levels of chaos within the CIS. All in all, not NR's finest hour and probably quite a damaging day in terms of fines, late passengers and freight (and thus economic damage) and of course the reputation of signalling centres. Bearing in mind the reports of an actual fire causing all this, one wonders what sort of mitigation could effectively have been put in place. False alarms are one thing, but real fires are quite another.

 

[ushawk]

All freights in the affected area i believe were held to get passenger trains moving.

Alarm went off at about 5AM and trains started to move again at around 6.40 - so thats a long time of trains not moving between London and Brighton and all the lines in between. First time i can recall this happening so its pretty rare, but had this have been a major fire, then we could have been talking major disruption for a long time.

 

[Waddon]

This all poses the question, with all this centralised signalling, suppose the signalling centre had been totally knocked out by a fire and had to be rebuilt, would that mean that trains in the affected area would be unable to run normally for weeks, months? What contingency plans have they got for an incident like this? Can one of the other major signalling centres take over?

 

[tsr]

This all poses the question, with all this centralised signalling, suppose the signalling centre had been totally knocked out by a fire and had to be rebuilt, would that mean that trains in the affected area would be unable to run normally for weeks, months? What contingency plans have they got for an incident like this? Can one of the other major signalling centres take over?

Another signalling centre can in theory take over - provided it's fully operational itself and that the workload and the gubbins for transferring the signalling are managed well.

If Three Bridges signalling centre had burnt down today, I really have no idea what would happen in practice.

 

[ushawk]

If Three Bridges signalling centre had burnt down today, I really have no idea what would happen in practice.

And i dare'nt say Network Rail would fully know either, im not sure of what signalling centre would take over Three Bridges, possibly Victoria at present but thats the only one i can think of.

And its going to be a bad day in the South today, reports of a person being hit by a train at Hilsea, everything between Cosham/Havant and Portsmouth is suspended.

 

[ainsworth74]

This all poses the question, with all this centralised signalling, suppose the signalling centre had been totally knocked out by a fire and had to be rebuilt, would that mean that trains in the affected area would be unable to run normally for weeks, months? What contingency plans have they got for an incident like this? Can one of the other major signalling centres take over?

Well the Netherlands had a major fire in one of their three(?) signalling centres which between them control the entire country. Disruption on the day of the fire was intense, basically a case of just give up and go home everyone. But the next day a reduced service was running as the other signalling centres were able to takeover much of the work and they also had the facilities to transfer small sections to local control as well.

As long as you plan for it the loss of a major signalling centre need not be catastrophic.

 

[Tomnick]

Another signalling centre can in theory take over - provided it's fully operational itself and that the workload and the gubbins for transferring the signalling are managed well.

If Three Bridges signalling centre had burnt down today, I really have no idea what would happen in practice.

I'm assuming this is the 'old' Three Bridges box rather than the new ROC - in which case it certainly wouldn't be possible for another box to take over immediately. Even in the ROCs, I don't think there's yet provision for another ROC to take over (or indeed spare workstations for that purpose). It'd have to go through some sort of.re-control process, the speed of which depends on the.nature of the existing interlocking - not really a quick fix.

It's common for there to be remote emergency panels that can be switched in to allow some sort of service to run - though I don't know whether there are any in the area in question.

 

[michael769]

Disruption is expected until 4PM

FCC have declassified First Class for the morning (check before you travel) and are advising all passengers to board the next available train.

EMT, LM, SE, SWT Southern, LU and FCC (Great Northern Route) are accepting tickets on any reasonable route. Within Zones 1-6 TfL bus services are accepting tickets on any reasonable route.

 

[ushawk]

Most trains now running back to time, any current delayed trains are either running fast or terminating short.

 

[michael769]

There are a lot of out of position crews and sets so residual delays and cancellations can be expected for some hours.

 

[tsr]

Just to clarify, what I said earlier about switching over referred to ROCs - not the current setup. Sorry for any confusion.

Delays and general alterations are still many. LDBs at Redhill are a right mess.

 

[infobleep]

I saw 1 freight train and 1 network rail train pass through Clapham Junction this morning some point between 7.30 and 7.50. They were both heading north. I think one or both of them may have used platform 14.

They couldn't use platform 17 because it had a train stuck in it. Not sure where they moved the train to as well WWL trains appear to have been cancelled until later on. May be it formed a later train which started short from Clapham Junction.

At Clapham Junction I heard it was a fire at the signal box in Three Bridges. On the Web it said a fire alarm was sounded and the fire brigade was investigating. The departure summery screen at Harrow had either "train delayed due to Three Bridges". or "train cancelled due to Three Bridges". The TFL running information screen at Harrow said it was a line side fire.

Clearly the fire wasn't that bad, that they couldn't return to work. Well done for getting services running again. A friend travelling to Farringdon was only 30 minutes late this morning.

 

[Class377/5]

The system has been implemented, but I believe it may actually be monitored from Three Bridges (someone will be along to correct me if I'm wrong). Hence the various levels of chaos within the CIS. All in all, not NR's finest hour and probably quite a damaging day in terms of fines, late passengers and freight (and thus economic damage) and of course the reputation of signalling centres. Bearing in mind the reports of an actual fire causing all this, one wonders what sort of mitigation could effectively have been put in place. False alarms are one thing, but real fires are quite another.

Southern'S CIS is actually controlled from Croydon currently.

It could hare been much worse. Especially if it had happened in the new ROC. However in a newer building it would have been less likely.

 

[adc82140]

The North Downs line was somewhat affected- the main Guildford rush hour service (07:04 off Reading) was cancelled- I presume the unit forming that service was marooned at Redhill first thing- I hate to think what the already cosy one 30 minutes later was like. There were some cancellations to other destinations from Reading as well due to displaced crews, proving that an incident like this can have far reaching effect.

 

[tsr]

Southern'S CIS is actually controlled from Croydon currently.

That's odd - I'm sure someone told me it was TBD the other day. Thanks for the correction!

 

[ushawk]

That's odd - I'm sure someone told me it was TBD the other day. Thanks for the correction!

Once the ROC opens Southern will move everything down to Three Bridges, should happen this year.

 

[neilm]

The system has been implemented, but I believe it may actually be monitored from Three Bridges (someone will be along to correct me if I'm wrong). Hence the various levels of chaos within the CIS. All in all, not NR's finest hour and probably quite a damaging day in terms of fines, late passengers and freight (and thus economic damage) and of course the reputation of signalling centres. Bearing in mind the reports of an actual fire causing all this, one wonders what sort of mitigation could effectively have been put in place. False alarms are one thing, but real fires are quite another.

Southern'S CIS is actually controlled from Croydon currently.

It could hare been much worse. Especially if it had happened in the new ROC. However in a newer building it would have been less likely.

Any reason why in the new building it would be less likely? Will they still be able to operate while an alarm is going off, more like a hospital?

 

[tsr]

Once the ROC opens Southern will move everything down to Three Bridges, should happen this year.

Quite - I must have misheard them.

 

[noddingdonkey]

Any reason why in the new building it would be less likely? Will they still be able to operate while an alarm is going off, more like a hospital?

A two stage system is quite feasible, where there is a pre-alarm which sounds when a detector is triggered (often an intermittent alarm, or like many large stations have, a message paging a certain Inspector) followed by the evacuation alarm when it's confirmed or hasn't been reset in a certain time.

 

[Eagle]

I thought one of the advantages of the ROCs was that everything was standardized across the network, so that should an evacuation occur any critical responsibilities could be easily transferred to a different centre.

 

[High Dyke]

Once the ROC opens Southern will move everything down to Three Bridges, should happen this year.

Reportedly smoke coming from a telecoms room requiring the fire service to attend.

Imagine the chaos this would've caused in the new ROC...if the proposal to transfer Kings Cross station area to the control of Three Bridges had happened.

 

[GB]

Reportedly smoke coming from a telecoms room requiring the fire service to attend.

This is true. So even if there was a 2 phase alarm in place, its likely the result would have been exactly the same.