Wires down at Luton (8/11/16)

[Class377/5]

Obviously I am just a passenger assuming the railway has decent contingency plans to ensure my service remains when the wires go down up north. I have no idea what the plan would be - maybe Finsbury Park or Cricklewood would be better.

Er this is a railway contingency plan but me sat there for 30mins looking at options to disprove the idea that come 2018, Thameslink would be worse affected. You realise proper contingency planning takes a lot longer right? It was a simple we can run fine proving exercise that's all.

Also you'd never get them serviving the 8 car Cricklewood. West Hampstead or maybe Brent Cross when that's built for turning purposes.

However back to the original point, you are saying that plan A is to cut out 50% of our services through London Bridge completely, which would lead to extensive overcrowding as it does every time a train is cut now.

You worried about your own service being massively over crowded when the incident is so serious the MML gets its service slashed from 15tph (tpday, 16tph in 2018) to 3tph. That's a significant challenge for anyone. I've already suggested multiple alternatives meaning Redhill wouldn't be as badly affected as the 50% your making out.

There is no extra capacity going to the Redhill Line in the peak in the new 2018 timetable (in fact in certain periods seating capacity will see serious cuts - although standing space goes up) so it will be the worse possible line to cut capacity in this instance.

Right if your claiming there no capacity to run anything extra in my suggestion of having removed some trains completely from Redhill is rather silly. If the (current) 2Wxx services do't run then there are paths available. If they do run as a Finsbury Park or West Hampstead/Brent Cross terminator from Gatwick.

Looking back at the documents and having a deeper look the 2Wxx trans are a lot more important as they are the only ones calling at Norwood Junction as well so are needed for that link.

 

[ItchyRsole]

..and there are hundreds of buses and drivers all standing around doing nothing, just waiting for something like this to happen.

Bus companies, like rail operators do not have scarce resources doing nothing.

I would have thought very little would be available until after school contracts had been fulfilled which certainly would be after 0800...
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The problem has been going on for over a day already, and was said by GTR themselves that the problem could last till Tuesday. No crystal ball was needed, it was happening! They should of had buses at major stations, like St. Albans through the night leaving every now and again as opposed to nothing at all.

The last time they had major disruption FCC were bringing coaches down from wales. Got me to work. This was merely more bad management, bad decision making and penny pinching from GTR.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
The problem had been going on for over a day already, and was said by GTR themselves that the problem could last till Friday. No crystal ball was needed, it was happening! They should of had buses at major stations, like St. Albans through the night leaving every now and again as opposed to nothing at all.

The last time they had major disruption FCC were bringing coaches down from wales. Got me to work. This was merely more bad management, bad decision making and penny pinching from GTR.

Edited. No editing option??

 

[Robertj21a]

The problem has been going on for over a day already, and was said by GTR themselves that the problem could last till Tuesday. No crystal ball was needed, it was happening! They should of had buses at major stations, like St. Albans through the night leaving every now and again as opposed to nothing at all.

The last time they had major disruption FCC were bringing coaches down from wales. Got me to work. This was merely more bad management, bad decision making and penny pinching from GTR.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
The problem had been going on for over a day already, and was said by GTR themselves that the problem could last till Friday. No crystal ball was needed, it was happening! They should of had buses at major stations, like St. Albans through the night leaving every now and again as opposed to nothing at all.

The last time they had major disruption FCC were bringing coaches down from wales. Got me to work. This was merely more bad management, bad decision making and penny pinching from GTR.

Edited. No editing option??

Where do you suggest they get all the buses, and drivers, from, particularly when the main provider of rail replacement buses in the London area is already quite involved with the Croydon Tramlink replacements ?