ECML Disruption - Saturday 27th December

[Qwerty133]

I think the main problem is that they don't have any information on their website. The media are doing a poor job (as normal) informing people, but then they have little information too.

Is there going to be ticket acceptance in place? People could plan their journeys now if there was ticket acceptance in place, but there is nothing other than 'a revised/emergency timetable will be in operation'.

How many trains are expected to go through to Finsbury Park and things like that. Obviously it takes time to organise, but this has seemingly been known for quite a few hours now, and from what I've read by forum members and staff members on site the problems have only been piling up and it was fairly expected to overrun. Surely, EC (and TSGN) should have already had plans in place. In fact, TSGN is probably the biggest issue here, not EC, how will this affect Great Northern services or will there just be minimal disruption to there services (with most disruption likely due to pax loadings)?

Only the 3rd story on the 21:00 headlines on BBC News, after advising that they may be bad road conditions due to expected bad weather, still not heard the BBC mention that Euston is also closed.
Hopefully XC will be more cooperative this time than in August and accept that they'll have to take extra passengers instead of tweeting that tickets aren't valid on their services, even on routes where they are always valid, as EMT only have so much capacity and will be taking the slack from both lines.
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Perhaps the nice people at EMT could extend some of their Sheffield services to Doncaster and Pax for London advised to change at Doncaster?

Possibly a bit late notice to get enough extra crews though - especially with the snow.

Not going to happen, they're not even running the manchester service this weekend that has ran during other Watford closures.

 

[185143]

I've defended East Coast a bit on Twitter. They've been taking a barrage of abuse. I've been re-directing some of it to Network Rail! However, they aren't doing themselves any favours by not responding to Tweets...

As have I. I just got a barrage of abuse in return!

 

[Kite159]

The once an hour Virgin diversion from Euston to Coventry/Birmingham International via Chiltern Mainline are going to be extra busy now.

 

[Qwerty133]

Grand Central's Twitter is operated by the Cross Country team, and from a previous tweet they posted they aren't allowed to use Twitter outside of the office. Grand Central seems to have just been thrown on the side of the XC Twitter as something to kind of just say 'Hey look GC has a Twitter that is actually manned now'

Well they need to give some people access outside the office, to both accounts, whether them people are members of the social media team, or preferably managers doesn't matter, but someone really should have access.

 

[najaB]

BN does not have enough space to stable the amount of sets in the London area and those sets stabled at KGX were to form the first services when the possession was given up. It was all planned fairly well.

Fair enough, I know it's not easy to plan things without benefit of a crystal ball. I guess it was a balanced risk - if they had stabled the sets elsewhere and the engineering work had gone to plan then people would be complaining about the late start to service.

 

[Bald Rick]

The once an hour Virgin diversion from Euston to Coventry/Birmingham International via Chiltern Mainline are going to be extra busy now.

Why??

 

[Kite159]

Why??

Passengers with flexible tickets heading to Scotland changing at Coventry or Birmingham International? Or changing to get on a XC service to Leeds/York

 

[21C101]

It doesn't help that its Boxing Day and only on call staff are in and no social media staff, as it is still boxing day. To formulate an emergency timetable takes time. Once its checked and signed off it can be handed out. The public don't realize its not just the trains, but staff and crew to man the service for a whole day. All of that gets looked at for an emergency timetable.

Be carm I say as I know as much as the travelling public. It will be announced when it can, but passengers will travel regardless of how serious this disruption is.

With six different sets of engineering work going on, it wasn't unthinkable that one would overrun and therefore a good risk mitigation would have been to have planned an emergency timetable just in case. This sort of thinking ahead is where top managers earn their wages or not as the case may be......
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Passengers with flexible tickets heading to Scotland changing at Coventry or Birmingham International? Or changing to get on a XC service to Leeds/York

Might be better off walking to Moor St and getting a nice comfortable MK3 set with class 67 to Marylebone...

 

[matacaster]

This is part of the reason why I suggested extra christmas services via quieter routes using infrastructure which is still open.

http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=109583

It is very difficult to plan and execute multiple major projects at once and it was almost certain that at least one would overrun or fall victim to bad weather at Christmas. Unfortunately, NR tend to get bogged down in the enormity of what they are trying to do infrastructure wise, tending to treat the passengers as a bit of a nuisance who can be fobbed off when the inevitable happens ... and it does. A (maybe slow / maybe a touch inconvenient) route north from a mainline London station should have been planned from the start. Even with no disruption, northern shoppers have been denied trains to the sales (Harrods is very popular even just to window shop), football supporters, people returning to / from Scotland have been given insufficient consideration. Perhaps NR and the operators are softening passengers up for the reintroduction of third class!:cry:

 

[Qwerty133]

As have I. I just got a barrage of abuse in return!

Just been trying to help some where possible, and have posted refund info from NRCOC, some are actually grateful!

 

[21C101]

If it hadn't been first stripped of most of its platforms, then shut, the ICs could have been diverted to Broad Street....

In fact if route training was put in place, could services be diverted to Liverpool Street via the Graham Road Curve? Once crossrail is open in 2018 it won't be (quite) so busy so maybe this could be looked into as a long term mitigation.

Running an IC "stopping" service from Leeds to Liverpool St once a day in the morning and evening peaks Mon - Fri would get the route knowledge in place and probably be very well used, given that the IC services don't stop at Finsbury, meaning that city commuters from Grantham etc. have to fight their way onto the Northern or Circle line at Kings X.

 

[Max]

It's very poor that there still isn't an alternative timetable online 5 hours after the disruption warning was originally put out.

 

[Saint66]

If it hadn't been first stripped of most of its platforms, then shut, the ICs could have been Diverted to Broad Street....

But hindsight is a wonderful thing!

 

[ModernRailways]

It doesn't help that its Boxing Day and only on call staff are in and no social media staff, as it is still boxing day. To formulate an emergency timetable takes time. Once its checked and signed off it can be handed out. The public don't realize its not just the trains, but staff and crew to man the service for a whole day. All of that gets looked at for an emergency timetable.

Be carm I say as I know as much as the travelling public. It will be announced when it can, but passengers will travel regardless of how serious this disruption is.

It may well take time, but this should have been planned.

Southern, South West Trains, and SouthEastern are all very quick with their emergency timetables when their is overrunning engineering works and that is likely because they expect them to overrun and then when they don't they breathe a sigh of relief, and when they do overrun they apologise, publish timetable and then hope the day passes by without anything else disrupting it. Managers should have been prepared for this, and they will have likely been working today anyway to see what was happening.

This to me, is East Coast's own fault. They weren't prepared and they're now facing the full brunt of it.

Does anyone know what Great Northern's plans are for tomorrow or are they still up in the air too?

It's very poor that there still isn't an alternative timetable online 5 hours after the disruption warning was originally put out.

Likely won't be put up until tomorrow lunch time - they did that last time they had an emergency timetable IIRC.

 

[Tom B]

It's very poor that there still isn't an alternative timetable online 5 hours after the disruption warning was originally put out.

Quite - presumably it was known about before the public announcement too.

Do not travel is all well and good unless you need to travel to get to work!

Also no news on ticket validity although I presume no staff will be stupid enough to try and force severely disrupted passengers on to booked services. which may or may not run.

 

[Skimble19]

As far as I can tell from home there's nobody in at GN Control, or if they are then they're certainly keeping very quiet and not updating anything..

The GN/TL website is however yet again showing how truly awful it is. Why the FCC website couldn't have been rebranded I really don't know, it had only just had thousands and thousands (3-figure thousands!) spent on it!

 

[tsr]

It's very poor that there still isn't an alternative timetable online 5 hours after the disruption warning was originally put out.

I know that some other major projects have a series of emergency timetables written in advance for what would be considered "more predictable" cutbacks when an overrun occurs. (London Bridge, I'm looking at you!) Now, these don't always work - sometimes because issues arise after lines have undergone full but non-passenger-service testing, sometimes because components fail, or just because the route is affected by something else which further affects capacity.

However, in the absence of any of these factors, I would theoretically argue that a service cutback from King's Cross to Finsbury Park would not be deemed to be a particularly unusual or unexpected contingency in the event of any works like this overrunning. I am therefore surprised at the way the actions of the TOCs concerned have been stated in public, as if they are not just having to upload a timetable, but also write the whole thing. That said, I sense we are not getting the full picture, and alas this is the wrong side of the Thames for me to get all the updates I need to assess the situation. It could well be that there has had to be a callout of management staff to an office which has been delayed, so timetables have not been approved and sent to NR. It could be that there were too many possible conflicting shunts/engineering train movements to be able to guarantee a contingency passenger service to any given station. Or perhaps there has been an IT glitch meaning that there has not been any information to hand in a publicly-readable format.

Even if there have been no huge complications, the closure of a major intercity terminus of an evening is one of those things which can almost never be 100% fully planned down to the last dotting of an i or crossing of a t. There are bound to have needed to be some on-the-day tweaks to a plan which should never usually be in public service. You can be 99.84% there and then something crops up which you would never think of when all is running beautifully on a warm summer's evening... and the last thing you want on a cold winter day is a train-load of stranded passengers because one cog fell out when you didn't proofread page 106.

 

[Hartington]

Might be better off walking to Moor St and getting a nice comfortable MK3 set with class 67 to Marylebone...

I can't help feeling that staff at New St will be sending quite a few people to Moor St.

 

[21C101]

As far as I can tell from home there's nobody in at GN Control, or if they are then they're certainly keeping very quiet and not updating anything..

The GN/TL website is however yet again showing how truly awful it is. Why the FCC website couldn't have been rebranded I really don't know, it had only just had thousands and thousands (3-figure thousands!) spent on it!

I think on this occasion TSGN can't be faulted too much. This is what is up on their website. Essentially their amended timetable appears to be going ahead as planned with the exception that the few Peterborough/Cambs/Lynn line services that would have gone to kings cross after 11AM now will get caped at Finsbury park or further north, however they are running services to Moorgate from Hertford and Welwyn:

Due to overrunning engineering works near London Kings Cross, journeys to and from this station on Saturday 27 and Sunday 28 December will be significantly disrupted. The planned track improvements in the London Kings Cross area are taking longer than expected to complete.

Saturday 27 December


Trains are unable to run between Finsbury Park and London Kings Cross.

Train services that are already scheduled to terminate at, and start from Finsbury Park will run as planned.

The trains that were due to run to and from London Kings Cross will only run as far as Peterborough, Stevenage or Finsbury Park.

East Coast passengers changing trains at Finsbury Park may use London Underground services, and Great Northern trains between Finsbury Park and Moorgate, to complete the journey.

East Coast are advising customers intending to start or finish their journey at London Kings Cross, to consider deferring travel plans to either Sunday or Monday.

Grand Central passengers with a ticket for travel on Saturday 27 December may use their ticket on Sunday 28 or Monday 29 December.

Sunday 28 December

The reduced service to and from London Kings Cross is expected to operate as planned on Sunday 28 December, but journeys may be retimed, or take longer than expected.

A revised timetable is currently being developed and will be made available as soon as possible. Please check our website regularly for updates.

You can follow this incident using the hashtag #KingsCrossTrains

 

[Qwerty133]

Late evening news on BBC adds nothing to the early evening bulletin.

 

[DarloRich]

No TOC except TLGN tweeted this yet (although NRE have). Sorry but this was clearly expected hours ago, so a middle manager should have ensured Internet access to be informing and helping passengers, staying online until the early hours.

And say what? Don’t travel but we are working out a plan so call back later? No I cant tell you when we will have worked out a plan, what with it being quite complicated etc etc ad nauseuam? That will just anger more people. It is bad enough. Don’t make it worse with half baked responses.

Whilst you know best, I am sure, I might suggest waiting till you have some actual news, firm advice and a unified agreed plan of action across all TOCS before publicising it. Is one consistent voice not better than several confused ones?

The report of EC trains stuck at the cross because they are berthed there seems a bit odd. They could be towed out slowly by locos under possession - unless all 4 lines are blocked by a missing bridge or something.

The work over-running was always going to be a possibility. Was this bad planning/lack of imagination by EC, or did they have nowhere else to stable the sets?

Surely they had somewhere to stable the sets? Or do they really have more sets than they do depot space now - even if it meant running services out of London at a later time/relying on southbound services arriving on time and having quick turnarounds? Even then, surely there are still locations along the ECML they could be stored under surveillance - does Hornsey have any spare roads?

They were berthed at Kings Cross to be in position to operate as soon as the limited access was granted in the morning to make best use of the limited timetable slots and also to stop wibbling if trains couldn’t get in form the north. Dammed if you do and dammed if you don’t.

With all lines blocked it will be hard to find ways to get the train out without making the delays even worse. Protecting X times movements through all of those worksites would be a big challenge.

it is XC though so they'll probably replace a 4 coach voyager with a 2 coach turbostar and use the freed voyager to free a HST to gain extra cash by loaning it...

Or using some commercial acumen/ cross industry support (depending on your point of view )

But it is a Saturday and XC has a reduced HST fleet usage requirement at weekend and I guess EMT will be to busy to loan out any sets. This will at least allow some EC services to run.

At least they've tweeted something about the problems, unlike Grand Central. It's not exactly difficult to send a tweet, with a link, which should be able to be done from anywhere with Internet access, by anyone with the password, so unless only 1 person knows the password and they're on holiday to Antarctica (which would be a absolutely stupid system- what if they get hit by a bus) there's absolutely no excuse for not tweeting about it within 2 minutes of it becoming know, let alone 2 hours.

Again, whilst I am sure you know best, it could be that the information is not to be released until it is all agreed or controlled from one central point to ensure that one message is released rather than some on line version of Chinese whispers.

And it does take and awful long time to sort these things out when you don’t have a full staff in control, you are trying to rouse managers and staff and get them in on a day off ( a festive day off to boot! Cheers!) with them scattered all over the country. With bad weather thrown in as an added bonus! This kind of problem will go beyond the on call management team and need more people. This is a CEO/ministerial level problem!

All said I know that trying to explain anything is a waste of time to many of the experts on here. You know best, I am sure. I should just agree with you as that is what you want.

 

[Qwerty133]

I believe EMT and Virgin should both be back on twitter in just over an hour, so more info on alternatives may be gained then

 

[bussnapperwm]

I can't help feeling that staff at New St will be sending quite a few people to Moor St.

xx15 departures off Moor Street depart from Snow Hill 3 minutes earlier so a better chance of getting a seat on those journeys is by boarding at Snow Hill!

 

[Qwerty133]

And say what? Don’t travel but we are working out a plan so call back later? No I cant tell you when we will have worked out a plan, what with it being quite complicated etc etc ad nauseuam? That will just anger more people. It is bad enough. Don’t make it worse with half baked responses.

Whilst you know best, I am sure, I might suggest waiting till you have some actual news, firm advice and a unified agreed plan of action across all TOCS before publicising it. Is one consistent voice not better than several confused ones?







They were berthed at Kings Cross to be in position to operate as soon as the limited access was granted in the morning to make best use of the limited timetable slots and also to stop wibbling if trains couldn’t get in form the north. Dammed if you do and dammed if you don’t.

With all lines blocked it will be hard to find ways to get the train out without making the delays even worse. Protecting X times movements through all of those worksites would be a big challenge.



Or using some commercial acumen/ cross industry support (depending on your point of view )

But it is a Saturday and XC has a reduced HST fleet usage requirement at weekend and I guess EMT will be to busy to loan out any sets. This will at least allow some EC services to run.



Again, whilst I am sure you know best, it could be that the information is not to be released until it is all agreed or controlled from one central point to ensure that one message is released rather than some on line version of Chinese whispers.

And it does take and awful long time to sort these things out when you don’t have a full staff in control, you are trying to rouse managers and staff and get them in on a day off ( a festive day off to boot! Cheers!) with them scattered all over the country. With bad weather thrown in as an added bonus! This kind of problem will go beyond the on call management team and need more people. This is a CEO/ministerial level problem!

All said I know that trying to explain anything is a waste of time to many of the experts on here. You know best, I am sure. I should just agree with you as that is what you want.

I didn't expect full details immediately, but just a tweet or 5 such as 'IMPORTANT INFO: There will be NO TRAINS to/from Kings X tomorrow, updates to follow' 'please keep checking this feed and <insert web adress> for further information' 'please be assured that we are working as hard as possible to minimize the disruption caused, and info will follow as soon as possible' 'Unfortunately we are currently unable to reply to individual queries but are trying hard to source staff to enable us to do this'.

 

[DarloRich]

I didn't expect full details immediately, but just a tweet or 5 such as 'IMPORTANT INFO: There will be NO TRAINS to/from Kings X tomorrow, updates to follow' 'please keep checking this feed and <insert web adress> for further information' 'please be assured that we are working as hard as possible to minimize the disruption caused, and info will follow as soon as possible' 'Unfortunately we are currently unable to reply to individual queries but are trying hard to source staff to do this'.

I don’t think that is what you said initially but agreed.

However until you have enough people in it does pull someone of a more important job. I was trying to point out on festive bank holiday that might be harder than normal.

 

[Qwerty133]

Info on trains is appearing on twitter (@penaltyfare).
Way too much to post all on here.

 

[Hadders]

I guess the issue they're having to sort is that they probably can't turn everything at Finsbury Park as iirc they use the Canonbury Curve to do the reversals.

Most GN was scheduled to turn at Finsbury anyway, it's the relatively small-ish bit that was going through to KGX that they've got to turn elsewhere - probably Stevenage or Peterborough.

They've also got to try and sort out how to get round the sets trapped at Kings Cross and hopefully they'll see if they can strengthen the GN trains from Peterborough to 12 cars to help deal with displaced East Coast passengers.

 

[asylumxl]

Tickets not accepted on EMT via Sheffield. That's not misleading at all, since many of the tickets will be valid that way anyway.

 

[Tom B]

Southbound service by that feed looks to be an ex-Leeds and an ex-Scotland each hour to FPK. Presume they'll be rammed...

 

[dvboy]

Info on specific EC trains starting to appear here: http://www.eastcoast.co.uk/travel-information/travel-alerts/#serviceupdates