ECML Disruption - Saturday 27th December

[dk1]

Is it just me or does the "attention guard please contact driver" announcement sound a bit unprofessional? Shouldn't they be in direct communication?

Who cares whether it sounds professional? If it works in getting the guard to contact me then it works for me. I do it often if there in the middle of revenue duties. Mobile phones are switched off in the cab.

 

[otomous]

I believe we're all getting telepathic circuits fitted in our brains so that we can silently contact each other. Can't believe I'm even bothering to reply.

 

[Busaholic]

Three points came out of the interview with Carne on Radio 4: -
1. The first two minutes were spent trying to get Carne to say he wasn't going to take his bonus. Carne said when he took over he reduced the maximum bonus from 150% of salary to 20%. He refused to say he wouldn't take his bonus - the remuneration committee would decide. Did himself no favours !
2. Carne had, today, instigated an inquiry into the problems at Kings Cross.
3. After discussions with the Sec of State a review of working practices would be carried out i.e. Should these major projects be carried out in other ways by shutting lines and doing the complete upgrade in one non-stop operation.

I heard the interview. It was made clear by the presenter that this was to be the only interview granted by Carne at the present time and was 'live on air' with Mark Carne speaking from his holiday cottage in Truro. I won't use an exclamation mark, because I might run out of them. My wife was formerly big in PR and she couldn't believe he'd suckered himself into that for a start. Then, as you say, he spent the next two minutes refusing to rule out receiving his bonus (to the extent you could say he was not going to agree to it voluntarily) and the normally mild-mannered Ed Stourton started getting cross with his prevarications.

Carne's capitulation today on the bonus will, IMO, have reulted from a call from someone high in the Dept of Transport, with the full backing of the Transport Sec, telling him in no uncertain terms to renounce it, or else...

 

[dcsprior]

I find it really irritating that everyone goes into meltdown at this. There was a huge amount of work being done at the quietest time of year. Yes it overran but into what? The weekend between Christmas and New Year. Hardly into the rush hour peak.

If this had overran into a Monday morning rush hour, then for most of the people affected, it will result in one of the return journeys out of the 220 they make every year being horrendous.

Instead, it overran into 27th December, meaning that a significant proportion of people affected will be those who make very few rail journeys each year - leaving them with a perception of the railway as unreliable. So the impact of the overrun on the railway's reputation was likely worse on 27th than if it had overran into a Monday morning rush hour - regardless of the scale of the real impact.

Of course, this still leaves the question of who, if anyone, deserves to be blamed for what happened. As someone looking on from the outside, it seems that what happened was:

1. Someone made the decision for the ECML work to be scheduled at time which meant that if it overran the other main route north of London (and the only other route from London-Scotland) had a planned closure
2. Network Rail (or their subcontractors - but it amounts to the same thing) didn't complete their work on time
3. The TOCs affected struggled to cope with the aftermath

So far, all the focus seems to be on #2

 

[causton]

Is it just me or does the "attention guard please contact driver" announcement sound a bit unprofessional? Shouldn't they be in direct communication?

Yeah they have a Bluetooth headset!!!

:roll:

 

[SimonS]

I heard the interview. It was made clear by the presenter that this was to be the only interview granted by Carne at the present time and was 'live on air' with Mark Carne speaking from his holiday cottage in Truro. I won't use an exclamation mark, because I might run out of them. My wife was formerly big in PR and she couldn't believe he'd suckered himself into that for a start. Then, as you say, he spent the next two minutes refusing to rule out receiving his bonus (to the extent you could say he was not going to agree to it voluntarily) and the normally mild-mannered Ed Stourton started getting cross with his prevarications.

Carne's capitulation today on the bonus will, IMO, have reulted from a call from someone high in the Dept of Transport, with the full backing of the Transport Sec, telling him in no uncertain terms to renounce it, or else...

Maybe the same person at the DfT gave him a high viz vest and suggested it might be good PR in the next interview to actually be seen near the railway

 

[Bald Rick]

I heard the interview. It was made clear by the presenter that this was to be the only interview granted by Carne at the present time and was 'live on air' with Mark Carne speaking from his holiday cottage in Truro.

The presenter was rather careful with what he said at the introduction - the interviewee was actually at BBC Cornwall in Truro.

 

[Tomnick]

I find it really irritating that everyone goes into meltdown at this. There was a huge amount of work being done at the quietest time of year. Yes it overran but into what? The weekend between Christmas and New Year. Hardly into the rush hour peak. Some people are inconvenienced, but the railway doesn't say what the work was or what it is trying to achieve. Instead, a grovelling apology, the regulator steps in to kick ass - and isn't it the regulator forcing NR so hard to be more efficient and do more with less money, i.e., get decent chunks of engineering work done in one go and not the usual ridiculously wasteful circus of 3 hours actual work in an entire overnight possession.

I agree that the response does seem out of all proportion. Yes, there have been a couple of significant possession overrun, and yes, lots and lots of passengers have been greatly inconvenienced (though, of course, the service was to be very much thinned out anyway on the 27th into KX). Does that justify the tremendous pressure to sack the top man though, even before an investigation has been carried out? What would that achieve? I'm not a great fan of the huge bonuses, but again the talk of whipping that away sounds like a knee-jerk reaction. Is one bad day all that Mark Carne is to be judged by, irrespective of the performance of everything else that he presides over? The time for that judgment is surely at the time that the bonus is to be paid.

 

[TheBigD]

Does anyone know why East Midlands Trains were running a reduced service out of St Pancras on the 27th with only 4 trains per hour instead of their normal 5???

 

[causton]

Does anyone know why East Midlands Trains were running a reduced service out of St Pancras on the 27th with only 4 trains per hour instead of their normal 5???

They claimed they were running a normal service according to their website. The missing one (taking a brief look) was Corby, with a couple of Sheffield services terminating short at Derby too. Not too much reduced capacity, possibly to put longer trains for people heading longer distances?

 

[Antman]

I know, I think exactly the same every time I go into Tesco's and they make an accouncement asking for someone to go to the checkouts, or a member of staff to go to clothing, or a cleaner to go to aisle 13. Why can't they all just use crystal balls instead?

Funny you should mention supermarkets but often they will say something like "this is a staff announcement, customer service code 10, thank you" which sounds a bit more professional than telling all and sundry that they have a blockage in the gents toilet

 

[ExRes]

Is it just me or does the "attention guard please contact driver" announcement sound a bit unprofessional? Shouldn't they be in direct communication?

I always used to stop my train and walk back through the coaches to find the TM for any required discussion, much more professional

:roll:

 

[sor]

I agree that the response does seem out of all proportion. Yes, there have been a couple of significant possession overrun, and yes, lots and lots of passengers have been greatly inconvenienced (though, of course, the service was to be very much thinned out anyway on the 27th into KX). Does that justify the tremendous pressure to sack the top man though, even before an investigation has been carried out? What would that achieve? I'm not a great fan of the huge bonuses, but again the talk of whipping that away sounds like a knee-jerk reaction. Is one bad day all that Mark Carne is to be judged by, irrespective of the performance of everything else that he presides over? The time for that judgment is surely at the time that the bonus is to be paid.

You only have to look at Sharon Shoesmith as an example of what happens when kneejerk reactions, media pressure and politicians trying to look good come together.

I think the payout the council had to make for unfair dismissal was in excess of 600k. Because Ed Balls wanted to look like he was decisive immediately, than waiting for the facts and analysis

I can't take the career politicians too seriously when they call for sackings. It's not as if they have to resign if something doesn't go to plan in their constituencies or departments - all of the government should have been replaced many times over by now, on that basis. Presumably the people calling for Carne's head aren't also demanding the SoS for Transport go too.

 

[jon0844]

Funny you should mention supermarkets but often they will say something like "this is a staff announcement, customer service code 10, thank you" which sounds a bit more professional than telling all and sundry that they have a blockage in the gents toilet

London Underground use codes, but when they put out a call for a member of the cleaning team to deal with a code 'n', you can usually make a fair assumption that it's something rather nasty.

 

[Tomnick]

Funny you should mention supermarkets but often they will say something like "this is a staff announcement, customer service code 10, thank you" which sounds a bit more professional than telling all and sundry that they have a blockage in the gents toilet

I've certainly never heard the latter announced on a train! Indeed, a simple announcement asking the guard to contact the driver is more akin to the 'coded' message, rather than conveying full details over the PA. If it's any consolation, it's all hidden in coded beeps on some newer trains!

 

[philjo]

I travelled on the 27th. my 07:55 ex-Cambridge train at Letchworth was at least 45 mins late but got a lift to hitchin & caught 07:45 which was from Peterborough and 11 minutes late.
no real problems at finsbury park at 08:20 (though at that time everything was planned to terminate at Finsbury anyway) except that the next 2 scheduled moorgate trains were cancelled.
I used the victoria line (going out of the station to use the other entrance which is bettwer with luggage as there are less steps involved) . the gates between GN & victoria platforms at Highbury were closed off when I went trough at 08:30 so you could not have changed trains there even if the moorgate trains had been running!

Marylebone was surprisingly empty - I caught the 09:06 to Moor street. the front coach had about 10 other people in it until lots got on at Leamington. at least 100 got off the train at Bicester & queued for the buses to Bicester Outlet village.

 

[andy1571]

I too travelled on the 27th, up to Leeds in the morning, and back in the evening.

There were certainly plenty of problems at Finsbury Park in the morning despite the planned closure into Kings Cross at that point, with many services cancelled, or being shown as running in the order of 30-60 minutes late. There was a good staff presence at that point, but they were clearly struggling to get a handle of what was going on - trains would arrive and they wouldn't know what they were doing next, some had drivers, others didn't, and passengers were told to go to one platform only for another train to appear in a different platform. The screens couldn't keep up either - quite often they would say a train wasn't scheduled to stop, only for it to pull up and load passengers - the front destination (and to a certain extent, train type) being the main clues as to where it was going.

Luckily in the evening, again, I missed most of the confusion, and the East Coast set I was on travelled straight through to Finsbury Park, arriving slightly, though not massively late. I noticed that some screens were just showing lists of trains that had been cancelled many hours earlier, which seems to be a problem in times of major disruption.

However, my overriding impression was that of admiration for many of the staff who were thrown into an almost impossible situation - I certainly wouldn't liked to have been in some of their shoes. As mentioned the station staff at Finsbury Park were trying their hardest in the face of hostility from some customers, and deteriorating operational circumstances. The driver of the 8-car Class 317 I travelled up to Stevenage was very good - informative and clear. East Coast staff were also pretty good in both directions, giving clear information on onward connections, the seat reservation situation and so on.

I also noticed some pretty slick East Coast turnarounds - for example, the service to form the 18.05 off Leeds arrived late, but was turned around in 4.5 minutes, including replenishing the buffet. Granted, there were not reservations to put out, but I thought that was still very good going.

The episode does deserve investigation, as something clearly went awry. But personally, I was an hour late into Leeds, and not too badly affected on the way back, so it's hardly the end of the world. And just to reiterate, I thought it was a pretty good showing from the staff I encountered, who were clearly trying their best.

Andy M

 

[45107]

Does anyone know why East Midlands Trains were running a reduced service out of St Pancras on the 27th with only 4 trains per hour instead of their normal 5???

Two track railway between Radlett & Harpenden. 4 traincsper hour when this is planned.

 

[Red Dragon]

Carne's capitulation today on the bonus will, IMO, have reulted from a call from someone high in the Dept of Transport, with the full backing of the Transport Sec, telling him in no uncertain terms to renounce it, or else...

Definitely !

 

[MarlowDonkey]

The weekend between Christmas and New Year. Hardly into the rush hour peak.

A peak time for leisure travel though, as is Easter. It's a plausible scenario that Kings Cross is closed, thus an emergency timetable should exist. Perhaps it would have been easier during regular working periods such as August as commuters would likely to be more adaptable for alternative routes. The idea of terminating trains at Finsbury Park worked badly because of congestion and capacity problems. Perhaps the long distance services should terminate further out and have a rail replacement train as a shuttle.

So if the main London terminus is closed or the lines beyond unavailable, what are the alternatives? For Paddington, or rather Reading, we've seen that Marylebone and Waterloo diversions are possible. What about the others? For Euston, triple Voyagers diverting on the Chiltern lines are a regular expedient.

British Rail could be flexible when it needed to be forty years ago. When commuting in 1973, I can recall the aftermath of the December derailment at Ealing Broadway. Services towards Reading were restored by the device of coupling three of the regular 117 units together and sending them up to Greenford and back via Old Oak Common.

 

[SpacePhoenix]

A peak time for leisure travel though, as is Easter. It's a plausible scenario that Kings Cross is closed, thus an emergency timetable should exist. Perhaps it would have been easier during regular working periods such as August as commuters would likely to be more adaptable for alternative routes. The idea of terminating trains at Finsbury Park worked badly because of congestion and capacity problems. Perhaps the long distance services should terminate further out and have a rail replacement train as a shuttle.

So if the main London terminus is closed or the lines beyond unavailable, what are the alternatives? For Paddington, or rather Reading, we've seen that Marylebone and Waterloo diversions are possible. What about the others? For Euston, triple Voyagers diverting on the Chiltern lines are a regular expedient.

British Rail could be flexible when it needed to be forty years ago. When commuting in 1973, I can recall the aftermath of the December derailment at Ealing Broadway. Services towards Reading were restored by the device of coupling three of the regular 117 units together and sending them up to Greenford and back via Old Oak Common.

Is there a better station that they could have used instead of Finsbury Park with entrances on two sides and ideally 2 subways to each platform so half the station could be embarking only and the other half disembarking only?

 

[HowardGWR]

I found this contribution on a BTL comment in the Guardian.
"I was at Finsbury Park. It wasn't only Network Rail to blame, East Coast mainline and local station staff also failed passengers.
* On East Coast mainline, Christmas, Easter, bank holidays, and weekends are the busiest times, these trains are half empty on weekdays.
* Saturday 27 December was a very busy day because no trains ran on Christmas and Boxing Day. And rail bosses know exactly how many passengers are travelling, because most seats are sold in advance.
* One train holds around 700 passengers. There's no reason in principle why that many people cannot disembark or embark at Finsbury Park - it might take 15 minutes to move them all off platforms, but it's doable. The key to success is to move all the disembarking passengers out of the station before allowing any of the embarking passengers in. Any terminus station is organized like this. At King's Cross, embarking passengers wait in the Departure Hall and are not allowed onto the platform until the train is empty. (Eurostar is the same.)
* If passenger streams go in both directions (as would happen at a normal commuter station mid-line) chaos ensues.
* On 27 December at Finsbury Park passengers wanting to travel North crowded onto train-less platforms until the station became unsafe - station entrance barriers were closed, staff were overheard in a panic because some passengers had found an unsecured sidedoor. At one point, a staff announcement asked passengers to get off the tracks back onto the platform
* Around once an hour, an East Coast train from the North arrived and tried to disembark its passengers onto already crowded platforms. These arriving passengers had to force their way, single-file, through the crowd and eventually out into the fume-filled bus station. Any gap in the flow was taken as a sign of weakness and filled by opportunists from the Northbound crowd trying to gain a slight advantage over their fellow travellers. It took staff 50 minutes or more to disembark a single train.
* Because trains were arriving and being disembarked so slowly, Northbound passengers were arriving at Finsbury Park faster than they were leaving the station, and the crowd simply grew and grew all morning. I stood unmoving within 10 feet of the station entrance before giving up and going home.
* The crowd included young children, disabled and elderly people. Conditions were frightening, some people were angry, some were pushing, and it was a cold day. There were no toilet facilities (any in any event, going in search of a toilet would mean surrendering your place in the crowd)
* Most people in the crowd had an expensive pre-booked ticket with seat reservations, non-transferable, non-refundable and not valid on any other train
* Station staff cowered behind the entrance barrier and occasionally gave unhelpful directions, the crowd yelled back "We can't hear you, get a megaphone"
* British Transport Police stood on the edges unsure what to do, and asking each other on their walkie-talkies for guidance; maybe they were only there because they were expecting violence?"

 

[hwl]

I found this contribution on a BTL comment in the Guardian.
"I was at Finsbury Park. It wasn't only Network Rail to blame, East Coast mainline and local station staff also failed passengers.
* On East Coast mainline, Christmas, Easter, bank holidays, and weekends are the busiest times, these trains are half empty on weekdays.
..."

This person has obviously only ever travelled outside the peaks during the week and not on the full services in the peak that tend to be much more expensive so don't attract leisure travellers.

 

[Chrism20]

This person has obviously only ever travelled outside the peaks during the week and not on the full services in the peak that tend to be much more expensive so don't attract leisure travellers.

I think what they were trying to say was that with the exception of the peaks most of them run half empty whereas all day Saturday they were reserved to run full resulting in something that isn't the norm.

As someone said earlier commuters (who also are not usually laden with luggage) normally know what the alternatives are in times of disruption rather than your two or three times a year leisure traveller who is travelling with suitcases, kids, buggies etc etc.

 

[MichaelJP59]

That's an interesting analysis from a member of the public. It does seem that Finsbury Park was chosen without any thought as to how the much greater passenger flows could be organised. Hopefully lessons will be learned, if the station is used again under similar circumstances then special arrangements need to be made to clear the station of disembarking passengers for each arrival before admitting embarking passengers.

Thankfully no-one was actually injured in the melee. If you've ever been trapped in a crowd that is not in control and increasing in density then you will never want to experience it again.

 

[Tomnick]

That, to me, seems to be where it all went wrong - the TOCs came up with a contingency plan that appeared workable, possibly with some minor issues, from an operating point of view. Whether that plan was sufficient to shift the numbers of people involved on this occasion, I don't know, but something similar has certainly worked without all this fuss on other occasions - and indeed the planned service, significantly reduced, probably wouldn't have provided much more capacity. Clearly Finsbury Park was overwhelmed by the volume of passengers travelling both in and out, and things quickly got out of control from there, totally destroying the train service in the process. Although the root cause was clearly down to Network Rail and its contractors, I think the TOCs have a few questions to answer too and, more importantly, a few opportunities to learn from the experience.

 

[SPADTrap]

Would it have been possible to keep that many people outside of the station until trains were ready though? At least the station provided SOME shelter? It is the obvious answer but something tells me that wouldn't have been so easy, especially when people see trains arriving. It wouldn't surprise me if it descended into riot.

 

[hwl]

That's an interesting analysis from a member of the public. It does seem that Finsbury Park was chosen without any thought as to how the much greater passenger flows could be organised. Hopefully lessons will be learned, if the station is used again under similar circumstances then special arrangements need to be made to clear the station of disembarking passengers for each arrival before admitting embarking passengers.

It has been used successfully many times before, it appears that this time EC weren't prepared (especially with enough suitable drivers) to enable arriving and departing services to used different platform islands and thus segregate passenger flows more easily.

 

[HowardGWR]

I thought the traveller summed up pretty well what the problem was. Such an event could happen at any terminus (closure for fire, etc) and if the outer suburban station is to be used, then it would seem advisable that the system he / she advocates is put in place.

It seems to me that the TOCs have got off very lightly from this event. In contrast, what happened to NR was force majeure.

Incidentally, the ignorance displayed by many of the public in those BTL comments about who owns what / is responsible for what was evident in many mistaken moans about 'privatisation'.

 

[Tomnick]

It has been used successfully many times before, it appears that this time EC weren't prepared (especially with enough suitable drivers) to enable arriving and departing services to used different platform islands and thus segregate passenger flows more easily.

On previous occasions, I don't think they've done anything other than turn back from the Up Fast platform - that's the only option that doesn't involve a shunt via Highbury Vale and the single line towards Canonbury (do EC drivers sign this, and is the stock cleared?). This time, they did actually shunt some across to the Down Fast platform via the north end of the station to start back from there, in an attempt to segregate the passenger flows once things started to go wrong - that still left the bottleneck of the subway, and I'd guess that the queue for Down trains would soon have extended back into there anyway even if they'd been shunting across right from the start. That's where holding northbound passengers outside the station would have helped - but, as SPADTrap suggests, that's probably much easier said than done (especially with understandably frustrated passengers combined with the general selfish attitude that seems common nowadays).