Weather related disruption Leeds/York/Doncaster (27/07)

[TUC]

LNER currently have 42 Coaches working to get passengers moving at the following stations: Darlington, York, Doncaster, Wakefield, Newcastle, Leeds.

I do find the 'this doesn't happen in other countries' argument so tedious. Each country will have their own problems and challenges. None are perfect. - Shall we build infrastructure in this country to withstand typhoons? earthquakes? No..because the odds of it happened are remote. Same as today.

Funny how Northern have taken the 'its too difficult' approach when LNER have found 42 coaches.

 

[Stampy]

York ROC doesn't control Leeds Station, that's still under York IECC.

(to clarify, the areas affected by the signalling problems are all under the control of York IECC)

So that would be anything with a L, Y or S signal plate??

Which (if, i'm correct) would wipe out everything from :-

Templehurst Junction to Northallerton on the ECML and around the Leeds area

 

[bengley]

So that would be anything with a L, Y or S signal plate??

Which (if, i'm correct) would wipe out everything from :-

Templehurst Junction to Northallerton on the ECML and around the Leeds area

And all the way from York to Leeds via Micklefield!

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Funny how Northern have taken the 'its too difficult' approach when LNER have found 42 coaches.

The famous public sector inefficiency in action there! [/sarcasm]

 

[Moonshot]

Funny how Northern have taken the 'its too difficult' approach when LNER have found 42 coaches.

Do enlighten this forum on what exactly you would do. Don't forget to include the fact that the vast majority of northern passengers will have journeys replicated by existing bus services.

 

[warriorofrovac]

Funny how Northern have taken the 'its too difficult' approach when LNER have found 42 coaches.

I can imagine it's not for want of trying on Northern's behalf.

 

[Iskra]

It’s having a knock on effect on the Tyne Valley, the announcer just announced the delayed single 156 that just arrived at Carlisle as the busiest it’s ever been. Glad I wasn’t on that one, the unloading process was a bit Dunkirk- lots of people with excessive amounts of luggage too.

 

[FQTV]

Anyone know if Super Off Peak tickets will be valid on trains planned to leave KGX before 18:00 if they are delayed and the train I wanted to take (the 18:18 or 18:30) is cancelled?

On the basis that your ticket is now also valid on:

• East Midlands Trains
• Grand Central
• Northern
• TransPennine Express
• Virgin Trains

via any reasonable route, I would suggest that any train operator would have trouble trying to enforce peak and off peak restrictions.

A train being full to capacity would be the more likely restriction, I'd have thought.

 

[Moonshot]

I can imagine it's not for want of trying on Northern's behalf.

Indeed, and having been right in the thick of things earlier today, I can absolutely guarentee thats exactly what was happening. Some forumites really should be on the inside of this industry when disruption happens, they would learn a few lessons.

 

[gavin]

All lines across the LNER route have now reopened and trains are beggining to run once more delays will remain for the rest of today

 

[Gemz91]

Funny how Northern have taken the 'its too difficult' approach when LNER have found 42 coaches.

Probably not many spare coaches left to be found if LNER have already got 42 of them.

 

[chrisdmadd]

Funny how Northern have taken the 'its too difficult' approach when LNER have found 42 coaches.

Do me a favour, look at the northern map in Yorkshire and look at the LNER map in Yorkshire, (in the affected areas) then think about your comment.

 

[Bantamzen]

It seems like a lot of people think it's poor that a lighting strike directly on equipment is handled so much better elsewhere than it is here. So I am going to ask, is this really true or just the usual "Typical Britain" comments that prevail whenever a weather related incident happens?

I don't know about anyone else, but I've been uncomfortably close to a lightning strike (less than 30 feet), and from what I saw huge surge of electricity hitting electrical circuits tends to play havoc with them. Perhaps, and it's just a suggestion people should wait to hear exactly what happened on the ground before going off on one?

 

[Darandio]

One Twitterer made the suggestion this morning that because they had known about these storms all week, preparations should have been made and alternative transport should have already been ready at the locations affected by lightning strikes.

I really hope they have since looked at their comment and realised exactly what they have suggested.

 

[bramling]

One Twitterer made the suggestion this morning that because they had known about these storms all week, preparations should have been made and alternative transport should have already been ready at the locations affected by lightning strikes.

I really hope they have since looked at their comment and realised exactly what they have suggested.

Well of course. It’s just rained where I am, for the first time in about 2 months, and exactly as and when forecast. Cue loads of people moaning in the town centre about rain!

 

[FQTV]

It seems like a lot of people think it's poor that a lighting strike directly on equipment is handled so much better elsewhere than it is here. So I am going to ask, is this really true or just the usual "Typical Britain" comments that prevail whenever a weather related incident happens?

I don't know about anyone else, but I've been uncomfortably close to a lightning strike (less than 30 feet), and from what I saw huge surge of electricity hitting electrical circuits tends to play havoc with them. Perhaps, and it's just a suggestion people should wait to hear exactly what happened on the ground before going off on one?

I think, from a passenger point of view, it's quite well-understood that this specific incident is serious and fairly exceptional.

However, disruption in and of itself is not exceptional - indeed in this particular part of the country at the moment, 'normal' operations are somewhat exceptional.

The issue is how the industry copes with it, communicates with passengers and learns. As an example, the Transpennine Express website has, all afternoon, had the red disruption banner across the homepage. However, the link didn't go to the disruption page; the one that details what's happening and what ticket restrictions/acceptances have been varied. No; it went to the largely-useless live departures board page.

As of about an hour ago, heading into the evening peak, when the entire network is in turmoil, the banner has gone and there is absolutely nothing on the website homepage to alert travellers to what's going on. Nothing.

I don't think many people, here or elsewhere, are unaware of just how difficult this must be on the ground for those tasked with dealing with the problem. However, arrogantly dismissive responses to passengers' real need for assistance and guidance simply make the situation worse.

As a poster above alluded-to, concentrating certain functions in a limited number of locations, with apparently questionable resilience to either acts of god or, perhaps worse, malicious intent, may be efficient on the good days, but less so on the (regular) bad ones. That, coupled with the contemporaneous fragmentation of operations, would appear to be a challenging set of contributors to expect to achieve reliable and responsive performance from.

 

[TPO]

The York Rail Operations Centre (ROC) - the big new building next to platform 11 - has workstations that cover not only York itself but the ECML north and south, the Leeds line, Leeds station and fringes with other signal boxes on all routes out of Leeds and all of the Aire Valley lines to north of Skipton. This requires a whole load of repeating kit and safeguards to 'prove' within the signalling that points, signals and track circuits are working as expected. If the link between the detection on these items and the ROC goes down, then everything is designed to fail safe - signals to red and level crossings down for road users. It follows that if you want to manually and exceptionally override the signalling safeguards to allow a train to detrain in a platform, there are a very comprehensive set of procedures to go through to ensure that there are no conflicting movements authourised and every movement of a passenger train over facing points is made guaranteeing that these points are locked so they can't inadvertantly move under the wheels of a train, even potentially if some damaged signal component from the lighting strike allowed a stray current to the point motor. So each point has to be manually cranked to the desired position and then 'scotched and clipped' - i.e. mechnical devices applied to the point blades to physically guarantee no movement. This might be a pain and will take some time, but please don't have a go at the poor staff on the ground charged with these responsibilities. By their nature, these incidents are all unique and staff need the time and thinking space to operate safely without being hassled to hit a certain time deadline. Otherwise, to compound the already bad problems, you then have the potential for a derailment as well. This actually occurred on the District Line at Ealing Broadway not too long ago - derailment due to full route not being secured for an exceptional movement in a signalling outage.

The advice not to travel should be heeded - by now this incident will have created a national knock on in terms of late running and rolling stock out of position. By far the biggest challenge will be in deployment of train crew, who will all by now be stuck in the wrong places running out of duty hours. So it will not recover for the rest of today and any trains that do start running have the potential to be short formed. So don't travel today - which is the advice that has already been given. Even if it all came back now, many signalling areas run in Auto Route Setting - ARS - mode. For this to work, each train has to be correctly described with a headcode in the system. In times of high disruption, ARS will have to be switched off while the service recovers, which will put more work on the human signallers normally overseeing it and this in itself will cause further disruption.

In terms of the ROC going forward, it will be interesting to see how Network Rail provides greater resilience, disaster recovery and remote mirroring/duplication of critical systems.

A good summary, and highly relevant thoughts on the consequences of the rush to modern technology- not just on the railway.

I have thought for a while that whilst modern electronics are great whilst they work and parallel just-in-time systems offer excellent service for the price, the downside is a lack of resilience as everything is so tightly coupled. All it takes is a big hit in a key location, and the problems are (a) massive and (b) difficult/takes a long time to recover from.

The nature of the things that cause big hits is that they are infrequent and unpredictable (e.g. you can predict weather on a big scale- but not whether lightening will strike a particular asset)- so it is very difficult in the modern world of cost saving to retain sufficient competent staff to deal with widespread disruption through "degraded working." Back in the old days, a lightening strike on a mechanical signalling asset would typically hit one signal/set of points- which could be addressed by calling the local ganger/linesman to come and operate the points by hand. Whereas now, the sheer scale of assets controlled from a ROC means that possibility is gone, even if you know what assets have been damaged (and damage is likely to be wider as more electronics).

There was some interesting work by Perrow in the 1970's about systems resilience, and I do sometimes wonder if "modernisation" is actually progress; it all depends whether you want to save immediate costs and put people out of work and have lots of shiney new (expensive) kit- or if you are happy to use people + robust mechanical stuff to run a robust service. Culturally, we have been doing the former since the late 1960s onwards. But the fixation with "lean" and "efficiency" comes with a downside of loss of resiience; it is difficult to have a system that is both "lean" and "resilient" unless you have 100% control of all the inputs. Resilience is not easy to achieve in any big system, and less so the more tightly coupled and centralised it becomes. Interestingly, the devolved nature of the "old fashioned" signalling systems was much more robust, as damage in one area tended to be restricted to local assets.

I am not a luddite, and don't have an issue with technology- quite the opposite, I am very in favour of the potential of modern technology- but I am also a great believer in using the simplest effective method of doing something. The parallel is between the USA spending $$$$ on developing a pen that could write in space- whilst the USSR simply used a pencil! It's horses for courses, and sometimes simplicity is of value, expecially when reslilience of a critical system is important.

TPO

 

[Robertj21a]

At the very least every public bus service in the effected area should be accepting rail tickets. Not of use to everyone but would help for shorter journeys.
But then that would require not having a completely fragmented bus system.

That's all very well, and appropriate given the severe weather conditions. On the other hand, bus operators should, quite rightly, run their services primarily for their own regular customers and may well not want hordes of extra passenger trying to cram on board, particularly when the bus is usually considered to be an inferior mode of transport at any other time !
It always amuses me that train passengers seem to just assume that there are loads of buses and drivers available whenever the railways screw up.

 

[Tio Terry]

It seems like a lot of people think it's poor that a lighting strike directly on equipment is handled so much better elsewhere than it is here. So I am going to ask, is this really true or just the usual "Typical Britain" comments that prevail whenever a weather related incident happens?

I don't know about anyone else, but I've been uncomfortably close to a lightning strike (less than 30 feet), and from what I saw huge surge of electricity hitting electrical circuits tends to play havoc with them. Perhaps, and it's just a suggestion people should wait to hear exactly what happened on the ground before going off on one?

It all starts with the design. In the UK - especially something as old as an IECC - we tend to build a building as cheaply as possible and put electronic equipment in it. We then try to protect it as best we can from power surges and lightning strikes. It's all back to front really.

Other countries I have worked in take a different approach. The building is designed to house electronic equipment from the outset. It is designed as a Faraday Cage all the re-bar is welded where it crosses and joins, not just wired together as is common practice with "ordinary" buildings, the metal frame is fully connected with the re-bar and all is earthed to one single point earth - prevents circulating currents. Internal metallic cable trays are designed so that there are no metallic loops - again, no circulating currents that can induce damaging voltages. I could go on with boring technical things but the principle is design the building to house delicate electronic equipment, don't just build a building and put electronics in it and hope for the best! By the way, if you can, put a dam great radio mast beside the building, it is much more likely to take the lightning strike and dissipate it thus protecting the building!

 

[TPO]

It all starts with the design. In the UK - especially something as old as an IECC - we tend to build a building as cheaply as possible and put electronic equipment in it. We then try to protect it as best we can from power surges and lightning strikes. It's all back to front really.

Other countries I have worked in take a different approach. The building is designed to house electronic equipment from the outset. It is designed as a Faraday Cage all the re-bar is welded where it crosses and joins, not just wired together as is common practice with "ordinary" buildings, the metal frame is fully connected with the re-bar and all is earthed to one single point earth - prevents circulating currents. Internal metallic cable trays are designed so that there are no metallic loops - again, no circulating currents that can induce damaging voltages. I could go on with boring technical things but the principle is design the building to house delicate electronic equipment, don't just build a building and put electronics in it and hope for the best! By the way, if you can, put a dam great radio mast beside the building, it is much more likely to take the lightning strike and dissipate it thus protecting the building!

Designed in resilience.........very doable but as ever there's a cost involved- so instead of cost-benefit, we should be considering fitness for purpose including resilience.

Unfortunately, most of our infrastructure has been "modernised" on a cost (= as cheap as possible) basis..... although thankfully I believe the National Grid still "gets" the concept of resilience!

TPO

 

[Nick66]

On the basis that your ticket is now also valid on:

• East Midlands Trains
• Grand Central
• Northern
• TransPennine Express
• Virgin Trains

via any reasonable route, I would suggest that any train operator would have trouble trying to enforce peak and off peak restrictions.

A train being full to capacity would be the more likely restriction, I'd have thought.

That’s what I thought but it didn’t say. Fortunately that is the case as confirmed by gateline staff, as the 18:18 is cancelled and the 18:30 delayed. Got a seat but no air con. Can’t have everything

 

[AM9]

Whilst I don’t necessarily disagree with the general theme, it’s noticeable that your post hinges around things which *might* happen.

Is there anybody who knows that what we have been told won't happen? Of the climate change experts that aren't sponsored by the oil industry there are very few that deny recent weather extremes are nothing to do with climate change.

So far we’ve seen a string of hot days, mainly in the south-east, perhaps bordering on touching records but nothing earth shattering. It’s also worth noting that this most recent “heatwave” has mainly affected the south-east. I’ve just come back from a 2-week holiday in Wales and the weather wasn’t really much to write home about for summer - rained on a couple of days, a couple of good sunny days only one of which I would describe as “hot”, and the rest cloudy ranging from cool to warm. Storms are hardly unusual in summer, especially as August comes.

We may be coming to the end of the longest unbroken hot spell since 1976, the longest dry spell since records began in 1776 (the previous record was 1962) and this long dry spell started in the winter, which was the main reason for the moors in the north having such sustained burns (even if they were started by arsonists). This spell weather extremes is not just a "string of hot days, mainly in the south-east".

No doubt at some point in the next year or two there will be periods of rainfall resulting in some rivers flooding, and the environment agency being blamed for not doing enough to protect people who have chosen to live in flood-prone areas.

Yes, there could be another event like 2013-14 when the Somerset Levels were flooded. I wouldn't (and didn't) criticise the Environment Agency for the flood. I probably agree with you on the fact that flood plains flood, quite obvious really and when housing developers want to build on them, the local authority and the EA should stamp all over them. Dredging channels creates a false situation where it is still necessary to flood fields upstream to try and defeat nature (and the laws of gravity).

As I say, I don’t really know enough to say whether climate change is or isn’t likely - even experts aren’t really sure let alone able to agree - however I certainly wouldn’t be wanting to spend large amounts of money based on the recent weather - during which generally the transport system seems to have coped well, perhaps excepting Eurotunnel’s air conditioning issues which I think we can both agree is not really an indicator of systemic unpreparedness in the industry! The industry coped pretty well with the snow in March too as I recall.

What’s the odds next year the jet stream will be further south and we’ll see a summer of Atlantic weather systems - especially outside the south-east?!

It depends on what you mean by 'recent weather'. The meterologists started alerting us way back in the '90s when questions were being asked about the storms and some other extremes that had occurred. Before then, the concept of global warming was largely discussed only between the more avid 'greens' and the scientists. The big mistake was calling it global warming which to many in the UK sounded like a welcome change to the dull weather that they always moaned about. It was a bit like HS2 being sold only for its time saving, the wrong way to put it.
As far budgetting for extremes goes, clearly it is difficult to justify spending money to insure our futures as the population has a very short horizon and memory on political promises. My original comment was regarding the protection of key infrastructure from (in this case) lightning strikes, and I would consider a ROC as very much 'key'. Protecting buildings from lightning discharge is not that difficult but must be done properly. I have been involved on the periphery of lightning protection of aircraft. That is a thin skinned vehicle with weight and power contraints. It's difficult but doable - even more difficult with Kevlar and other composite structures but is still done. A large permanent building on dry land with communications which now are largely fibre channels is considerably easier and it is inexcusable not to do it, IMO.

 

[47802]

Some of the responses on this thread are laughable, just what planet do people live on. The railway is not immune from significant weather events, just like the aviation industry and road. I note several homes have been struck by lightning as well in Yorkshire

No it isn't, but it looks like that as seems to be the case all to frequently the Railway isn't handling it particularly well with poor communication etc.

 

[transmanche]

The parallel is between the USA spending $$$$ on developing a pen that could write in space- whilst the USSR simply used a pencil!

That's a popular myth, but it's not true.

Both the Americans and the Soviets used pencils in space. It was Paul Fisher of the Fisher Pen Co. who invented the 'space pen', nobody commissioned him to do so. NASA paid about $6 per pen and his pen has subsequently been used by American and Soviet/Russian space missions.

 

[chrisdmadd]

We do have to wait and hear what went on but for something as big as this to happen during a thunderstorm lessons have to be learned. Clearly something has slipped as this shouldn’t be allowed to happen to such a critical part of the infrastructure.
We can’t insulate every piece of equipment but we have lost a huge portion of it today and that shouldn’t have happened.

 

[Kieran1990]

It’s an interesting jolt home from Manchester tonight- had northern it to Stalybridge then wait for delayed all shacks to Leeds.
Poor let down though from TPE at Victoria tonight- the only announcements were old ATOS Anne and staff weren’t around to assist with how to get back across the Pennines. Glad i used some joined up thinking and risked going to Stayley.. cheeky pint in the pub also while awaiting the stopper! Not rammed either which I’m surprised at!

Sounds like an awful day in the Yorkshire area- glad I was on the 7:34 this morning before it all went up the preverbial creek. Sounds like an absolute lack of those paddles!

 

[61653 HTAFC]

I stupidly hadn't heard about the chaos before heading out to Leeds this afternoon... luckily it worked in my favour as a delayed Leeds terminator arrived at Batley just as I got there. Could've got away with an off-peak ticket but what's an extra quid and a bit!
The service I got must've been the first in a while because it was a bit packed, though as I'm not fussy about sitting next to strangers I still got a seat!

On arrival at Leeds, the station was absolute bedlam. Once again, the decision to put the A-Z departure boards right next to the barriers was shown to be a big mistake, but I managed to fight through the crowds. A lot of anger from people directed towards the one poor guy manning the entire gateline, but unfortunately when things go wrong people will always want to vent their spleens. One bloke was really effing and jeffing at the gateline guy, and I even said "it's not his fault, is it? He's doing his best with all these people!" and he calmed down a bit.

As I bought my ticket when I should have been aware of the issue, no delay repay for me (not that there's much point on a £5.40 ticket) but I was very impressed with the way frontline staff were handling the situation. The guard on the TPE service gave out information about delay repay and how to claim, and was very apologetic about the situation. Whatever the problems on the railway, the staff always come through when tbe fertiliser hits the ventilator. Well done, all of you.

 

[transmanche]

We may be coming to the end of the longest unbroken hot spell since 1976, the longest dry spell since records began in 1776 (the previous record was 1962) and this long dry spell started in the winter, which was the main reason for the moors in the north having such sustained burns (even if they were started by arsonists). This spell weather extremes is not just a "string of hot days, mainly in the south-east".

Exactly.

I saw this poster whilst out walking in Northumberland yesterday. It's the kind of thing you would expect to see in Australia, not in the North East of England. Anyone who thinks this is just a case of a "string of hot days, mainly in the south-east" is deluding themselves.

(Northumberland Fire Group is a partnership of emergency services, environmental bodies, landowners, etc.)


Extreme Fire Risk warning poster issued by Northumberland Fire Group.

 

[158756]

We may be coming to the end of the longest unbroken hot spell since 1976, the longest dry spell since records began in 1776 (the previous record was 1962) and this long dry spell started in the winter, which was the main reason for the moors in the north having such sustained burns (even if they were started by arsonists). This spell weather extremes is not just a "string of hot days, mainly in the south-east".

I agree with most of your post, but winter and spring saw around average rainfall in the north west, it's only taken the dry spell since May (still with more rain than the south) to dry out the moors and trigger the forthcoming hosepipe ban.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Leeds still a mess as I make my way home, with a Voyager bound for Southampton sat in P15 and the 1819 Carlisle leaving from P17- this may well be normal, but is the worst possible platform for the Airedale lines even when things are going to plan. As per usual P16 is like Black Friday, and as per usual the great British public are showing themselves to be absolute **redacted**: I stepped aside to let a man in a motorised wheelchair pass, but he insisted I go first then proceeded to ram into my ankles!