Heat related issues (25 July 2019 and subsequent days)

[Sleeperwaking]

It will take a long time for NR to fix a lot of wires. You must remember that the conditions are horrible for the workers. How would you like it if you had to work in the hottest weather of the year for hours on end in a relatively dangerous environment (if trains are still running)?

Thinking about it, the OLE teams may have to do a lot of inspections for nearly failed OLE on top of repairing the parts that did break. At least, it's already been reported up thread that the rolling stock sector has unit availability issues due to additional heat related inspections, so it would make sense if that applied to the infrastructure as well.

 

[reddragon]

Are you able to explain what the problem is with the MML wiring and why you think 4 days to fix it is unrealistic? It must be quite serious.

EMT are still running trains out of St Pancras, however they are running to the emergency timetable put in place yesterday meaning there are fewer trains than normal. This means they are advising people not to travel to try and control numbers.

The MML & ECML were done on the cheap using head spans and failures are common

 

[Peter C]

Thinking about it, the OLE teams may have to do a lot of inspections for nearly failed OLE on top of repairing the parts that did break. At least, it's already been reported up thread that the rolling stock sector has unit availability issues due to additional heat related inspections, so it would make sense if that applied to the infrastructure as well.

Yes - so it all takes a long time for everything to get fixed.

-Peter

 

[Bald Rick]

I understand workings conditions are gonna be vile in this weather but really? Does it have to take 4 days to fix overhead wires

More accurately, 3 nights. It will be a big job.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

More accurately, 3 nights. It will be a big job.

Having just come back on the 1433 slow to St Albans - the damage in the north of Belsize Tunnel is quite striking and the OLE is all over the place , if not in the 4ft. The fire was extensive yesterday. Got rid of the buddleia in part.

That section is badly congested with the slimmed down GTR and EMT services sharing the slow lines , and to be frank , I doubt if more could be achieved. The service is "spotty" with late running and cancellations off peak.

In contrast I travelled earlier Rickmansworth to Kings Cross on the Met - all fine , bar the fact that off peak the fast lines from Croxley Jct are not used with the result everything on the slow lines blocks back and crawls- such that my train was terminated short at Moorgate. Odd way to run a 4 track railway with nothing wrong.

 

[Geswedey]

Having just come back on the 1433 slow to St Albans - the damage in the north of Belsize Tunnel is quite striking and the OLE is all over the place , if not in the 4ft. The fire was extensive yesterday. Got rid of the buddleia in part.

That section is badly congested with the slimmed down GTR and EMT services sharing the slow lines , and to be frank , I doubt if more could be achieved. The service is "spotty" with late running and cancellations off peak.

In contrast I travelled earlier Rickmansworth to Kings Cross on the Met - all fine , bar the fact that off peak the fast lines from Croxley Jct are not used with the result everything on the slow lines blocks back and crawls- such that my train was terminated short at Moorgate. Odd way to run a 4 track railway with nothing wrong.

TFL in there wisdom decided a few years back that passengers wouldn't understand a mix of fast and all stations trains on the met hence all slow off peak, same reasoning results in most cases buses have to run the full length of the route all day even if the demand isn't equal throughout the route.

 

[LAX54]

Too early to say what caused yesterday’s failures.

The OLE is a complex system, and there are many potential points of failure. Even something as simple as a dropper becoming detached (the thin vertical wires between the contact wire and catenary wire) can cause a dewirement if the circumstances are right (or wrong, depending on your point of view!)

However what does tend to happen in very hot weather is that the whole system gets a bit ‘looser’; whilst most OLE is tensioned, it is only the contact and catenary wires that get the tension - the rest doesn’t (headspans, cross contact wires, etc etc). This all means that certain types of defect become more pronounced, and more likely to cause an issue than in ‘normal’ temperatures. There’s a similar effect in very cold weather, where the whole system tightens up.

Clearly in an ideal world there would be no defects in the OLE, but there are always some.

Once the tension weights at the end of some spans reach the bottom, and there is nowhere to go, then if it gets any hotter, then contact wire will sag a bit, and it will not take much to get all tangled up, not what you want at 100mph !

 

[Edders23]

haven't trawled through the whole thread so my apologies if this did appear but there are lots of mentions of other countries but I would assume in places like the US and mexico they have shorter lengths of CWr if any and more expansion joints so difficult to compare as most countries work to differing standards etc. or is this wrong

 

[LAX54]

I understand workings conditions are gonna be vile in this weather but really? Does it have to take 4 days to fix overhead wires

With wires down a multiple locations, some many miles apart, they would need very long arms to reach all locations at once ! There are only a finite amount of OHL staff to carry out the work, some of the G.E team had been out for the Colchester incident, (12 hrs +) and again the next night to finish off the job, in fact when you think ..4 days was pretty flippin good !

 

[Bald Rick]

haven't trawled through the whole thread so my apologies if this did appear but there are lots of mentions of other countries but I would assume in places like the US and mexico they have shorter lengths of CWr if any and more expansion joints so difficult to compare as most countries work to differing standards etc. or is this wrong

As I mentioned earlier, there are no expansion joints in CWR. What they do is set a higher stress free temperature, and are less worried about buckles and broken rails than we are - simply because the railway is less busy.

 

[Bald Rick]

Once the tension weights at the end of some spans reach the bottom, and there is nowhere to go, then if it gets any hotter, then contact wire will sag a bit, and it will not take much to get all tangled up, not what you want at 100mph !

I know I’ve seen it like that on your patch!

Is there still the OLE3 restriction north of Colchester? (80mph above 32C IIRC)

 

[LAX54]

haven't trawled through the whole thread so my apologies if this did appear but there are lots of mentions of other countries but I would assume in places like the US and mexico they have shorter lengths of CWr if any and more expansion joints so difficult to compare as most countries work to differing standards etc. or is this wrong

Having travelled LA to San Diego by AMTRAK..115 miles in 3.5 hours the speed is a lot slower than the UK on the best of days, and as for freight, they must have at least 1 off the road once a week, some slight, and some spectacular !

 

[LAX54]

I know I’ve seen it like that on your patch!

Is there still the OLE3 restriction north of Colchester? (80mph above 32C IIRC)

No, North of Colchester we are still normally line speed yesterday we had the Anglia blanket 30/60, but think that was more for rail stress than OHL, Liverpool Street to Shenfield and Southend still have OLE restictions in hot weather. (and the Colchester Town dewire, the line speed is 15 anyway ! )

 

[londonmidland]

Just to show how ‘fragile’ things still are on the MML, this report came in not too long ago;
“Driver of 6M20 reported overhead wire touching cab roof, train was routed up Hendon to Up Slow at a stand while in West Hampstead station on UF.”

Clearly this isn’t a quick fix and there is a lot of inspections that need to take place first before reopening line(s)

 

[OFFDN]

Looks like the ECML has just gone again too...

 

[RealTrains07]

It will take a long time for NR to fix a lot of wires. You must remember that the conditions are horrible for the workers. How would you like it if you had to work in the hottest weather of the year for hours on end in a relatively dangerous environment.

If you read my post properly i was only questioning the time it takes to finish the repairs since damage like this has been completed in less time before

Not having a go at the conditions they were working in. I know they are bad

 

[RealTrains07]

We need to remember their is the argument that NR have been somewhat unprepared as well the TOCs mabye considering this intense heatwave has been predicted for over a week and NR clearly weren’t prepared for the amount of issues caused by the heat on the network.

They both have done their best considering the situation of course but this is still a learning curve we cant ignore unpreparedness on something like the railway

 

[158756]

Were they expecting all the OHLE problems? All the warnings I saw were about buckled rails, Southeastern seemed most vocal about expected difficulties and travel warnings but in the end it was the overhead electrified part of the network that fell down spectacularly.

 

[Bald Rick]

If you read my post properly i was only questioning the time it takes to finish the repairs since damage like this has been completed in less time before

Not having a go at the conditions they were working in. I know they are bad

What is ‘damage like this’? Do you know what the extent is?

It is evidently severe damage, over some distance. It’s not simply a case of reconnecting a dropper!

 

[Wivenswold]

Job's stopped on the GEML, appears to be a signalling black-out from Ilford to Liverpool Street.

 

[Bald Rick]

We need to remember their is the argument that NR have been somewhat unprepared as well the TOCs mabye considering this intense heatwave has been predicted for over a week and NR clearly weren’t prepared for the amount of issues caused by the heat on the network.

They both have done their best considering the situation of course but this is still a learning curve we cant ignore unpreparedness on something like the railway

But here’s the thing - the forecast a week out was for temperatures of up to 30/31C. Not 37/38C. The former is normal; the latter is not. Even as recently as Monday it was forecast a maximum of 34C, perhaps 35 in the usual hotspots (Heathrow, central London). You’ll have to trust me, but every degree matters.

 

[30907]

Looks like the ECML has just gone again too...

Whereabouts? Nothing obvious on RTT or NRE.

 

[Peter C]

If you read my post properly i was only questioning the time it takes to finish the repairs since damage like this has been completed in less time before

Not having a go at the conditions they were working in. I know they are bad

Oh. Apologies.

-Peter

 

[philjo]

Whereabouts? Nothing obvious on RTT or NRE.

I was waiting at Welwyn Garden City just before 5pm and several southbound trains were being held at red signals. The Cambridge train I was waiting for was being held at Hatfield. We were told that the power had tripped out between WGC and Potters Bar, though it was reset within about 10 minutes.

 

[tsr]

Looks like the ECML has just gone again too...

Whereabouts? Nothing obvious on RTT or NRE.

I was waiting at Welwyn Garden City just before 5pm and several southbound trains were being held at red signals. The Cambridge train I was waiting for was being held at Hatfield. We were told that the power had tripped out between WGC and Potters Bar, though it was reset within about 10 minutes.

A number of trains were affected by a major UK Power Networks supply blip, but this was resolved very quickly.

 

[700007]

Job's stopped on the GEML, appears to be a signalling black-out from Ilford to Liverpool Street.

A number of issues have been reported on this stretch apparently - a train crossing the lines at Forest Gate Junction broke down blocking all but the down main, trespassing in the Ilford area and the power going out taking all the signalling with it. Whether all 3 are true, I am not too sure because I am hearing a lot of inconsistencies with different people's reporting of events, both customer facing and behind the scenes.

 

[Dr_Paul]

Also, may I ask in terms of the dog at Waterloo, how did it happen? What idiot would go running after his dog on an ELECTRIFIED LINE? Surely he knows that it's not safe. And if he doesn't, there are bigger issues here. Peter

I was amazed to read about this. Looking at the pictures, the bloke was more or less at International Junction, so he had ran quite some distance from Waterloo along the track, I don't think that he could have gained access to the track other than from the platforms. The dog was found, uninjured, some time next morning. The bloke may be facing charges of trespass and obstructing the railway.

 

[Karl]

Had to laugh at this

I bought two of the very same model of fan only days ago. They've been running non stop since. Only £12.99 from The Food Warehouse. Surprisingly good quality too.

 

[Antman]

I was amazed to read about this. Looking at the pictures, the bloke was more or less at International Junction, so he had ran quite some distance from Waterloo along the track, I don't think that he could have gained access to the track other than from the platforms. The dog was found, uninjured, some time next morning. The bloke may be facing charges of trespass and obstructing the railway.

He's probably just glad his dog is safe and sound, people don't always do the sensible thing in such circumstances.

 

[Peter C]

I was amazed to read about this. Looking at the pictures, the bloke was more or less at International Junction, so he had ran quite some distance from Waterloo along the track, I don't think that he could have gained access to the track other than from the platforms. The dog was found, uninjured, some time next morning. The bloke may be facing charges of trespass and obstructing the railway.

He should definitely being charged for trespass and obstructing the railway! Yes, he was trying to save his dog, but still.

-Peter