Post Hatfield speed restrictions - how impactful were they?

[Saint66]

I was only a kid when the Hatfield crash occurred and was not aware of the magnitude of it at the time.

However, I have always read and heard about there being hundreds of speed restrictions in the weeks after that severely hampered the network. I wondered if any posters had any memories of this spell and can share what it was like trying to travel by train at the time?

 

[306024]

Well apart from now it was the most unstable time in living memory. Railtrack were in total shock in the aftermath, so naturally erred on the side of caution for many months while they assessed the state of their infrastructure. Decisions were made hastily, and changed constantly.

On the Great Eastern Main Line which was the route I was involved with, it resulted in mile upon mile of 20mph speed restrictions, such that the timetable was unworkable and had to be completely recast. Not just once either, as speed restrictions moved around, seemingly at random. The old joke about the timetable being filed under fiction certainly came true.

For passengers, especially regular commuters it was awful. Fewer trains, overcrowding, travelling slowly, doubling some journey times, it was a nightmare.

Mile upon mile of rails were changed, but speed restrictions around pointwork especially took months to be removed. Eventually the railway recovered, but passenger confidence took a while to be regained.

 

[D6130]

A week after Hatfield, I had an interview and assessment for a driver's post with Eurostar. The day before the interview, I was working a fairly late 'early' turn at Skipton, after which I had to dash home, get changed and return to the station to take a train to Leeds and then on to King's Cross. The journey from Leeds to London took four and three quarter hours with all the speed restrictions, plus the diversion via the Hertford Loop, and I was the last of the candidates to arrive at the hotel near the Cross where Eurostar were kindly putting us up for the night. Therefore I was allocated the last remaining vacant room in the hotel, which was on the top floor right underneath the water tank, the pipes from which seemed to pass down the walls of my room. I didn't get a wink of sleep as a result of the continuous 'Niagra Falls' sound effects and after breakfast the following morning, I had to make my way to Waterloo for a train to Basingstoke, where the interviews and assessments were taking place at the South West Trains training centre. On leaving the hotel, I crossed King's Cross Road with a green pedestrian light, only to be almost mown down by a woman on a bicycle doing about 30mph on the inside of the waiting traffic, whizzing straight through the red traffic lights with her head down. This caused me to instinctively leap backwards onto the bonnet of a waiting taxi! (Having seen what had happened, the cabbie was very good about it!). I had just about regained my composure when I arrived at Waterloo and the rest of the journey went without incident but, when I arrived at the training centre, I was in no state to undergo such a rigorous assessment. However I surprised myself by passing almost everything with flying colours, but I took three seconds too long on the dot pattern concentration test....so I never became a Eurostar driver.

 

[Bald Rick]

I was only a kid when the Hatfield crash occurred and was not aware of the magnitude of it at the time.

However, I have always read and heard about there being hundreds of speed restrictions in the weeks after that severely hampered the network. I wondered if any posters had any memories of this spell and can share what it was like trying to travel by train at the time?

It was bloody awful.

Well apart from now it was the most unstable time in living memory.

In timetable terms, post Hatfield was worse. In punctuality terms it was light years worse.

It was described as a ‘nervous breakdown’ of the Network, and that’s about right.

Most Long distance trips had their timetables extended by at least an hour. London - Birmingham was at least 3, often 4. It did get progressively better as the weeks went on, but it was hell.

Curiously the ‘Southern’ was largely unaffected, although it was suggested that the track engineers there took a different view of the rolling contact fatigue standard.

The effects lasted for nearly two years. Whilst there was hundreds (thousands?) of miles of rerailing done in the first 6 months to remove the speed restrictions, this was done at the expense of normal track renewal and heavy maintenance as the resources were diverted. This led to loads of further speed restrictions for that reason. There was then 18 months of catching up of that, with lots of short notice Engineerign works. I think I removed about 20 TSRs in 3 months from a standing start.

 

[edwin_m]

My recollection is the same as @306024. Not only were the trains far slower, they couldn't get to the terminus in time to form their next working so they were a lot less frequent too. The problem was compounded by quite extensive flooding in the months following Hatfield - it wasn't always clear which was causing a particular problem.

As far as I'm aware no rails were found in anywhere near the condition of the ones at Hatfield. Basically Railtrack corporately failed to understand the problem of gauge corner cracking, because they had nobody senior they could trust to employ engineering judgement. So having failed to get the defective rails changed out before they disintegrated, they lacked the data or the knowledge to determine that Hatfield was truly a one-off, so ended up imposing restrictions wherever there was a suspicion of a similar problem.

It might be relevant to today's circumstances to note how passengers came back once the appalling service and apparent threat of serious derailments receded. Long distance operators (the worst affected) dropped from 2.3 billion passenger-miles to 1.5bn and 1.6bn for two quarters, then hovered around 2bn until climbing back in late 2005. But other operators with a much larger share of passenger-miles held steady, so the overall effect was quite small.

Rail passenger miles

Quarterly data on rail passenger miles.

www.gov.uk

 

[Inversnecky]

I recall the Signals to Danger podcast episode of Hatfield said that passenger numbers dropped by 50% afterwards.

 

[whoosh]

I'd just started commuting about a month before the accident. Chaos was all I remember of many journeys in the following couple of months.
Then, a bit of annual leave at Christmas. Ahhhhhh, and relax.... but the prospect of going back to the commute to work after the holidays weighed heavy on my mind.
I remember during the Christmas holiday, the news on TV reported that thousands of engineers and maintenance people had been out sorting out the route through Hatfield.
"Oh good I thought, perhaps my nightmarish journey will be better when I go back to work."

No.
The line through Hatfield reopened, but there were so many speed restrictions of 20mph that it took just as long as getting stuck behind a stopping service going via Herford North and there was no improvement in journey times for probably another couple of months after that even.

I sometimes caught a WAGN stopper - although it was slow because it stopped at many places, it did at least get up to speed still between stations as there didn't seem to be as many speed restrictions on the slow lines, and as a consequence of actually travelling at some speed for those short bursts, actually felt like you were getting somewhere.
In contrast, the slower acceleration of GNER 91s and HSTs, and any turn of speed they actually did get up to constantly being interrupted with prolonged periods of 20mph restrictions was like a (very) slow torture.

Also, there were less trains because journey times were longer but there was of course no increase in rolling stock. In fact a decrease of one train (later two because of the Great Heck incident) for GNER.
The route via Hertford North had longer signalling sections between Stevenage and Hertford North than it does today, and this had an effect on capacity as well.
This meant not only long, slow, disrupted journeys, but many of them were undertaken sitting on bags in luggage racks or stood up.

A miserable period, and it caused regular passengers a great deal of stress. I wouldnt be surprised if some had breakdowns - you couldn't get to work on time, and what time would you ever get home?!
People got snappy. One day I was just drifting off (luckily got a seat that day) and was woken up by a passenger having a go at another man for tapping the keys on his laptop! It was nothing more than background noise and hadn't disturbed me, but this irritant seemed to be the last straw for that particular passenger. Then that annoyed me as the remonstrating conversation had disrupted precious dozing time.

Short fuses all round.

 

[Inversnecky]

I'd just started commuting about a month before the accident. Chaos was all I remember of many journeys in the following couple of months.
Then, a bit of annual leave at Christmas. Ahhhhhh, and relax.... but the prospect of going back to the commute to work after the holidays weighed heavy on my mind.
I remember during the Christmas holiday, the news on TV reported that thousands of engineers and maintenance people had been out sorting out the route through Hatfield.
"Oh good I thought, perhaps my nightmarish journey will be better when I go back to work."

No.
The line through Hatfield reopened, but there were so many speed restrictions of 20mph that it took just as long as getting stuck behind a stopping service going via Herford North and there was no improvement in journey times for probably another couple of months after that even.

I sometimes caught a WAGN stopper - although it was slow because it stopped at many places, it did at least get up to speed still between stations as there didn't seem to be as many speed restrictions on the slow lines, and as a consequence of actually travelling at some speed for those short bursts, actually felt like you were getting somewhere.
In contrast, the slower acceleration of GNER 91s and HSTs, and any turn of speed they actually did get up to constantly being interrupted with prolonged periods of 20mph restrictions was like a (very) slow torture.

Also, there were less trains because journey times were longer but there was of course no increase in rolling stock. In fact a decrease of one train (later two because of the Great Heck incident) for GNER.
The route via Hertford North had longer signalling sections between Stevenage and Hertford North than it does today, and this had an effect on capacity as well.
This meant not only long, slow, disrupted journeys, but many of them were undertaken sitting on bags in luggage racks or stood up.

A miserable period, and it caused regular passengers a great deal of stress. I wouldnt be surprised if some had breakdowns - you couldn't get to work on time, and what time would you ever get home?!
People got snappy. One day I was just drifting off (luckily got a seat that day) and was woken up by a passenger having a go at another man for tapping the keys on his laptop! It was nothing more than background noise and hadn't disturbed me, but this irritant seemed to be the last straw for that particular passenger. Then that annoyed me as the remonstrating conversation had disrupted precious dozing time.

Short fuses all round.

If only Zoom had been around then!

 

[whoosh]

If only Zoom had been around then!

I would've worked from home if I could! The railway wouldn't have recovered if that had been the case I don't think.
With Covid, the railway is still there running trains fairly reliably, so it will recover as well as it can.
If Zoom amd work from home had been available then, I think the railway would've shot itself in the foot big time. It did shoot itself in the foot as it was, but there were travellers who used it out of necessity who couldn't help but stay customers throughout that spell.

Curiously the ‘Southern’ was largely unaffected, although it was suggested that the track engineers there took a different view of the rolling contact fatigue standard.

The office where I worked was almost exclusively populated by people travelling on South Eastern who had no problems at all with their journeys, and who frowned at me walking in over an hour late, having spent the morning so far stood up, and upon arriving late into Kings Cross, then made all sorts of efforts to get across London - which was another round of fun. One morning a pigeon at Kings Cross Thameslink sat on the overhead wire where the clearance between it and an overbridge is very small, and blew the substation... so no trains! Even later this morning, oh good!

 

[6Gman]

Fortunately by then pretty much all my travel was leisure rather than work so I could just view the chaos with a sort of bemused interest.

Clearly remember changing trains at Stafford (for Crewe) confident that "something" would turn up - which it did - but that a resemblance to any timetable would be vague. Waiting for the train we were regaled by a member of the station staff "explaining" that it was all caused by Railtrack buying rails from Hungary that were a load of rubbish.

 

[Bikeman78]

I was only a kid when the Hatfield crash occurred and was not aware of the magnitude of it at the time.

However, I have always read and heard about there being hundreds of speed restrictions in the weeks after that severely hampered the network. I wondered if any posters had any memories of this spell and can share what it was like trying to travel by train at the time?

I recall that a fair chunk of Cardiff to Bridgend was 20 mph for a while. East of Cardiff to Paddington wasn't too bad. I recall that First Great Eastern juggled units around so that the 16:02 or 16:32 (I forget which) to Ipswich and back was a 312.

 

[Bald Rick]

It might be relevant to today's circumstances to note how passengers came back once the appalling service and apparent threat of serious derailments receded. Long distance operators (the worst affected) dropped from 2.3 billion passenger-miles to 1.5bn and 1.6bn for two quarters, then hovered around 2bn until climbing back in late 2005. But other operators with a much larger share of passenger-miles held steady, so the overall effect was quite small.

Unfortunately, Zoom and MSTeams didn’t exist back then. This time the circumstances are rather different. And notably, the trains have never run as well as they have for the past year!

 

[Bikeman78]

Curiously the ‘Southern’ was largely unaffected, although it was suggested that the track engineers there took a different view of the rolling contact fatigue standard.

The LTS was largely unaffected too. I went on several trips on the network for that reason.

 

[Martin66]

On the afternoon of the Hatfield accident I was travelling from Cardiff to Newcastle upon Tyne. We left at 1600 ish on a direct train and didn't get into Newcastle until 0200 ish.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

The delays and speed restrictions were a sufficiently major talking point in the media that they earned a "Matt" cartoon on the front page of the Daily Telegraph of a passenger at Clapham Junction listening to an announcement that the next train was the Sleeper service to London Victoria...

 

[55002]

Absolutely horrendous I commuted from Newark to London daily. 3 1/2 hours one way. Used to be 1 hour 15 before. Was soul destroying, spent more time on train than in work. In hindsight should have driven to a tube station

 

[Nippy]

I remember a 6 hour London to Exeter trip. Going round the steeply canted curves at Tiverton at 20mph was interesting...

 

[Bald Rick]

On the afternoon of the Hatfield accident I was travelling from Cardiff to Newcastle upon Tyne. We left at 1600 ish on a direct train and didn't get into Newcastle until 0200 ish.

Well that must have been something else - the speed restrictions took a couple of weeks to come on.

 

[Mag_seven]

Anyone remember this - "Sorry Is Not Enough"!

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Horrendous - timetables became unworkable as in the early days of the disruption , ESR's were put on all the time.

Drastic effects - for example Thameslink ceased to be a cross London operation for a while and just ran 6 tph Moorgate to Bedford all stations via the slow lines. (the fast lines were left to MML - who were crucified by speed restrictions , such that they stopped all southbound trains at St Albans , - so you could sit in an empty first class and enjoy complimentary tea. MML Trains were empty virtually) - I have no idea what Thameslink did south of the river - presumably some sort of Blackfriars - Brighton and London - Bridge Sutton.

It almost destroyed Inter City and long distance travel , and caused huge stress for operators - particularly drivers , and had effect on fleet as (for example) - sets were running through disc pads at a much heavier rate. It was a bad winter too for other reasons , - so the misery was compounded.

Some parts of the network were less affected - South Wales Valleys comes to mind where a combination of lowish speeds and wheel grinding 14x resulted in little impact. A good part of the South likewise - possibly as the engineers had a better feel for track quality / condition , unlike say the WCML North of Carlisle which was completely closed on the evening , or soon after the crash.

A time best forgotten.

 

[pdeaves]

During this time I worked for a design consultant and was heavily involved in the contract to calculate TSR (and ESR) warning arrangements. We had fun and games trying to resolve overlapping calculation, which were then made worse when the 'guys on the ground' said they had run out of warning boards... including the ones they had hired from a neighbouring contractor.

 

[Mag_seven]

Horrendous - timetables became unworkable as in the early days of the disruption , ESR's were put on all the time.

Drastic effects - for example Thameslink ceased to be a cross London operation for a while and just ran 6 tph Moorgate to Bedford all stations via the slow lines. (the fast lines were left to MML - who were crucified by speed restrictions , such that they stopped all southbound trains at St Albans , - so you could sit in an empty first class and enjoy complimentary tea. MML Trains were empty virtually) - I have no idea what Thameslink did south of the river - presumably some sort of Blackfriars - Brighton and London - Bridge Sutton.

It almost destroyed Inter City and long distance travel , and caused huge stress for operators - particularly drivers , and had effect on fleet as (for example) - sets were running through disc pads at a much heavier rate. It was a bad winter too for other reasons , - so the misery was compounded.

Some parts of the network were less affected - South Wales Valleys comes to mind where a combination of lowish speeds and wheel grinding 14x resulted in little impact. A good part of the South likewise - possibly as the engineers had a better feel for track quality / condition , unlike say the WCML North of Carlisle which was completely closed on the evening , or soon after the crash.

A time best forgotten.

The timetables and stopping patterns were constantly changing so much so that I was on several trains where the driver failed to stop at a station that they should have done as a result.

 

[deltic]

Remember naively setting out from London for a business meeting in Manchester and arriving an hour late on an already extended timetabled journey time - the train was not surprisingly empty

 

[Merle Haggard]

There was the suggestion at the time (related to M.M.L., but presumably applied elsewhere) that TOC income from Railtrack penalty charge credits outweighed loss of ticket revenue...,

 

[yorksrob]

I was commuting in West Yorkshire at the time and don't remember that being much different. That said, we had just had (or were going through the last stages) of the Leeds station rebuild which had created a lot of upheaval, and prior to that Leeds had always been snarled up, so I may not have noticed much difference.

 

[Bald Rick]

Typically lower speed routes, and those that had a preponderance of ropey rolling stock (like most of Southern region, and anywhere else with slam door stock or Pacers), didn’t get the same level of rolling contact fatigue, and thus fewer speed restrictions immediately post Hatfield.

Some of the low speed / heavy tonnage lines also didn’t have speed restrictions immediately, but suffered with the diversion of resources from renewals. Doncaster to Immingham suffered terribly with this, as of course did the Settle and Carlisle.

 

[Devonian]

I regulary travelled between Bristol and Plymouth on Virgin Trains at that time, and remember the railway going from a fairly reliable service to total chaos overnight. I spent hours and hours at Bristol Temple Meads listening to train after train being delayed, cancelled or moved to another platform, so no-one could turn up to catch a train with any confidence of where they should wait or what time they would leave. Every announcement seemed to start with "I'm sorry to announce...". Bear in mind that at this time the only information available to passengers was from announcements or the then brand-new scrolling platform displays, so we had no way of knowing if a train that was supposedly due to arrive in two minutes really was anywhere near the station (it frequently wasn't).

Once on board, I recall endless slow, stop-start, grinding journeys, interspersed with rail replacement buses, with horribly overcrowded trains thanks to everyone piling on whichever train arrived first in a desperate attempt to get anywhere.

Then there was the absolutely brilliant wheeze by Virgin to offer half-price tickets to encourage fed up ex-passengers back on the train - sparking more overcrowding on the engineering-work-hampered routes that was guaranteed to put off anyone giving them a second chance and cheese off everyone else for good measure. And, after a couple of years of inconvenience, just when things were calming down and you thought it was safe to go back on the rails, Virgin launched Operation Princess, throwing several more shades of chaos at passengers. All in all, not a good period to have travelled through.

 

[Irascible]

Was commuting on WAGN into Moorgate at the time, turned what was already a horrible experience into something so unpleasant I was rather thankful when the company went under ( dot-com bubble not long after ) and I didn't have to do it anymore... I don't remember any particular delays on WAGN inner suburban services but there was certainly even more overloading.

 

[Grumpy]

It almost destroyed Inter City and long distance travel

I seem to recall hearing that it caused a major disruption to Royal Mail's time critical services, with a big reduction in Quality of service results. Probably an early nail in the mail by rail coffin

 

[4COR]

It was some time ago now, but during the time after I remember having a Fri evening Kings Cross to Leeds journey of 5hr30m + which I'm fairly sure involved two sections of wrong direction single line working where we waited for some time for trains running right line to pass.

I should have been on the train before but that got cancelled, and landed up sitting on the floor in the gangway between two coaches all the way until Wakefield...the only welcome relief was that the catering trolley was stuck in the same place as they couldn't move anywhere...

The return journey was no better, and I think I landed up going via Huddersfield and Manchester, avoiding the diversionary route via Lincoln that was in place for the weekend...