Weather disruption Sunday 17th July and following few days

[Steddenm]

Now sitting in platform 7 at Watford Junction as 5M08.

Was terminated at Watfofd Junction 303 mins late.

 

[Falcon1200]

1047 Liverpool to Euston trapped between Cheddington and Tring has now moved forward passed Tring. Stuck since just after 1 now 4 1/2 hours late but at least moving

Yes, thanks, 1M08 has now arrived at Watford Jc at 1725, 303 minutes late. This train may well be carrying a double load too as the previous Glasgow-Euston, 1M07 0630, was cancelled. A hellish day for the railway and its customers.

(Thanks too for the updates re its termination, posted as I was typing the above !)

 

[6Gman]

My (freight) train was cancelled today, along with many others. It honestly should be illegal to work in cabs that get that hot, it's indescribable sometimes.

There is actually a point at which you can decline to work because of excessive heat (I forget the exact figure but I do recall arguing the point in past employment - and fans were brought in to address the issue).

 

[Failed Unit]

I wonder if all will be back to normal in the morning. Sounds like a lot of things to fix and still very hot to consider starting. Some of it won’t be a 5 minute job either.

 

[GB]

There is actually a point at which you can decline to work because of excessive heat (I forget the exact figure but I do recall arguing the point in past employment - and fans were brought in to address the issue).

There is no specific maximum figure....at least according to ASLEF.

 

[MarkWi72]

Late to the party on this, but Sunday was chaotic. My return from New Street to Glasgow will cost me 22 quid, once my compo payback is sorted. My train up to Glasgow Central was an hour late on Friday (well 52 mins). Overnight Sleeper was cancelled so the connection at Wigan was heavy going and got worse at Preston and Lancaster. But Sunday was the one.

15.35 away back to Preston - previous trains cancelled so the World and his dog cramming into Central. Queues snaking everywhere. Gave ourselves about 40 minutes breathing space too. Then Scot rail, Avanti staff asked where people were going. So all London bound passengers had to tough it out , whilst myself a mate and 4 others got a paid for cab to Preston and Lancaster. Then a further cancellation of the Liverpool to Wolverhampton service, and an hour and a couple of beers in the Station Pub later I managed to get on a train to Wolverhampton. Then off to Brum, but no trains from Moor Street after 9 .

Avanti will be paying out loads of compo after these few days. Doing tings cheaply costs more in the long run.

No wonder they've asked people not to travel Monday and today - it is mayhem by all accounts. Wires down at Milton Keynes and Birmingham New Sreet. Really feel for rail staff (who have been great through these issues)and can see why they have been striking. All power to them I say.

 

[800001]

Avanti will be paying out loads of compo after these few days. Doing tings cheaply costs more in the long run.

What have they been doing cheaply that has come into play with the weather issues?

 

[Darandio]

There is actually a point at which you can decline to work because of excessive heat (I forget the exact figure but I do recall arguing the point in past employment - and fans were brought in to address the issue).

There has never been a maximum defined figure, only that employers take steps to ensure the welfare of workers.

 

[6Gman]

Hahaha… Sounds like a right militant to me who was happy to lean on the rule book to keep himself cool wat the expense of the passengers - you know, those people who actually pay for the railway - who were left standing on a sweltering platform with not much shade, no breeze, and no air conditioning, wondering when the next train might run.

I've always preferred my driver to be comfortable - no cracked windscreen, working wipers, not bursting for the loo at the end of a long spell of continuous driving, and certainly not suffering from excessive heat.

 

[Walter Whigham]

1047 Liverpool to Euston trapped between Cheddington and Tring has now moved forward passed Tring. Stuck since just after 1 now 4 1/2 hours late but at least moving

The train (1A25) has now been sitting at Kings Langley for about 30 minutes.

 

[MrB]

Having fared relatively well thus far, Southeastern appears to have entirely fallen apart this afternoon - incidents on all their routes, even HS 1.

 

[TheManOnThe172]

Prospects for Wed 20th?

National Rail Enquiries have just (1755 Tue) posted "for anyone travelling on Wednesday please take time to check before you travel" - without any indication of where one should be looking (I thought National Rail Enquiries might have been a reasonable place to expect to find information!). East Midlands Trains (my particular concern) hasn't any comment about Wednesday on its disruptions page.

Will it be pretty much "business as usual" tomorrow, or are there known issues that are likely to causer substantial disruption?

 

[infobleep]

Fire near Hampden Park. No trains in and out of Eastbourne.

Most trains from London terminating at Lewes. One is running to Ore. I assume ut will avoid Eastbourne.

 

[TrainGeekUK]

Do not travel advice issued for Lewes to Eastbourne, Hastings and Ashford Intl.

Sounds very serious at Hampden Park.

 

[800001]

Prospects for Wed 20th?

National Rail Enquiries have just (1755 Tue) posted "for anyone travelling on Wednesday please take time to check before you travel" - without any indication of where one should be looking (I thought National Rail Enquiries might have been a reasonable place to expect to find information!). East Midlands Trains (my particular concern) hasn't any comment about Wednesday on its disruptions page.

Will it be pretty much "business as usual" tomorrow, or are there known issues that are likely to causer substantial disruption?

No operator will know what they can run tomorrow.
On the east coast main line and lines off Hitchin to Cambridge, route proving trains are running tonight to check infrastructure.

On the Wcml, New street over head needs fixing. A multitude of issues on the southern section of wcml.

This will be same over the central and southern routes.

Check before travel? People should have enough sense about them to check individual train company’s social media and websites, or do they need spoon feeding.

 

[modernrail]

Nope I’m loving it too.

I bet the people whose houses have just been burned to the ground by a wildfire in Essex are absolutely loving is too. Wouldn’t be surprised if they haven’t taken the opportunity to get the old BBQ out!

 

[MarkWi72]

Do not travel advice issued for Lewes to Eastbourne, Hastings and Ashford Intl.

Sounds very serious at Hampden Park.

What's that?

 

[Busaholic]

Prospects for Wed 20th?

National Rail Enquiries have just (1755 Tue) posted "for anyone travelling on Wednesday please take time to check before you travel" - without any indication of where one should be looking (I thought National Rail Enquiries might have been a reasonable place to expect to find information!). East Midlands Trains (my particular concern) hasn't any comment about Wednesday on its disruptions page.

Will it be pretty much "business as usual" tomorrow, or are there known issues that are likely to causer substantial disruption?

I find criticism of such as NRE to be completely misplaced: everyone is having to cope with unprecedented circumstances both on and off the railways, not helped by Grant Cretin MP grandstanding his pathetic little self on the radio this morning by announcing he'd ensured that TOC announcements re cessation of services were not being applied wrongly! Some of the things that have happened in the last couple of hours could not have been foreseen by Mystic Meg herself, and who knows what might yet occur during the rest of the day?

 

[modernrail]

No operator will know what they can run tomorrow.
On the east coast main line and lines off Hitchin to Cambridge, route proving trains are running tonight to check infrastructure.

On the Wcml, New street over head needs fixing. A multitude of issues on the southern section of wcml.

This will be same over the central and southern routes.

Check before travel? People should have enough sense about them to check individual train company’s social media and websites, or do they need spoon feeding.

Hardly spoon feeding is it. ‘What should I do about travel tomorrow having absolutely no insight into the detail of any damage that might have occurred today because I don’t work on the railways. I know, I will check the National Rail website, that might me an idea. Oh not very helpful, I wonder if somebody could signpost what I do next because it was a do not travel instruction today and it isn’t tomorrow’

National Rail usually carries detailed summaries of all major disruption, expected time to solve etc. Are we saying the system hasn’t coped today?

Even in the storms it was pretty reasonable at saying which sections were affected etc.

 

[Starmill]

Some of the things that have happened in the last couple of hours could not have been foreseen by Mystic Meg herself, and who knows what might yet occur during the rest of the day?

Is this really true? Temperatures of 38 - 40 C sustained over a couple of days makes the things like sagging wires, buckled tracks, lineside fires and stranded trains rather obvious to me.

 

[MrB]

Do not travel advice issued for Lewes to Eastbourne, Hastings and Ashford Intl.

Sounds very serious at Hampden Park.

Power lines on track. (Pic from NR)

 

[nlogax]

What's that?

National grid wires down across the lines.

 

[800001]

Hardly spoon feeding is it. ‘What should I do about travel tomorrow having absolutely no insight into the detail of any damage that might have occurred today because I don’t work on the railways. I know, I will check the National Rail website, that might me an idea. Oh not very helpful, I wonder if somebody could signpost what I do next because it was a do not travel instruction today and it isn’t tomorrow’

National Rail usually carries detailed summaries of all major disruption, expected time to solve etc. Are we saying the system hasn’t coped today?

Even in the storms it was pretty reasonable at saying which sections were affected etc.

I would be tweeting, emailing, ringing, Facebook messaging, WhatsApp (any of these) a message to the train company that I would be travelling with, asking a question about how they plan to operate tomorrow

 

[MarkWi72]

National grid wires down across the lines.

Crikey.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I would be tweeting, emailing, ringing, Facebook messaging, WhatsApp (any of these) a message to the train company that I would be travelling with, asking a question about how they plan to operate tomorrow

And by doing so, overloading their customer services staff.

Better to publish accurate information and for people to be able to find it in a central location and not to need to do that.

 

[infobleep]

National grid wires down across the lines.

The one train to Ore running is now cancelled east of Lewes. Not surprised, having seen the photo.

 

[800001]

And by doing so, overloading their customer services staff.

Better to publish accurate information and for people to be able to find it in a central location and not to need to do that.

I would still contact the TOC!
LNER service alterations for today were only finally confirmed at 04:00 this morning.
That takes time to be uploaded to systems.
The people dealing with the messaging/social side have this info provided to them (it is not them who update National Rail), so no impact on Control staff.

End of the day, that’s the social teams job.

 

[AndrewE]

Well I certainly hope there is a rule book with limits not just on temperature ( high & low ) but also carbon monoxide , carbon dioxide , Ozone , humidity , ventilation ( air change rate ) to name a few - with sensors in place and alerts to warn . Only the driver knows if the complaint was genuine or not .

Not going to happen. There are exposure limits for most of those (set by HSE to prevent harm.) It is very rare indeed, maybe unknown (in the normal railway operating environment) for any contaminant to get anywhere near the limit set for 8 hours continuous exposure, let alone the higher limit tolerable for a 15-minute period which used to be set. Believe me, I spent half my working life making the measurements.

On top of that, finding sensors robust enough - and then keeping them all in calibration - would be an almost impossible task. You could never add this problem into a loco cab on top of just keeping railway traction units serviceable.

Over and over again I found that a multi-gas instrument was unusable simply because one sensor had failed or gone out of calibration. A company in Stockport (who also do wiring looms for loco cabs, I think) developed a brilliant instrument concept where the sensor with its calibration software was on a module which could be swapped out for calibration or to change the instrument to what you wanted to measure. It should have been a world-beater.

(And by the way, if you can devise a machine to measure "air change rate" rather than some surrogate measure you might make a lot of money.)

Humidity is not a problem in its own right, but needs to be considered in conjunction with air temperature, radiant heat and physical work-rate. A few specialist instruments try to do 3 of the 4, but are fragile and expensive (besides having multiple sensors to fail.) They also don't know anything about the work rate around them!

I'm not saying everything is perfect, I can't wait for Standedge Tunnel to be electrified (or bypassed by a new electrified base tunnel) as the acid gases in diesel exhaust (NOx, maybe some SO2) trigger my asthma, to the point that I have an inhaler to hand if I go through it.

If we choose to set off in our car in the knowledge that the ventilation and a/c will make it bearable fairly quickly then that is our choice. If it's a "common user" vehicle or loco with no opening windows and a poor reputation for the reliability of the cooling or ventilation then not setting off in a furnace you can't escape from seems quite sensible.

But

 

[D6130]

Most trains from London terminating at Lewes. One is running to Ore. I assume ut will avoid Eastbourne.

Really? Perhaps someone should tell them that the Eastbourne avoiding line from Polegate to Stone Cross Junction closed way back in 1969!

 

[Mcr Warrior]

I'd put money on it not being as hot as forecast.

Reckon that you'd have probably had to have paid up.