Power outage at Basingstoke signalling centre

Thisisajm · 6 Dec 2016

Reading reports that there was a loss of power at the signalling centre resulting in the loss of control of signals between Farnborough and Weymouth causing major disruption on the mainline.
Would there be much in the way of backup power?

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SpacePhoenix · 6 Dec 2016

Thisisajm said:
Reading reports that there was a loss of power at the signalling centre resulting in the loss of control of signals between Farnborough and Weymouth causing major disruption on the mainline.
Would there be much in the way of backup power?

Very strange, I'd have expected all large signalling centres to have backup generators that could power them for at least an hour.

najaB · 6 Dec 2016

Thisisajm said:
Reading reports that there was a loss of power at the signalling centre resulting in the loss of control of signals between Farnborough and Weymouth causing major disruption on the mainline.
Would there be much in the way of backup power?

I believe that most (all?) signalling centres have backup power generators and/or UPSs.

That's no guarantee that you won't experience power outages though. A company I used to work for had both and still managed to lose all power to the building for a day and half because the box of magic that switches over to the batteries and then starts the generator in the event of mains failure (not sure what the technical name for it is) blew up when they did the monthly test of the backup generator.

SpacePhoenix · 6 Dec 2016

I heard a story once (don't know how true) that some company had a fully working backup diesel generator but then a new building got built next door to the generator so when the generator kicked in, it overheated and shutdown

lincolnshire · 6 Dec 2016

SpacePhoenix said:
Very strange, I'd have expected all large signalling centres to have backup generators that could power them for at least an hour.

Usually a UPS to last in excess of the standby generator starting up and takeing load which then will run till the mains is restored.

Some times instead of a standby generator they have an alternative REC supply, so if the fault on the REC takes out both supplies then your up the creek without a paddle.

If you go for belt and braces back up then you would have UPS, two REC supplies and standby generator as back up .

A standby generator run for an hour? we had one run continuously for a least 2 weeks to keep the trains running, it just needed fuelling after about 5 days of running.

Thisisajm · 7 Dec 2016

There's a massive gas engine outside the building (just realised the building next to AA HQ is the signalling centre, isn't it?).
Would that be serving as a backup genny?

Top Cat · 7 Dec 2016

Thisisajm said:
There's a massive gas engine outside the building (just realised the building next to AA HQ is the signalling centre, isn't it?).
Would that be serving as a backup genny?

The photograph appears to show the Basingstoke ROC, but this is NOT currently the signalling centre.

The current signal box is located adjacent to the station behind platform 5.

Thisisajm · 7 Dec 2016

Top Cat said:
The photograph appears to show the Basingstoke ROC, but this is NOT currently the signalling centre.

The current signal box is located adjacent to the station behind platform 5.

I may have jumped to conclusions on a Google search.
Am I right assuming the long term plan is to move into that building?

Sunset route · 7 Dec 2016

Thisisajm said:
I may have jumped to conclusions on a Google search.
Am I right assuming the long term plan is to move into that building?

In geological terms, yes the aim is to use that building for signalling at some point in the long term future lmao :lol:

Paul180 · 7 Dec 2016

I have received this email from SWT this morning and by the sounds of it there must have been a power spike of something and the protection systems must have failed big time or something similar.

Following a significant failure of the National Grid power supply to our signalling centre in Basingstoke yesterday, a large amount of signalling equipment became damaged and we were unable to run trains on some of key routes between Farnborough, Basingstoke, and the West and South West of England.

The damage to the equipment was extensive, and engineers have worked through the night to rectify the problems and bring the equipment back into working order.

The majority of signalling equipment was brought back into use at around 0600 this morning.

Services between London Waterloo, Bournemouth and Weymouth will remain significantly disrupted for some time.

We are not able to run trains between Bournemouth and Weymouth at this time, and our engineers are still working on a estimate for the repairs to these systems.

A number of buses are in place and running between Weymouth and Poole, however, these are not running to a timetable at this time. You may face a significant wait for replacement transport to arrive. We are attempting to source more buses, and will work to arrange a timetabled service so that you are able to plan your journey more effectively.

Services between London Waterloo, Salisbury and Exeter St Davids are now able to run normally, but will remain heavily disrupted. Delays of up to 40 minutes and short-notice alterations will be likely whilst we try and get the service back to normal.

As soon as more information is available, it will be provided, so please check back here regularly.

In order to help you complete your journey, we have arranged for you to be able to use your tickets on the following routes:

London Underground - services between London Waterloo and London Paddington
Great Western Railway - services on routes between London Paddington and Exeter, Bath, Bristol and Westbury.

We are very sorry for the disruption to your journey yesterday, and the continued disruption to your journey today.

embers25 · 7 Dec 2016

Paul180 said:
I have received this email from SWT this morning and by the sounds of it there must have been a power spike of something and the protection systems must have failed big time or something similar.

By "Services between London Waterloo, Salisbury and Exeter St Davids are now able to run normally" they meant all services from Exeter cancelled until 0925!

Domeyhead · 7 Dec 2016

SpacePhoenix said:
I heard a story once (don't know how true) that some company had a fully working backup diesel generator but then a new building got built next door to the generator so when the generator kicked in, it overheated and shutdown

Working in IT business continuity I have some war stories
A company I worked for about 20+ years ago had a very large datacentre. Near to all exits were large red emergency power off buttons, shielded from accidental depression etc. Unfortunately it didn't shield them from a determined cleaner who for some unexplained reason thought it turned all the lights out, lifted up the protective flap and .... and the UPS didn't cut in.
An even larger IT company in Portsmouth with an even larger Datacentre realised that its existing diesel generating plant would not provide a stable supply quickly enough to maintain UPS (unless left running constantly) so they installed a high capacity battery array which would provide UPS for around 30 minutes. It was installed and placed inline. Some time later a huge flashover shorted out the entire datacentre to such effect that it took nearly a week to recover all the systems, one by one. The cause was condensation on the ceiling of the battery room dripping onto terminals eventually causing an arc and a fire. When the innoccent had been sacked and the guilty promoted, the subsequent recommendation was to "bring in yet another battery solution in case the first one failed". Yep, I thought, that'll do it.

I don't think I've known a backup UPS that actually worked without problems, nor an IT system.

tellytype · 7 Dec 2016

Ah that set of stories sounds familiar.

Let's just say a large online payments provider when we recount this story....had a genset to support the DC in a power failure. Except it'd never been tested. Or turned on since it was installed 10 years ago...or had its fuel polished...and the changeover switch wasn't connected to anything.

One of many.......

philjo · 7 Dec 2016

A friend of mine said at there was a power cut at their work once where the backup generator came in so seamlessly that no-one noticed that the mains was off and everyone continued working as normal - until the generator ran out of fuel about 6 hours later.

Elecman · 7 Dec 2016

lincolnshire said:
Usually a UPS to last in excess of the standby generator starting up and takeing load which then will run till the mains is restored.

Some times instead of a standby generator they have an alternative REC supply, so if the fault on the REC takes out both supplies then your up the creek without a paddle.

If you go for belt and braces back up then you would have UPS, two REC supplies and standby generator as back up .

A standby generator run for an hour? we had one run continuously for a least 2 weeks to keep the trains running, it just needed fuelling after about 5 days of running.

Which is what Manchester and Rugby ROCs and WMSCC have

QueensCurve · 7 Dec 2016

Domeyhead said:
Working in IT business continuity I have some war stories
A company I worked for about 20+ years ago had a very large datacentre. Near to all exits were large red emergency power off buttons, shielded from accidental depression etc. Unfortunately it didn't shield them from a determined cleaner who for some unexplained reason thought it turned all the lights out, lifted up the protective flap and .... and the UPS didn't cut in.
An even larger IT company in Portsmouth with an even larger Datacentre realised that its existing diesel generating plant would not provide a stable supply quickly enough to maintain UPS (unless left running constantly) so they installed a high capacity battery array which would provide UPS for around 30 minutes. It was installed and placed inline. Some time later a huge flashover shorted out the entire datacentre to such effect that it took nearly a week to recover all the systems, one by one. The cause was condensation on the ceiling of the battery room dripping onto terminals eventually causing an arc and a fire. When the innoccent had been sacked and the guilty promoted, the subsequent recommendation was to "bring in yet another battery solution in case the first one failed". Yep, I thought, that'll do it.

I don't think I've known a backup UPS that actually worked without problems, nor an IT system.

I worked on a plant with a safety critical ventilation system sopposed to switch between A and B supplies if the supply failed. When this was reuired in anger it turn out tha both supplies were fed from the same point. The was also a problem with automatic switchover to thr DG.

infobleep · 7 Dec 2016

Domeyhead said:
Working in IT business continuity I have some war stories
A company I worked for about 20+ years ago had a very large datacentre. Near to all exits were large red emergency power off buttons, shielded from accidental depression etc. Unfortunately it didn't shield them from a determined cleaner who for some unexplained reason thought it turned all the lights out, lifted up the protective flap and .... and the UPS didn't cut in.
An even larger IT company in Portsmouth with an even larger Datacentre realised that its existing diesel generating plant would not provide a stable supply quickly enough to maintain UPS (unless left running constantly) so they installed a high capacity battery array which would provide UPS for around 30 minutes. It was installed and placed inline. Some time later a huge flashover shorted out the entire datacentre to such effect that it took nearly a week to recover all the systems, one by one. The cause was condensation on the ceiling of the battery room dripping onto terminals eventually causing an arc and a fire. When the innoccent had been sacked and the guilty promoted, the subsequent recommendation was to "bring in yet another battery solution in case the first one failed". Yep, I thought, that'll do it.

I don't think I've known a backup UPS that actually worked without problems, nor an IT system.

My UPS at home has always worked during power outage, touch wood but I'm not running a large data centre or signalling system. I also have it plugged into an extension lead that is surge protected.

Perhaps we need to bring back semaphore signals which don't need a USP. What could possibly go wrong with those!

It's interesting to note that around 17.30 last night why had expected the disruption to clear by 20.00. No such luck however.

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philjo said:
A friend of mine said at there was a power cut at their work once where the backup generator came in so seamlessly that no-one noticed that the mains was off and everyone continued working as normal - until the generator ran out of fuel about 6 hours later.

Haha. Oops.

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09065 · 7 Dec 2016

embers25 said:
By "Services between London Waterloo, Salisbury and Exeter St Davids are now able to run normally" they meant all services from Exeter cancelled until 0925!

Just because they can 'run trains normally' it does not mean trains are in the right place.

Anything sat in Exeter New Yard was probably stabled and in need of a crew to travel by road or special ECS to prep the unit. What would be the point of sending crews west by road 'just in case' the line re-opened? They would have had to come back by road is the line stayed shut!

infobleep · 7 Dec 2016

09065 said:
Just because they can 'run trains normally' it does not mean trains are in the right place.

Anything sat in Exeter New Yard was probably stabled and in need of a crew to travel by road or special ECS to prep the unit. What would be the point of sending crews west by road 'just in case' the line re-opened? They would have had to come back by road is the line stayed shut!

Perhaps they need to reword the statement to read, trains can run normally on the line but due to X reason, we can't run trains until x time. Then no confusion.

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embers25 · 7 Dec 2016

infobleep said:
Perhaps they need to reword the statement to read, trains can run normally on the line but due to X reason, we can't run trains until x time. Then no confusion.

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Exactly. Also, if they had no crew in Exeter they'd have known in advance and so why did they only the cancel the 0725 and 0825 at the last minute. Also this should have been put on Journey Check and in the email instead of the statement saying things were running when they weren't.

infobleep · 7 Dec 2016

embers25 said:
Exactly. Also, if they had no crew in Exeter they'd have known in advance and so why did they only the cancel the 0725 and 0825 at the last minute. Also this should have been put on Journey Check and in the email instead of the statement saying things were running when they weren't.

Perhaps they hoped to have someone down their but found they couldn't. However you'd hope that would be known lore than a minute in advance of the service running.

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LeylandLen · 7 Dec 2016

Did the failure of the National Grid power supply to the signalling centre in Basingstoke affect only Network Rail and TOCs? I assume the public power supply was unaffected ? No doubt there will be a big claim for compensation from National Grid ? Passengers will be making claims under Delay/Repay.

infobleep · 7 Dec 2016

LeylandLen said:
Did the failure of the National Grid power supply to the signalling centre in Basingstoke affect only Network Rail and TOCs? I assume the public power supply was unaffected ? No doubt there will be a big claim for compensation from National Grid ? Passengers will be making claims under Delay/Repay.

Only if they were delayed by more than an hour. I don't know what the compensation deal would be between National Grid and Network Rail however. I've also lost track of how the finances work between South West Trains and Network Rail. Someone else is bound to know.

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embers25 · 7 Dec 2016

infobleep said:
Perhaps they hoped to have someone down their but found they couldn't. However you'd hope that would be known lore than a minute in advance of the service running.

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Given the 0641 is worked from the 0552 from Axminster which comes wmpty from Salisbury they would have known at 0450 when it didn't run. Equally the 0835 is formed from the 0551 from Gillingham that also didn't run and so again they would have know a long time before and yet both cancellations were not warned until the last minute. The 0725 starts from Exeter so i assume the crew for that come down on the 0552 but I could be wrong.

noddingdonkey · 8 Dec 2016

Interesting that SWT talk about "our" signaling centre in that email, when they could legitimately blame NR for this one

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infobleep · 8 Dec 2016

noddingdonkey said:
Interesting that SWT talk about "our" signaling centre in that email, when they could legitimately blame NR for this one

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I thought the worked along side NR, hence the we.

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lincolnshire · 8 Dec 2016

infobleep said:
I thought the worked along side NR, hence the we.

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They won,t be bothered who,s signalling it is as long as they are getting the train delay payments from Network Rail into there bank account.

Hope they don,t have any train breakdowns as Network Rail will be getting some money back off them.

The joys of privatisation.

Elecman · 8 Dec 2016

infobleep said:
Only if they were delayed by more than an hour. I don't know what the compensation deal would be between National Grid and Network Rail however. I've also lost track of how the finances work between South West Trains and Network Rail. Someone else is bound to know.

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There is no compensation arrangement between the DNO and NR above that for any other commercial company as no DNO would enter any such agreement. In this country if you need an absolute guaranteed power supply it is upto you to make that provision for yourself. Belt braces and bits of string with multiple redundancy built into your own distribution systems. The ROCS in general are designed that way.

Power outage at Basingstoke signalling centre

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