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XC train takes wrong route near Pontefract

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woodmally

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I'd never ever thought I'd type those words but yet it's true.

https://www.thestar.co.uk/news/train-gets-lost-in-yorkshire-after-it-goes-the-wrong-way-1-9182229
A long-distance express train became stranded while travelling through Yorkshire after it took a wrong turn while on a diversion. The CrossCountry Trains service from Newcastle to Reading was diverted on Friday afternoon due to an earlier incident, and ended up in the Pontefract area.

A spokesperson for CrossCountry said: “Unfortunately, while being diverted because of an earlier event, our 14:35 service from Newcastle to Reading was involved in an operational incident near Pontefract that meant it was unable to continue. After a delay the train was able to travel to Sheffield were it was terminated...
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How the heck does this happen?
 
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Bromley boy

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Very simply, it happens where the signaller sets a wrong route which the driver doesn’t sign, and the driver takes it.
 
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sw1ller

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Sensationalised headline to something that happens quite often. Slow news day somewhere!
 
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Shaw S Hunter

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Bromley boy said:
Very simply, it happens where the signaller sets a wrong route which the driver doesn’t sign, and the driver takes it.
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In this case there could be a little more to it. The train should have operated via Doncaster but was evidently diverted south of York to the Pontefract line. This is a regular XC diversion between York and Sheffield. My guess is, and I admit this is somewhat speculative, that XC control agreed with Network Rail to still serve Doncaster by running via Askern. But I doubt many XC drivers sign that way and control may have failed to check the route knowledge of this specific driver. If I am right it could be that as far as the signaller was concerned it was not a wrong route. The alternative is that the signaller was told to send all diverted traffic via Askern, a regular diversion for EC, with nobody realising that this would be a problem for XC. Of course the question still arises as to why the driver accepted a route they didn't sign. Unlikely though that we will find out what actually happened.
 
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Loop & Link

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May have been some confusion, service was wrong routed at Ferrybridge meant to be going towards Sheffield via the booked diversion missing out Doncaster, however it ended up heading towards Knottingley & Doncaster.
 
Bromley boy

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Shaw S Hunter said:
In this case there could be a little more to it. The train should have operated via Doncaster but was evidently diverted south of York to the Pontefract line. This is a regular XC diversion between York and Sheffield. My guess is, and I admit this is somewhat speculative, that XC control agreed with Network Rail to still serve Doncaster by running via Askern. But I doubt many XC drivers sign that way and control may have failed to check the route knowledge of this specific driver. If I am right it could be that as far as the signaller was concerned it was not a wrong route. The alternative is that the signaller was told to send all diverted traffic via Askern, a regular diversion for EC, with nobody realising that this would be a problem for XC. Of course the question still arises as to why the driver accepted a route they didn't sign. Unlikely though that we will find out what actually happened.
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That’s insightful, thanks.

Easy enough for it to happen with depots with different route knowledge.
 
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Economist

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Not the first time a "steering wheel" has been mentioned. One of my former colleagues from a previous role asked me, upon hearing that I'd be driving trains, a question about whether trains have steering wheels.

Yeah, of course they do, that's why we train drivers make £50k/year, we have to use the steering wheel to finely balance the train on top of the rails. It requires a serious level of skill and takes twenty years to master the craft. When the driver gets their small adjustments wrong the train comes of the rails and has to be driven back on top of them again, causes a lot of the delays everyone complains about...
 
Harbornite

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Economist said:
Not the first time a "steering wheel" has been mentioned. One of my former colleagues from a previous role asked me, upon hearing that I'd be driving trains, a question about whether trains have steering wheels.

Yeah, of course they do, that's why we train drivers make £50k/year, we have to use the steering wheel to finely balance the train on top of the rails. It requires a serious level of skill and takes twenty years to master the craft. When the driver gets their small adjustments wrong the train comes of the rails and has to be driven back on top of them again, causes a lot of the delays everyone complains about...
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Are you sure he wasn't joking?
 
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Economist

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Wouldn't say so, she was an apprentice in Admin or HR or something like that. Nice enough but asked lots of daft things, unbeatable at Mario Kart though...
 
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Essexman

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Economist said:
Not the first time a "steering wheel" has been mentioned. One of my former colleagues from a previous role asked me, upon hearing that I'd be driving trains, a question about whether trains have steering wheels.

Yeah, of course they do, that's why we train drivers make £50k/year, we have to use the steering wheel to finely balance the train on top of the rails. It requires a serious level of skill and takes twenty years to master the craft. When the driver gets their small adjustments wrong the train comes of the rails and has to be driven back on top of them again, causes a lot of the delays everyone complains about...
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Even harder for underground drivers who have to steer in the dark.
 
_toommm_

_toommm_

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Essexman said:
Even harder for underground drivers who have to steer in the dark.
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Underground trains don't have steering wheels... how would one be expected to see where it's facing if it's dark? They use joysticks.

Some people on this forum....
 
KingDaveRa

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https://news.sky.com/story/passengers-stuck-after-train-driver-gets-lost-11386277

Baffled train passengers ended up in South Yorkshire after their driver got "lost" on a route from Newcastle to Reading.

Jeni Harvey, who was riding the CrossCountry Train service, tweeted to say she was "stuck because the driver went the wrong way" on Friday.


She added: "Who knew this was even possible?"

Twitter user Ruth Adams replied: "I really did not know that trains could get lost!"

Ms Harvey tweeted back: "No! You wouldn't, would you?! But as hundreds of us unfortunately found yesterday, indeed they can...!"

The train was eventually redirected to Sheffield where the service was terminated, The Yorkshire Post reports.


Jeni Harvey@Jeniharvey

Currently on a lost train somewhere near Pontefract. We're stuck because the driver "went the wrong way." Who knew this was even possible?!​

Passengers then had to catch a different train to their intended destination.

A CrossCountry spokesperson said: "Unfortunately, while being diverted because of an earlier event, our 14:35 service from Newcastle to Reading was involved in an operational incident near Pontefract that meant it was unable to continue.

"After a delay the train was able to travel to Sheffield were it was terminated, and customers were able to continue their journeys on alternative services.

"The cause of this incident is currently being investigated."

Ms Harvey's train was "lost" days after disruptions followed the largest timetable shake-up in Britain for decades.

More than four million trains were rescheduled in the move, but passengers complained after many were cancelled.
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​
I'm baffled by this. Drivers can't get 'lost', they go where the track goes. It's a signalling issue, surely?!
 
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syorksdeano

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_toommm_ said:
Underground trains don't have steering wheels... how would one be expected to see where it's facing if it's dark? They use joysticks.

Some people on this forum....
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I thought they used PlayStation controllers?

Anyway good of Sky News to say that the train got diverted to Sheffield..... Given that it was one of the scheduled stops anyway
 
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Ianno87

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From what I can gather, train was sent along a diversionary route the driver didn't sign.

The "lost" part is from a passenger's Tweet, who's obviously misunderstood the situation from the driver "not knowing the way".
 
_toommm_

_toommm_

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syorksdeano said:
I thought they used PlayStation controllers?

Anyway good of Sky News to say that the train got diverted to Sheffield..... Given that it was one of the scheduled stops anyway
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I always find myself wondering why we stop at stations we're booked to call at too :D:D
 
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scotraildriver

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To be fair some foreign trains do LOOK like they have steering wheels like this Swiss thing.
hqdefault.jpg
 
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Geeves

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On a similar note they tried sending the already diverted Lime St - Euston on an additional diversion to Manchester Victoria the other week. It didn't make the the (usually sensationalist) Evening news thankfully! Afters setting back to Eccles from Ordsall lane it went on its merry way. Shame Id have liked have seen a Pendo at Vic.

As for Yorkshire and those routes around there its not surprising you could go round in three circles around Donny and SY and WY and never never use the same line twice!
 
_toommm_

_toommm_

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I'm surprised they didn't cancel it with the cancellation reason of 'Due to a mishap' - This is a real cancellation code too :D
 
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MichaelAMW

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Does the junction where the driver went wrong have approach control, flashing yellows etc. so that it's possible to know about the wrong route in advance? It's presumably not always possible to stop in time.
 
47271

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My wife swears that when she was on an Inter City cross country as a kid back in the day, it ground to a halt somewhere in the Midlands.

The guard announced 'if there's a driver on board who knows their way through (eg Tamworth, she can't remember exactly where) can they report to the guard.' The train sat for another five minutes. 'If there's ANYONE on board who knows their way through Tamworth...'
 
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Essexman

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underbank said:
After the Grayrigg Pendolino accident, one newspaper reported that the driver had tried valiantly to keep the train on the rails.
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That came from statements from Branson & Virgin - as reported in The Telegraph -

"The driver came around the corner, the line was defective and the train went off the line," Sir Richard said. "But he has carried on sitting in his carriage for half a mile running the train on the stone. He could have tried to get back and protect himself."

Later, however, a Virgin spokesman conceded that there was little any driver could do - he could not control or steer once a train had left the rails
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High Dyke

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Shaw S Hunter said:
In this case there could be a little more to it. The train should have operated via Doncaster but was evidently diverted south of York to the Pontefract line. This is a regular XC diversion between York and Sheffield. My guess is, and I admit this is somewhat speculative, that XC control agreed with Network Rail to still serve Doncaster by running via Askern. But I doubt many XC drivers sign that way and control may have failed to check the route knowledge of this specific driver. If I am right it could be that as far as the signaller was concerned it was not a wrong route. The alternative is that the signaller was told to send all diverted traffic via Askern, a regular diversion for EC, with nobody realising that this would be a problem for XC. Of course the question still arises as to why the driver accepted a route they didn't sign. Unlikely though that we will find out what actually happened.
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Speculation can be fun sometimes...

Ianno87 said:
From what I can gather, train was sent along a diversionary route the driver didn't sign.

The "lost" part is from a passenger's Tweet, who's obviously misunderstood the situation from the driver "not knowing the way".
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Made a few enquiries on this subject. It seems that the driver was ex-Grand Central and signed the Askern branch; hence the reason he may have taken the route, but not thought to question it - even though they should... The guard doesn't sign the route so the train couldn't continue towards Doncaster. Eventually it was agreed how to get the train back to its booked route, but not before incurring delay minutes.

As in discussion elsewhere on these forums delay minutes are split between the erring TOC and Network Rail, as both parties were at fault.
 
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Oxfordblues

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I was once on a train that was misrouted. It was the Saturdays-only Blackpool North-Manchester Victoria via the Whelley Line, De Trafford Jn and Atherton. It had the same headcode as the regular trains via Chorley so it was an understandable mistake by Euxton Jn signalbox. The driver climbed-down and spoke to the signaller who reset the points and signals, after waiting 3 minutes for the previous route to time-out.
 
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Shaw S Hunter said:
In this case there could be a little more to it. The train should have operated via Doncaster but was evidently diverted south of York to the Pontefract line. This is a regular XC diversion between York and Sheffield. My guess is, and I admit this is somewhat speculative, that XC control agreed with Network Rail to still serve Doncaster by running via Askern. But I doubt many XC drivers sign that way and control may have failed to check the route knowledge of this specific driver. If I am right it could be that as far as the signaller was concerned it was not a wrong route. The alternative is that the signaller was told to send all diverted traffic via Askern, a regular diversion for EC, with nobody realising that this would be a problem for XC. Of course the question still arises as to why the driver accepted a route they didn't sign. Unlikely though that we will find out what actually happened.
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XC don't sign via Askern. They used to sign Leeds to Doncaster via Hambleton but that went years ago mainly due to problems keeping the route knowledge current and refreshed. Hence any blocks around Doncaster area see XC services run via Pontefract.
 
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