I completely agree with you
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SWR Major Disruption 19/11
- Thread starter MontyP
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I completely agree with you
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RailUK Forums
No; insulting, childish and stupid is constantly reacting to suggestions that incidents like this reflect extremely poorly on the rail industry by shrieking "But you aren't an EXPERT!". I'm not a plumbing expert, but if I came home to find my bathroom flooded I'd be far from out of line to think that it reflected badly on the bloke who'd installed my new boiler yesterday.
kristiang85
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I generally find these 'expected end of disruption' tweets very inaccurate.
DarloRich
Veteran Member
The point is that the plumber may not be to blame and simply firing off accusations willy nilly might back fire. What happens when the plumber is shown to have acted entirely properly but your boiler manufacturer did not and supplied you a faulty product? - I am not asking for anyone to be an expert ( i am certainly not!) just that people try to understand what the root cause of each problem is an not try to conjoin separate and unrelated issues into a bigger one when not appropriate to do so.
The thing to remeber is the disruption is only the disruption occurring between Clapham Junction and Wimwblson due to a country line being blocked and not the other disruption.
Personally I'd struggle to separate the two out, as they are occruing at the same time for part of the day. However that doesn't mean that, that disruption might be over by 15:00, just leaving trains disrupted by the earlier disruption and not that one.
On a slightly related point, I think Mick Cash firing off accusations willy nilly does back fire on the RMT. It's a shame really.
I see the disruption between Clapham Junction and Wimbledon is over, which is something at least but a freight train has broken down at St Denys, such is life.
Panupreset
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It's not on my driving patch, but this 'let's just give up' attitude and run no service when things go wrong is becoming increasingly common and is unacceptable.
A lot of people within NR and TOC's are paid lots of money to come up with contingency plans and manage disruption. They are failing miserably. If those of us on the front line did our jobs as badly as they do theirs we would be off the road and out of a job pretty quickly.
What will come out of it ? 'we've held another lessons learned meeting'. Where the lessons clearly don't get learned.
People have had enough and we need to start hoisting that onboard and doing better. Whatever the disruption and cause the aim should be to start moving as many people as possible over as much of the network as possible. If that causes stock and crew displacement so be it, but at least your trying to run a service and people will be understanding of some further disruption ongoing until later in the day due to displacement.
A lot of people within NR and TOC's are paid lots of money to come up with contingency plans and manage disruption. They are failing miserably. If those of us on the front line did our jobs as badly as they do theirs we would be off the road and out of a job pretty quickly.
What will come out of it ? 'we've held another lessons learned meeting'. Where the lessons clearly don't get learned.
People have had enough and we need to start hoisting that onboard and doing better. Whatever the disruption and cause the aim should be to start moving as many people as possible over as much of the network as possible. If that causes stock and crew displacement so be it, but at least your trying to run a service and people will be understanding of some further disruption ongoing until later in the day due to displacement.
One issue which was picked up on in the Holden report is the lack of people to instruct the train crew as to what to do in disruption. There are no more than 6 people for hundreds and hundreds of train crew. It's never going to work when things go Pete Tong. Having more people to manage the load would help run a few more trains.
Llanigraham
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Are you able to tell us EXACTLY why this overrun happened?
If not how can it be indefensible?
jamesst
Member
This! It isn't unknown for guards at the toc I work for to revert to checking the companies twitter account at times of disruption such is the lack of information they receive.
The old adage that those on the front line are often the last to know continues to this day and thanks to continuous cost cutting is only going to get worse
Robertj21a
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Not at all sure that it's cost cutting at fault, more a lack of proper systems in place.
Warrior2852
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Well, this has been an absolutely terrible day between SWR, Southern and Thameslink.
I agree, it is now 4:30 and there are still quite a few delays. These updates on major incidents (minor ones are usually more accurate) generally mean mean "It will be slightly better by this time but there will still be disruption probably until end of service", because there are still problems of displaced trains etc.
One thing I want to bring up though is the buses. They have been discussed several times on this thread already, but, although I accept buses don't magically appear and it would take at least a few hours to implement, the impression I got from SWR Twitter was "We don't have enough buses for everywhere, so we won't organise any". Surely at least some buses, focused on more major areas (e.g. the SWML from Surbiton to Clapham, or some regional buses further south) would be better than no service at all?
I agree, it is now 4:30 and there are still quite a few delays. These updates on major incidents (minor ones are usually more accurate) generally mean mean "It will be slightly better by this time but there will still be disruption probably until end of service", because there are still problems of displaced trains etc.
One thing I want to bring up though is the buses. They have been discussed several times on this thread already, but, although I accept buses don't magically appear and it would take at least a few hours to implement, the impression I got from SWR Twitter was "We don't have enough buses for everywhere, so we won't organise any". Surely at least some buses, focused on more major areas (e.g. the SWML from Surbiton to Clapham, or some regional buses further south) would be better than no service at all?
kristiang85
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From looking at social media, it seems SWR are not committing to refunding season ticket holders, despite advising them not to travel.
Quite outrageous if so, there should be no question of that whatsoever.
As I said earlier in the thread, I am flexible and could work from home (despite having to rearrange my workplan and some meetings for today), and at the end of the day I don't want to take up a spot on an overcrowded train that someone who can't be flexible can have. But at the same time I paid for a service which I wanted to use, and I didn't get it, so I hope they clarify.
Quite outrageous if so, there should be no question of that whatsoever.
As I said earlier in the thread, I am flexible and could work from home (despite having to rearrange my workplan and some meetings for today), and at the end of the day I don't want to take up a spot on an overcrowded train that someone who can't be flexible can have. But at the same time I paid for a service which I wanted to use, and I didn't get it, so I hope they clarify.
Warrior2852
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To add to this, there is also a broken down freight train blocking the Southhampton line.
SWR Twitter is advertising ticket acceptance with Southern out of Victoria, despite all the problems being faced by them as well.
SWR Twitter is advertising ticket acceptance with Southern out of Victoria, despite all the problems being faced by them as well.
Robertj21a
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I think this is partly because it's First Group. They don't have any London bus operations nowadays and they are reputed to be unwilling to pay the 'proper' price for getting buses in during any emergency. If it had still been Stagecoach they would have had far more resources available (and, I guess, a more professional reputation for getting such things sorted).
The suggestion that: "some places will drop from say 6 buses an hour to 4 buses an hour, freeing up 2 to go do the emergency stuff" will never happen for the following reason - the timetables for bus services are registered with the Traffic Commissioner, so you cannot just remove a third of the service, the company would be hauled before the Traffic Commissioner and would get fined for not operating the scheduled service.
Also if buses could be sourced where would the buses go, to feed into train services operating as most of the stock was stuck in Wimbledon depot or Clapham Yard?
Yesterday (Sunday) the buses from Woking to Clapham Junction were scheduled to take 1 hour 50 minutes (they called at all stations to Surbiton then non stop to Clapham Junction), how long would that journey take on a Monday morning through school traffic, probably 3 hours and that is only to CJ. To run a half hourly service you would need 12 buses and each one would carry 70 people if it was a double decker, but there low bridges between Woking and Surbiton so you would only be able to have single deckers which carry 50 people. How many people does a 12 car 450 carry, a lot more than 50 people. Therefore a replacement bus service is a non starter when such disruption.
43096
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Not a cat in hell's chance. Basically any incident on the South Western results in two things: 1) disruption until the end of the day and 2) over optimistic assessments that normal working will be resumed in x hours, when we all know that WICC are utterly, utterly useless at service recovery and that they never recover the service on any given day.
deltic
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Thanks for the video link - a reminder about how "wonderful " life was on BR of old
Gatwickflyer
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Not that I think they would have had the resources to move anything like the number of passengers needing alternative transport, but the First Group do have their own internal division to provide buses in case of rail disruption...https://www.firsttravelsolutions.com/rail-transport-solutions
Busaholic
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Yes, a finger in the broken dam.
I how time consuming is it to cancel a train so it shows as cancelled on National Rail Enquiries? I ask because some trains are showing up as cancelles and others as delayed but are clearly never going to run.
The between 16:02 and 16:03, the 16:04 Guildford to Waterloo is Cobham was announced over the tannoy at the station. Being from platform 2 it was announced on the footbridge too. It was on the platform departure board. At 16:04 the screen flashed up correction and it changed to the 17:04 with no announcement.
The inbound service that formed it was marked as cancelled on National Rail Enquiries, so I suspected the 16:04 wouldn't run.
I had wondered if there might be a short planned stock movement but nothing.
Given the inbound service was marked as cancelled, how much longer would it have taken to mark the next service it forms as cancelled? Would they be hoping they might get some stock in place to form the next service?
This isn't the only service to be shown as delayed. Many still are but they are also still canceling services in the system too.
The between 16:02 and 16:03, the 16:04 Guildford to Waterloo is Cobham was announced over the tannoy at the station. Being from platform 2 it was announced on the footbridge too. It was on the platform departure board. At 16:04 the screen flashed up correction and it changed to the 17:04 with no announcement.
The inbound service that formed it was marked as cancelled on National Rail Enquiries, so I suspected the 16:04 wouldn't run.
I had wondered if there might be a short planned stock movement but nothing.
Given the inbound service was marked as cancelled, how much longer would it have taken to mark the next service it forms as cancelled? Would they be hoping they might get some stock in place to form the next service?
This isn't the only service to be shown as delayed. Many still are but they are also still canceling services in the system too.
Jona26
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And now further disruption between Wokingham and Reading due to problems with the signalling equipment!
Robertj21a
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Parham Wood
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One consideration for not running trains to say Guildford is how do you stop all the people for Waterloo etc. joining the trains? Guildford would end up with 100s of passengers milling around wondering how to travel further on. Correct and timely information might deter some but I suspect mainly will travel in hope! Maybe this was part of the reason for not running any trains at the start. However I would still have liked to see some local trains running. Surely there must be a contingency plan for lines blocked in this location or was cancelling everything the plan? It was a shame that SWR did not more fully explain why they cancelled all trains then at least passengers might understand. Communication is still not the railway's strong point.
I have still not seen why there was a delay to finishing the works. The news tonight said something about defective track causing a problem. I am sure the person in charge had a very bad and stressful night. That said the railway seems to be falling apart in many places at the moment.
I have still not seen why there was a delay to finishing the works. The news tonight said something about defective track causing a problem. I am sure the person in charge had a very bad and stressful night. That said the railway seems to be falling apart in many places at the moment.
Ain’t that the case.
You do feel that SWT would have attempted to run some form of service certainly south from Guildford rather than just throwing up their corporate arms.
I’m afraid the R in SWR increasingly seems to stand for Rubbish.
They are making me, should l find myself with a problem, less inclined to compromise and more inclined to litigation/police action ..You'll never beat the apologists on here Wolfie, they work shifts!
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Passed through Waterloo en route to Woking approx 19.45. I was lucky! boarded a packed basinstoke which was then canceled. Back to concourse- most trains apart from a few locals cancelled. Next woking shown at 21.00. Lots head for the pub to wait. Then an Alton is called and departs in less than 5 mins - mostly empty. So I got away in 20 mins so in circumstances ok. Was clear though station staff had no idea, no one seemed to be in charge and information screens bore no relation to reality. I know it’s a complex system and hard to recover when it goes wrong but seems to me SWT just can’t manage the basics - tell people what’s actually happening, which trains are running and how they get home!
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