Avanti to Preston and middle of the night cab to Edinburgh

[Carlisle]

I would imagine the contingency plan there does not offer much now there is no route retention via Dumfries.

There will surely also have been some TPE crews / units available, whilst not great using 5 cars it’s bound to be preferable to taxis .

 

[Dr Hoo]

Something that I learned at a relatively early stage in my railway career was that sometimes there simply isn't a better/cheaper/quicker way of dealing with a problem.

It was a lovely summer evening in 1985 and I was a BR Operations Manager on duty at Rochester just to keep an eye on things because the Tall Ships were in town and there were quite a lot of extra passengers about. The signalbox rang the platform: "Err, Guv, the traction power's gone all the way from Swanley to Gillingham. All roads. I think that you'd better phone Control." (No mobile phones in those days.)

I rang control at Waterloo and confirmed that there was a major outage that had the Electric Control Room flummoxed. Around 10,000 evening peak passengers, boosted by trippers, were probably on their their way to the Medway Towns at that moment. Trains didn't have radios, many had no public address system. "What are the chances of getting buses out?" asked the controller.

"Well, about zero. All the main roads through Rochester and Chatham are closed for a massive carnival that's about to start. Traffic throughout the Medway Towns is basically at a standstill. Any buses that might have been available on a normal evening will be out on specials and extras to do with the festival or trapped in their depots. No taxis available either." (No Medway Road Tunnel back then.)

It might have been possible to scrape up the odd Class 33 or 73 from Hoo Junction or Faversham but that could do nothing to significantly remediate the situation.

"Looks like we'll just have to hope that the power supply boys can fix it soon then..."

So everybody waited on trains stalled at various places on the Sole Street Bank or back to Gravesend and Sittingbourne. My wife (of a few weeks duration) was one of the lucky ones. Her train back home from work in London was stalled at Sole Street station and many people baled out and went to a nearby pub.

Eventually the power came back on and trains started to trickle through and by about 2100 it was possible to go home. Nobody that I am aware of spent any money on buses or claimed for taxis. Nobody was entitled to Delay Repay. And as far as I can recall there were very few written complaints about it either. Obviously nobody could post on social media or 'go viral'. Everybody got home safely that night somehow or other.

In rail operations on a busy network such as we have in Britain there is a small but real chance that something will go wrong and strand a lot of people in situations where it isn't reasonably possible to do anything about it quickly, especially late in the evening.

I always try and avoid travelling after about 2100.

 

[jagardner1984]

It does appear to me that as fewer routes are used more and more intensively, with longer trains carrying more passengers later into the night, the loss of "go almost anywhere" trains and the Thunderbird rescue locos that used to populate the WCML is more keenly felt.

One wonders the comparative costs given the frequency of such incidents for a whole variety of reasons, from weather to technical issues, whether some "standby" coaching stock and a bimode , with some freight operator contracted to provide driver cover at 3 locations, around London, around the midlands (Crewe and York being obvious locations), around Central Scotland, versus the hundreds of taxis that were doubtless required last night. Even assuming 100% occupancy (one would assume for a 200 mile journey they did not require, unless willing, 3 adult strangers to sit errrr ..... cheek to cheek, so to speak, in the back of a minicab), the cost of this journey could easily be £100/passenger, in addition to whatever other costs are incurred in delay repay / compensation / accomodation. The processing of these scale of costs and the passing of them between railway organisations will also add significantly to the overall costs to the industry.

Whilst this is notably awful customer service example, it does not appear to be *that* exceptional for people to be stranded for protracted periods of time with no workable plan how any reasonable number of people will get anywhere towards their destination, beyond an entire 600 capacity train decanting into hundreds of standard saloon cars to complete a journey of hundreds of miles.

Whilst no bean counters like the costs of any form of resilience, it doesn't seem inconceivable that the costs of Monday night's shenanigans alone equated to the majority of the annual salary of a train driver, for example.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

I've seen some reference to the fact that the route closure was "for 3 hours".
So was the route reopened late evening, allowing through services to run?
By which time the M6/74 would be full of taxis carrying stranded passengers.
No doubt southbound trains were affected too, but not publicised on social media.
I see one group had many children who would not be allowed to travel alone in a taxi.
They had to hire their own coach it seems.

Again, you wonder how the railway makes money in these circumstances.
Given its strategic position on the WCML, Preston always seem to at the core of these incidents - you'd hope there is a Plan B for most eventualities.

 

[Falcon1200]

From what I understand the defect reported was at the Milk Water Viaduct south of Lockerbie, and (possibly as a result of the Lamington Viaduct failure) both lines were blocked; Therefore Scottish crews did not make it to Preston to work trains back north.

 

[DarloRich]

There was a series of tweets from a school group stuck at Preston. The teachers sorted out a coach via thier travel provider. The teachers, not Avanti. They also got help from a local fast food place to feed the kids ( 50+) with fish and chips.

Poor show by Avanti. Surely someone at Preston could have got the kids into an office space in the station rather than on the street. Surely someone is empowered "on the ground" to deal with these issues. Surely..............



( btw the tweet in the first post looks very R S Archer)

 

[Bletchleyite]

My experience of Avanti staff at Preston on the evening of the Lamington incident was of a woeful lack of competence. I'm not surprised this went badly.

 

[DarloRich]

My experience of Avanti staff at Preston on the evening of the Lamington incident was of a woeful lack of competence. I'm not surprised this went badly.

Surely, SURELY, someone is in charge on site. First action: Get the vulnerable passengers in a safe place and then away first. ( and 50 + young school kids on a day trip to parliament should not be on the streets of Preston at 11PM! )

I wonder if the issue is that YOU WILL use our corporate travel partner to arrange alternatives rather than just getting the yellow pages out and ringing every bus, coach & taxi company within 30 miles.

 

[Basher]

Travelling from Newcastle to kings cross yesterday morning, there was a Class 390 Pendolino parked up at York with class 47 attached. I have never seen a Pendolino on the East Coast before.

 

[DarloRich]

Travelling from Newcastle to kings cross yesterday morning, there was a Class 390 Pendolino parked up at York with class 47 attached. I have never seen a Pendolino on the East Coast before.

Are you sure it wasn't a class 56 and the new Avanti class 80X units? They are built at Newton Aycliffe and hauled south to Wolverhampton

 

[Purple Train]

It was discussed on Jeremy Vine's show on Radio 2 earlier. I switched off the radio as soon as Vine said the service went from Kings Cross. There was so much that was left unexplained that I briefly thought about ringing in, but I'd have needed a 20-minute monologue

 

[Mcr Warrior]

I switched off the radio as soon as Vine said the service went from Kings Cross.

Don't all trains for Edinburgh depart from London from Kings Cross?!

 

[norbitonflyer]

Don't all trains for Edinburgh depart from London from Kings Cross?!

Does raise the question as to why the original Tweeter was using Avanti at all, rather than GNER or Lumo.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Does raise the question as to why the original Tweeter was using Avanti at all, rather than GNER or Lumo.

Suspect that using the likes of Trainline will quite often result in a London to Edinburgh itinerary with the cheapest available same day / next day single fare if you travel mid afternoon from Euston on the 16:40.

 

[riceuten]

But presumably a driver was rostered to drive that train from Preston to Glasgow/Edinburgh, driving it to Carlisle is part of their job, if they then had to drive it straight back to Preston with whatever passengers had managed to get from Edinburgh/Glasgow to Carlisle then they'll be home early, or back in the Preston around the time they should have got to Glasgow. If a Glasgow driver, they're in the Preston Premier Inn either way, if a Preston driver their own bed rather than a Glasgow Premier Inn.

They're paid good money to drive a train, provided it's on rolling stock and a route they are qualified to drive and doesn't exceed their contracted hours it shouldn't matter what is diagrammed, unless they were taking wildcat strike action yesterday.

You missed out ‘they should be glad they have a job’ and ‘it’s only pressing a button, isn’t it?'.

The reality is that this kind of work needs rostering and resourcing, and NOT relying on overtime.

Unless you think overtime should be compulsory…

 

[QueensCurve]

Staff changeover at Preston. Presumably they didn’t want them stranded, but it’s okay for the passengers.

A question would be why 1S90 was able to penetrate the defect and why 9S93 had to be terminated at Preston?

While I understand that the service is based on changing crews at Preston, it is a pain that the service cannot be run through to eg Carlisle.

 

[30907]

I've seen some reference to the fact that the route closure was "for 3 hours".
So was the route reopened late evening, allowing through services to run?

Acco4ding to RTT 2 reasonably punctual trains left Preston around 2000, no doubt carrying the passengers off the preceding half-dozen which hadn't run.

one group had many children who would not be allowed to travel alone in a taxi.

The school's safeguarding policy probably didn't permit it, nor Avanti's.

A question would be why 1S90 was able to penetrate the defect and why 9S93 had to be terminated at Preston?

Because one had a driver to Glasgow and the other didn't?

They had to hire their own coach it seems.

Which probably did them reasonably well all round - hopefully the ticket refund is greater than the coach hire.

 

[QueensCurve]

Acco4ding to RTT 2 reasonably punctual trains left Preston around 2000, no doubt carrying the passengers off the preceding half-dozen which hadn't run.

The school's safeguarding policy probably didn't permit it, nor Avanti's.


Because one had a driver to Glasgow and the other didn't?

Which probably did them reasonably well all round - hopefully the ticket refund is greater than the coach hire.

So might it have been possible to use taxis to take train crews south to Preston so that trains could be worked north?

 

[IslandDweller]

I was caught up in this, but coming southbound. I was on the 1538 departure (1M16) Glasgow Central to Euston. It was an 11 car Pendalino. Not rammed to the roof, but a very decent load from what I could see.

If you look at real time trains this shows the service as cancelled. Yes, true, but not the full picture. The service left GLC almost on time (perhaps a few minutes late) but only made it to Lockerbie. We got there just before 1700 and sat there until well past 1900. Our conductor was doing his best to keep us updated, but made it clear he was getting little news – other than the need to inspect a bridge. He knew that nothing was moving, but not much more.

The doors were open and passengers were free to leave, but the conductor made it clear that Lockerbie has few facilities and Avanti control had been unable to source any replacement buses. Quite a few folk got off, I have no idea what they did next. Without wishing to be rude to the good burghers of Lockerbie, there is not much there. A couple of pubs with rooms, and maybe two local taxis?

Our conductor implied that there was another Pendalino behind us from Glasgow, which was stopped at Carstairs – but I don’t have any more details on that.

Sometime before 2000 our train (1M16) headed back to Glasgow. A slight pantomime because Avanti control told our driver and conductor that this was the plan, but nothing had been put into the signalling plan, so the signaller would not give us a clear signal. That took at least 15 minutes to resolve. We were assured that Avanti would pick up a hotel bill if we didn’t have anywhere to stay in Glasgow– though I have not a clue what claim process to use for this – that’s my research task for later. As soon as we started moving back towards Glasgow, I jumped on the web and grabbed a room at a Premier Inn. Got a room overlooking the Clyde, which was an unexpected treat.

We stopped at Carstairs on our way back to Glasgow. Another Avanti Pendalino came in on the opposite platform, inbound from Edinburgh. As I presume this was a VVST move, this does not show in real time trains.
By this time, the line had re-opened between Lockerbie and Carlisle and that other Pendalino was going south – but only as far as Preston. Loads of fellow passengers switched from our train on to that one. I don’t work in the industry, but I’ve read enough posts on this forum to appreciate that arriving into Preston at close to midnight, there was little prospect of any onward transport to Euston. I have no idea what happened to those passengers – be fascinated to hear if anyone knows.

I eventually got to Euston yesterday, arriving a full 19 hours later than planned. But at least I had a proper rest in a hotel rather than standing on a platform. Even if I am currently out of pocket, figuring out if/how Avanti will cover that hotel cost.

As already mentioned, I don’t work in the industry. But as an interested observer, I’d suggest that the standard Avanti emergency plan is not fit for purpose. It relies on finding replacement road transport at the drop of a hat – and at short notice after the working day is over, that just does not work. Especially as in this case there were at least three Pendalino worth of travellers – which could be 1,000 t0 1,500 souls. I also realise that with a government that is barely functioning and a PM who seems to despise railways, we are unlikely to see anything change.

My next trip to Scotland is on easyjet out of Gatwick. I'm fully aware that Gatwick is a punctuality disaster zone, so this is not guaranteed to be any less stressful.

 

[Kite159]

Does raise the question as to why the original Tweeter was using Avanti at all, rather than GNER or Lumo.

Cost?

Maybe he prefers the seats on a Pendo to the seats of an Azuma?

Could be a whole load of reasons

 

[Djgr]

Does raise the question as to why the original Tweeter was using Avanti at all, rather than GNER or Lumo.

Is this trying to suggest that this incident was a fantasy?

 

[Djgr]

I've seen some reference to the fact that the route closure was "for 3 hours".
So was the route reopened late evening, allowing through services to run?
By which time the M6/74 would be full of taxis carrying stranded passengers.
No doubt southbound trains were affected too, but not publicised on social media.
I see one group had many children who would not be allowed to travel alone in a taxi.
They had to hire their own coach it seems.

Again, you wonder how the railway makes money in these circumstances.
Given its strategic position on the WCML, Preston always seem to at the core of these incidents - you'd hope there is a Plan B for most eventualities.

It is difficult to see how a company like Avanti deserves to make money.

Profit should not be seen as a right but something that is earned through offering excellent value and services to customers.

(Obviously a million miles away from bus bandit corporate mentality)

 

[farci]

'...The Cumbernauld school kids had been on trip to London and were due to head home when their Avanti Coast train service to Glasgow was axed. The group of 55 were told after four hours of waiting that there was no way to get them home as the children couldn't be sent alone in taxis...'

Another 'non service' by Avanti?

https://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/kind-takeaway-boss-feeds-50-27793158

 

[PY33]

Staff changeover at Preston. Presumably they didn’t want them stranded, but it’s okay for the passengers.

Exactly. If the train had carried on to Carlisle it would have allowed some time to organise taxis and/or buses from there. That would however have needed a bit of lateral thinking and a willingness to work on behalf of the crews.

Avanti is run for the benefit of its staff - not its customers.

 

[6Gman]

But presumably a driver was rostered to drive that train from Preston to Glasgow/Edinburgh, driving it to Carlisle is part of their job, if they then had to drive it straight back to Preston with whatever passengers had managed to get from Edinburgh/Glasgow to Carlisle then they'll be home early, or back in the Preston around the time they should have got to Glasgow. If a Glasgow driver, they're in the Preston Premier Inn either way, if a Preston driver their own bed rather than a Glasgow Premier Inn.

Quite possibly a Glasgow driver who was stuck north of the blockage?

Or a Glasgow driver who was at Preston and who could have worked to Carlisle but would then have had to abandon the unit at Carlisle thus messing up the following day's service?

 

[DDB]

I think a lot of people are being harsh on the railway.
I think this actually shows the railways in a good light if people think about it a bit more.
The fact that so many people had to be moved shows how many people a train actually moves and at at high speed over a long distance and a very high level of safety. Which is why we need them! You can't magic up at short notice or have on standby anything else that will move that many people that distance.
The railway got everyone to their stations. That is part of the reason trains are expensive because occasionally they have to spend a fortune on other transport to get people there.
The twitter thread also complains/mentions about passengers hearing their train was cancelled while on the train. That is the railway company doing everything it can to tell passengers ASAP what it knows.
The railway company can't be held responsible for the taxi drivers. They called a company and asked them to do a job. It is the taxi companies responsibility to look after their staff including charging a suitable rate if necessary to cover putting them up overnight.
The railway effectively this for its staff. Part of the reason railways cost is because they rightly have limits on hours.
What realistically could the railways actually do instead? If you have 10 20 or 30 coaches and drivers on standby at every station why bother with a railway at all and just use them instead.

 

[Basher]

Are you sure it wasn't a class 56 and the new Avanti class 80X units? They are built at Newton Aycliffe and hauled south to Wolverhampton

It had Avanti logos

 

[Basher]

It had Avanti logos

As we were travelling at speed may not of got this correct

 

[DarloRich]

As we were travelling at speed may not of got this correct

o/t for this topic but i suspect this is what you saw ( here at Doncaster - not my picture)

56081 by Alan Padley, on Flickr

 

[6Gman]

I think a lot of people are being harsh on the railway.
I think this actually shows the railways in a good light if people think about it a bit more.
The fact that so many people had to be moved shows how many people a train actually moves and at at high speed over a long distance and a very high level of safety. Which is why we need them! You can't magic up at short notice or have on standby anything else that will move that many people that distance.
The railway got everyone to their stations. That is part of the reason trains are expensive because occasionally they have to spend a fortune on other transport to get people there.
The twitter thread also complains/mentions about passengers hearing their train was cancelled while on the train. That is the railway company doing everything it can to tell passengers ASAP what it knows.
The railway company can't be held responsible for the taxi drivers. They called a company and asked them to do a job. It is the taxi companies responsibility to look after their staff including charging a suitable rate if necessary to cover putting them up overnight.
The railway effectively this for its staff. Part of the reason railways cost is because they rightly have limits on hours.
What realistically could the railways actually do instead? If you have 10 20 or 30 coaches and drivers on standby at every station why bother with a railway at all and just use them instead.

Actually, they didn't. The school party had to make their own arrangements.

On the broader point this is the consequence of sectorisation and privatisation, and the TOC/NR split.

Incidents of this nature are happening too frequently and in my opinion need to be addressed (how is more difficult given the TOCS' obsession with bespoke rolling stock).