Bad Day at SWT NR Alliance Office 10-2-15

[30909]

After the Fratton incident overnight and short formed trains through today’s service this has happened. A major signalling failure outside London Waterloo led to them being unable to run trains into or out of platforms 1-14 at London Waterloo. You have to feel for the front line staff, those in control and the passengers.
http://www.journeycheck.southwesttrains.co.uk/

Following signalling problems at London Waterloo some lines have now reopened.
Impact:
Train services running to and from this station may be cancelled, delayed by up to 90 mins or revised at short notice. Disruption is expected until 02:00 11/02.
Customer Advice:
An earlier major signalling failure outside London Waterloo led to us being unable to run trains into or out of platforms 1-14 at London Waterloo. Major disruption is expected until the end of service, as train delays have been experienced as far down as Woking and train crews may be displaced and not immediately available to work their subsequent journeys..
Engineers have rectified the issue however due to the severity of the disruption, delays and service alterations are anticipated until the end of service today.
Trains may be terminated short at key locations to reduce the congestion between Woking and London Waterloo.
We apologise for the disruption to your journey this evening.
First Great Western, Southern Railway and Transport for London services are conveying passengers via any reasonable route until further notice.

 

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Your right about the staff. I'm sure there must have been some unhappy passengers. These signalling problems seem to keep happening around Waterloo. Anyone know what caused the problem tonight?

Myself and friend, who I happened to bump into on a short formed train just missed the widespread disruption. He had the pleasure of standing from Waterloo.

I was very grateful of his Portsmouth train being a few minutes late as my 17.39 Surbiton train got delayed upon leaving Surbiton, with no slow trains showing on real time trains as being directly ahead. Don't know if the Alton train was diverted onto the slow line shortly after Surbiton but as we reached Woking it certainly was diverted into platform 5, so yet another wait outside the station. Still I got the train I needed to catch and got lucky with the disruption.

As there is only one fast train an hour from Surbiton around this time, my options are limited to hoping I make my connecting train or leaving work earlier and catching the previous stopping service, which only gets in 2 minutes earlier.

This morning there was a signalling issued at Guildford, according to the guard, which may have been very minor and short for all I know. I was on the 8.20 stopping service to Waterloo left 8.25.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Found out the most likely reason for slow running beyond Surbiton station towards Woking yesterday:

Speed restriction affecting trains between Surbiton and Woking*

While conducting a routine line inspection, our track maintenance team found a defect on the line at Hampton Court Junction Crossing.*

Trains that run over this section of track will not be able to run at normal line speed, and will need to reduce their speed to 20mph while running over the affected section.*

This does mean that services running from Waterloo towards Woking will be delayed on their journeys until we are able to repair the defect; we anticipate that trains will lose about 5 minutes while passing through the affected section which is located shortly after Surbiton.*

We are very sorry for any delays this will cause to your journey.*

Message Received :09/02/2015 18:44

http://m.journeycheck.com/southwest...510&webMsg=true&&engWorksPeriod=&serviceTime=

I had been checking their line updates section rather than general updates, which is where the above is to be found, which is why I missed it previously. Surprised there hasn't been the need to cancel stops to recover from the 5m delays it will cause. Could it lead to congestion?

Likely to mean that until it's fixed, I shouldn't bother getting the 17.39 from Surbiton as I'll miss my connection at Woking, the connection time being 5 minutes. The 18.40 may be OK because my connection is booked to use the same platform and they are less likely to switch platforms. However if the issue delays the earlier stopping service by 5 minutes then it could get interesting as that's booked to leave as an ECS, shortly before my fast train arrives into Woking. In that circumstance the signalman may decide to divert the Portsmouth train into platform 4.

 

[3141]

I was on the train from Salisbury due in Waterloo at 18.19. Fine till Wimbledon where we stopped in the platform. I was opposite the information screens and could see that on the slow line platform all trains were marked as delayed. The guard announced there was a signal problem and only five platforms at Waterloo were in use.

We travelled slowly to Clapham Junction and paused there. The guard announced he would release the doors so that passengers could get out and use another route if they wished. We then travelled slowly to Vauxhall where the guard again released the doors. I got out and got the Victoria Line.

I thought it was most helpful to release the doors at these stations so that passengers would not have to be delayed further.