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Dawlish/ South West 08/05/16

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DarloRich

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A quick one:

Yesterday i traveled back from Leeds on a sweat box voyager which should have gone all the way to Penzance. It was truncated to Exeter due to high winds and tides along the sea wall at Dawlish. Coaches were arranged for onward connections.

This conjured up all kinds of comments form passengers but i wondered how bad it was down there yesterday evening. Does anyone know?

The guard constantly indicated that the train would terminate at Exeter as Network Rail wont allow Voyagers along the seas wall in bad weather. Was it so bad?
 
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PHILIPE

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A quick one:

Yesterday i traveled back from Leeds on a sweat box voyager which should have gone all the way to Penzance. It was truncated to Exeter due to high winds and tides along the sea wall at Dawlish. Coaches were arranged for onward connections.

This conjured up all kinds of comments form passengers but i wondered how bad it was down there yesterday evening. Does anyone know?

The guard constantly indicated that the train would terminate at Exeter as Network Rail wont allow Voyagers along the seas wall in bad weather. Was it so bad?

Happened again this morning. I don't know of the conditions at the time myself but you know, I'm sure, that waves over the top of a Voyager knocks out electrical equipment on the roof. XC always seem to act cautiously and any whiff of high waves, Voyagers get canned.
 
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DarloRich

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Happened again this morning. I don't know of the conditions at the time myself but you know know, I'm sure, that waves over the top of a Voyager knocks out electrical equipment on the roof. XC always seem to act cautiously and any whiff of high waves, Voyagers get canned.

Thanks. I think the main source of amusement was the clear blue sky and hot sun as far as Birmingham. The air con was u/s and the train was roasting leading to helpful comments about how cool a drenching might be!
 

Phil.

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Very high tides this week (7 metre range) with a fairly stiff onshore breeze yesterday.
 

HowardGWR

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Nobody picked up the Back to the Future in the thread title. :)
 
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iantherev

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Since a Voyager became stuck on the sea wall earlier this year, XC have tended to terminate Voyagers at Exeter/Plymouth at the slightest possible risk in the forecast. I've stood on Exeter St Davids with almost no wind whatsoever while the announcements say that trains are terminating due to high winds at Dawlish.
 

hello

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Since a Voyager became stuck on the sea wall earlier this year, XC have tended to terminate Voyagers at Exeter/Plymouth at the slightest possible risk in the forecast. I've stood on Exeter St Davids with almost no wind whatsoever while the announcements say that trains are terminating due to high winds at Dawlish.

i think you will find it is network rail that dont allow voyagers over sea wall when high winds are forecast, not xc
 

brompton rail

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Although not all XC trains were cancelled, of course. 05.20, 06.25, 07.25 services from Plymouth ran as booked, as did the first Bristol to Plymouth working. After that westbound service the next departure west was 06.00 from Leeds to Plymouth which arrived Plymouth just 4 mins late. The Leeds train is of course an HST!
 

Master29

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Can`t really understand the decision today by XC to cancel trains earlier this morning due to inclement weather. Looking at the Dawlish Cam rewind this morning looked fine to me. Iv`e often seen it much worse with Voyagers running. Strange decision this.
 

gimmea50anyday

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The curse of the salties strike again!

Sea water can short out the braking resistors' on the roof of the trains, and Dawlish is known to be rough to the infrastructure. As sometimes they adopt single line working the XC services may be cancelled in favour of the larger capacity GW HST's in order to thin out the service and minimise delays as well as mitigating any risk of stranding trains.
 

talltim

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Can't they cope with a beautiful sunny day? <D

Disclaimer. I'm oop north. Other weather is available.
 

Harbornite

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Sometimes they run down trains on the up line during stormy weather, but I'm not sure how effective this is.
 

74A

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The guard constantly indicated that the train would terminate at Exeter as Network Rail wont allow Voyagers along the seas wall in bad weather. Was it so bad?

Did they really say that. Its XC who won't send them as Voyagers weren't designed to work when immersed in salt water.
 

richw

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Very high Spring tides combined with easterly winds is the normal problem. We had both of these this morning. I know the Penzance Glasgow service was cancelled this morning.
 

Rapidash

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I went along the wall just before 0900 (0820 out of Paignton) There was a slight breeze at worst (no windows slamming shut on the Sprinter) and I didn't see much of an exceptional swell, either.

XC/NR/Hydrophobes Anonymous have been getting increasingly cancel happy for Atleast the last year. Did the insurance premiums go up or something?

Oh wait, just twigged this was about yesterday - I must be oblivious to the wind, as I barely noticed it over the weekend.
 
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Woody

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Since the storm of February 2014 severed the only rail link west of Exeter at Dawlish for 2 months, this exposed section of line has become a political "hot potatoe" in Devon and Cornwall. Indeed the government has been under huge pressure from all of the South West Peninsulas political and business leaders for improved network resilience of this scenic but highly politically sensitive sea wall route. As a result major studies are now being undertaken by the Peninsula Rail Task Force, Network Rail and GWR in this regard. So against this background the government would obviously want to minimise the risk however small of the route being blocked by Voyagers as happened when a Voyager became stuck on the sea wall earlier this year. OTT maybe but unlike Voyagers, GWR's and XC's HST's can keep running under all but the most extreme tidal and weather conditions with the joint benefits that the line stays open and the government avoids more political flack in the meantime! As a local that's how I see it anyway.
 

Western Lord

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Since the storm of February 2014 severed the only rail link west of Exeter at Dawlish for 2 months, this exposed section of line has become a political "hot potatoe"

Did you go to the Dan Quayle school of spelling?
 

Undiscovered

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Did they really say that. Its XC who won't send them as Voyagers weren't designed to work when immersed in salt water.

Indeed, it is XC who choose to run the Voyagers and XC who choose to cancel them too. I would imagine its cheaper to bus folks around rather than pay for delays caused by the salt water ingress to the electrics.

A link to a recent-ish Delay Attribution Board meeting:

http://www.delayattributionboard.co... XC unit failure @ dawlish FINAL SignedL.pdf

A little naughty to say Network Rail wont allow them to run.
 
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D1009

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Indeed, it is XC who choose to run the Voyagers and XC who choose to cancel them too. I would imagine its cheaper to bus folks around rather than pay for delays caused by the salt water ingress to the electrics.

A link to a recent-ish Delay Attribution Board meeting:

http://www.delayattributionboard.co... XC unit failure @ dawlish FINAL SignedL.pdf

A little naughty to say Network Rail wont allow them to run.
Buses aren't normally necessary as in most cases there are other trains following. Thanks for posting the link to the Delay Attribution Board, that explains why Voyager terminations have become more frequent of late. I didn't realise the Board's determinations were in the public domain.
 

AndrewE

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http://new.dawlishbeach.com/cameras/san-remo-silver-720p/
vidoes are of yesterday I think, looks a tad wet

I couldn't understand the reason for terminating westbound Voyagers at Exeter either, I looked at the weather forecast and there was hardly any wind - and that video proved it by showing the waves splashing up in the air and mostly dropping back down in the same place rather than blowing across the track. It was just a normal high spring tide. Happens twice every lunar month. Maybe there will need to be Tidal train timings again, like the boat train which was in the accident in which Dickens was a (non-fatal) victim.

Maybe XC should confine their Voyagers to other routes (increasing the capacity available by running pairs of units more often) and hire a fleet of IC125 / HSTs to run their west of England services... Now that would be an improvement in lots of ways!
 

richw

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I couldn't understand the reason for terminating westbound Voyagers at Exeter either, I looked at the weather forecast and there was hardly any wind - and that video proved it by showing the waves splashing up in the air and mostly dropping back down in the same place rather than blowing across the track. It was just a normal high spring tide. Happens twice every lunar month. Maybe there will need to be Tidal train timings again, like the boat train which was in the accident in which Dickens was a (non-fatal) victim.

Maybe XC should confine their Voyagers to other routes (increasing the capacity available by running pairs of units more often) and hire a fleet of IC125 / HSTs to run their west of England services... Now that would be an improvement in lots of ways!

The problem is Spring tides plus easterly winds. The prevalent wind is from the south and west in these parts so a rare occurrence having Spring tide plus easterly so.
 
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