Disruption to services - Storm Dudley & Storm Eunice

[stuu]

Yes, I did head out yesterday in my big coat and amazingly managed to enjoy my completely inessential trip to Sheffield for a walk and tour of its real ale pubs. It was a bit blustery but nowhere near as bad as what the weather forecasters were predicting.

How is the fastest wind speed ever recorded in England "nowhere near as bad as predicted"? Where is the wild exaggeration? Sheffield was well north of the strongest winds so of course it wasn't very bad there.

 

[Bletchleyite]

How is the fastest wind speed ever recorded in England "nowhere near as bad as predicted"? Where is the wild exaggeration? Sheffield was well north of the strongest winds so of course it wasn't very bad there.

Depends where you were. MK was quite tame, but once you got onto the M1 towards Luton (as mentioned above this was a necessary journey for medical reasons) it was horrendous. I stopped at the services between MK and Luton on the way back and it was like a wind tunnel, closing the door took some effort, and the bins were rolling around the car park.

 

[jon0844]

Other incidents that hindsight is great. Last night the 1930 London- Newcastle was held outside WGC because of a fallen tree. If they had kept it on the platform at WGC they could have opened the doors. Yes I know they don’t know how long the train was going to be there. But everyday is a learning day.

The train did stop on the platform at WGC (albeit slightly ahead of the signal, so it showed as being at Digswell). This was done so as not to foul the points for platform 4. There was the additional fun of the up slow being closed at Hatfield, so GN inners had to shunt to platform 1 (because of the LNER), use the ladder and change ends on the down fast to go back into platform 2 and start on the fast! Not a quick process, and it seems like only a few trains ever actually ran. By then, there was nobody around wanting trains anyway.

By having the LNER train at WGC, customers could abandon their journey and use a GN train to London (LNER stopped another train later also) or even arrange to be picked up.

I'm told plenty of people went to McDonald's, the local burger van, KFC and Dominos. The train didn't have food onboard, which was put on at Peterborough and everyone got food/drink there before continuing somewhat late - but hopefully having had the chance to stretch their legs.

At least it got all the way to Newcastle as it was going to be caped at York. And there were people onboard wanting to get to Leeds and Manchester.

 

[43066]

I think its somewhat different for air travel as no doubt people were arriving who had maybe set off many hours beforehand from different countries and had absoutely no idea what the weather situation was in the UK. In fact given that the red warning for London & SE was given at around 0400 GMT, some of these passengers may already have been in flight!

Also it just isn’t the same thing. Airliners don’t typically encounter fallen trees on the runway(!) and can land in surprisingly strong winds if they’re straight down the runway. It’s more about allowable crosswind components for them…

 

[yorksrob]

There have been criticisms here that the media only made a fuss about a red warning when it involved London, but also that the London red warning was held back until the early hours. Confusing!

Personally, I checked the BBC news (both radio and website) from time to time, and found lots of coverage of the red warning in the south-west when it was in place, and also lots of coverage of the red warning in London and the south-east when the warning came our way. Of course the regional TV and local radio (and regional news bit of the BBC website) tended to concentrate on what was happing in their patch; but overall I didn't see any London & south-east bias in media coverage (at least on the BBC).

I was listening to radio 2 Friday morning and all the news bulletins were "stay at home" and "do not travel" as was the Jeremy Vine show. To be fair to them, NR's advice was a blanket "do not travel" as well.

 

[infobleep]

It seems the rail replacement buses between Guildford and Petersfield are resuming. The 17:11 was the first one south. The 17:12 and 17:13 were still cancelled though.

The 15:34 was the first train for a while to Surbiton. It departed at 16:01. 17:46 seems to be the first rail replacement bus from Petersfield.

Still nothing via Woking yet.

 

[infobleep]

The media will always report tripe. Do your own research on reputable sites, e.g. the Met Office.

They are also very London-centric, which is why they were reporting the red in that way (they weren't until one was declared for London).

The BBC started their Web Site new live news reporting feed the night before when London wasn't red.

If any criticism could be levelled it would be that their earlier weather live disruption news was tagged Scotland and not UK. After all, I believe it was affecting Northern England too. Correct me if I'm wrong on that.

I find their tagging of news could be improved but that's outside the scope of this thread.

Currently (16.53) I'm seeing several later departures on RTT, most recently the 15.54 to Guildford via Cobham, leaving at 16.47½.

I think maybe they cancelled everything and then are uncallencing them as they know they will be running, which makes sense

 

[Cowley]

I don’t really know what Covid has to do with this whatsoever. From now can we stick to discussing the aftermath of this storm and how it’s effecting services currently please?

There’s also a recent thread about the issue of trees near the railway that might be useful if anyone wants to discuss that:

The major issue of trees falling onto the railway during storms. What can be done about it?

It's a bit of an old chestnut but why are all trees not routinely cutback / chopped down within say 6 ft of the cess?

www.railforums.co.uk

Thanks everyone.

 

[Failed Unit]

The train did stop on the platform at WGC (albeit slightly ahead of the signal, so it showed as being at Digswell). This was done so as not to foul the points for platform 4. There was the additional fun of the up slow being closed at Hatfield, so GN inners had to shunt to platform 1 (because of the LNER), use the ladder and change ends on the down fast to go back into platform 2 and start on the fast! Not a quick process, and it seems like only a few trains ever actually ran. By then, there was nobody around wanting trains anyway.

By having the LNER train at WGC, customers could abandon their journey and use a GN train to London (LNER stopped another train later also) or even arrange to be picked up.

I'm told plenty of people went to McDonald's, the local burger van, KFC and Dominos. The train didn't have food onboard, which was put on at Peterborough and everyone got food/drink there before continuing somewhat late - but hopefully having had the chance to stretch their legs.

At least it got all the way to Newcastle as it was going to be caped at York. And there were people onboard wanting to get to Leeds and Manchester.

i hadn’t realised you can’t get from Platform 4 to the fast lines. But that explains why the train was shown where it was on real times.

not sure if i would be confident enough to have a curry (or take advantage of the other restaurants) but if they had said it would take 2 hours maybe. Imagine the embarrassment missing the train (had they got things sorted quickly)

thanks for the clarification.

 

[Roast Veg]

My train from York to London is very busy but on time and no sign of any disruption at the moment.

Hats well and truly off to LNER today. There's a 10/20mph TSR at Welwyn and we were routed onto the up slow just before Welwyn North this morning, but despite that down trains are leaving on time. Very impressive stuff.

Other incidents that hindsight is great. Last night the 1930 London- Newcastle was held outside WGC because of a fallen tree.

As above, there's still a 10/20mph TSR here.

 

[Towers]

SWR Twitter is now casting doubt on tomorrow by the looks of it; a tweeter asking if there'll be a So'ton - Waterloo service tomorrow has just been told that it's "an ongoing incident" and to check the website.

I sincerely hope that they can manage some buses tomorrow to fill the gaping hole between Basing and So'ton if required, given the volume of passengers arriving at Basing with yesterday's tickets expecting to find a service.

 

[davews]

Nothing has run west of Staines today apart from the Windsor services which for a while looked normal. Had my afternoon walk through Martins Heron, the tree dangling over the platform has been removed and everything looked clear on the line. Did eye a chap in orange walking along the line towards Bracknell presumably doing a final check for debris. My friendly ticket clerk had been twiddling his fingers all day and knew nothing. Surely unless there is major damage somewhere you would have thought some sort of service would have been going by now.

 

[MikeWM]

The GN line from Letchworth to Kings Lynn has been open for about 5 hours now. They're managing to run about one train an hour to London (as opposed to 5) and about one every 2 hours to Ely and/or if you're lucky, Kings Lynn.

I appreciate things are out of place immediately the line opens, and expecting the service to be back to normal straight away is silly, but not having recovered anything approximating to a vaguely reasonable service after 5 hours seems really, really poor. Not surprising for GN who never seem able to recover from disruption, but still disappointing.

 

[handsomelife]

National Rail website saying everything from Waterloo is cancelled but Real time trains saying most trains are running.

Does anyone know which is (more) accurate?

 

[Roast Veg]

National Rail website saying everything from Waterloo is cancelled but Real time trains saying most trains are running.

Does anyone know which is (more) accurate?

I would trust national rail enquiries in this instance. Many Thameslink trains that never ran this morning took a long time to be marked as cancelled on RTT.

 

[Bletchleyite]

National Rail website saying everything from Waterloo is cancelled but Real time trains saying most trains are running.

Does anyone know which is (more) accurate?

NRE will be more accurate - a cancellation often doesn't make it to RTT's data sources until a fair while later.

Try this for a feed from the actual PIS at Waterloo: https://tiger.worldline.global/WATRLMN/ciss;graphic=1 (only works at stations with the Worldline PIS) - this is the exact thing people at the station will be seeing. It seems to be in "show only what's running" mode at present so you'll not see cancellations per-se, but if a train isn't on there it's not running unless it's reinstated at the last minute which does sometimes happen.

(For those who haven't used TIGER before, this URL takes you to the front page so you can select a station and display type: https://tiger.worldline.global/home)

 

[handsomelife]

Thanks both!

 

[infobleep]

SWR Twitter is now casting doubt on tomorrow by the looks of it; a tweeter asking if there'll be a So'ton - Waterloo service tomorrow has just been told that it's "an ongoing incident" and to check the website.

I sincerely hope that they can manage some buses tomorrow to fill the gaping hole between Basing and So'ton if required, given the volume of passengers arriving at Basing with yesterday's tickets expecting to find a service.

I'd be surprised if they can put on rail replacement buses. The one's that were planned to run between Guildford and Petersfield were mostly cancelled today and those weren't even last minute callups.

Looking on the Network Rail Wessex Twitter feed you get a good idea of what they are dealing with.

Conductor rail fire at Poole, a tree at Bracknell damaging equipment and a tree at Winchester where the trunk and roots are so big it requires a crane to remove them. These are just some of the 40+ incidents they say they have had to deal with.

https://twitter.com/NetworkRailWssx?t=wJbnIVj_x0r8LXpRUAUcjg&s=09

I reckon, armchair view warning, that Network Rail Wessex was unlikely in that the number of incidents they have had to deal with was overall more serious than those on other Network Rail areas.

More wind tomorrow won't help and I doubt the rain earlier did either.

The Network Rail area for Kent actually listed where the fallen trees were (obviously generalised). I would love to see a similar list for the Network Rail Wessex area.

 

[43096]

SWR Twitter is now casting doubt on tomorrow by the looks of it; a tweeter asking if there'll be a So'ton - Waterloo service tomorrow has just been told that it's "an ongoing incident" and to check the website.

I sincerely hope that they can manage some buses tomorrow to fill the gaping hole between Basing and So'ton if required, given the volume of passengers arriving at Basing with yesterday's tickets expecting to find a service.

It has to be said that SWR and GWR's response to this event has been shambolic today. The messaging has been appalling - yesterday it was "come back tomorrow" (which was reasonable in the circumstances) but then today there has been an adject failure both in terms of communications and even in attempting to run a service. The communications are unclear as to what the headline is, it's all couched in terms of "we're doing it for your safety" rather than a clear message of what is and isn't running. At one stage the NRE website was showing "Disruption across much of the country. TOCs affected: London Underground". The Underground was actually running a near normal service! As I write this, this is an extract of the information for SWR:

South Western Railway are working hard to run as many services as they safely can, they strongly advise you not to travel on the network until further notice. Unfortunately, It cannot be guaranteed that South Western Railway are able to get you to where you need to be, as replacement services will not be available on certain routes.

With many lines still blocked and trains and crew out of position, South Western Railway expect to see significant disruption today and you are urged to check your journey before setting off. A 50mph speed restriction is still in place across the network which is further compounding delays. We anticipate this will continue until the end of the day today Saturday 19 February.

Please ensure you check before you travel.

Ticket Acceptance and Refunds:

If you are able to re-plan your journey your ticket will be accepted on Saturday 19, Sunday 20 and Monday 21 February. If you are travelling on an advance ticket, please try to travel at a similar time to your original booking. Please note engineering works are also taking place on the South Western Railway network and a number of replacement buses are in operation.

So at the same time as issuing a do not travel for today, they're saying ticket acceptance from yesterday is available for today. Does anyone even think about this sort of drivel before publishing it?

As an example, I was going from Reading to Paddington this morning. Only TfL was running. GWR could not be bothered until gone 1000. No excuse: the line is open (relief lines at least, main lines blocked by a tree that's not on the track), if nothing else run some Reading-Paddington shuttles using 12 car 387s.

But worst of all, it's all utterly predictable. The inept, clueless, useless railway manages to screw it up every time. There will be plenty of people who were going out today and who looked at the train service and gone "I'll take the car" - the roads are clear. The TOCs don't care, they get it back from NR or the DfT. NR don't care, they get it back from DfT. In an industry that is on its arse for revenue and customers, that's a dangerous mindset. The Treasury may well look at it and ask why taxpayers are spending £billions every year funding such an irrelevance - and then pull the plug. Because the truth is we don't need the railway any more.

 

[Jimini]

I see Avanti have cancelled the 2025 and 2103 out of Euston to the West Midlands tonight. The last scheduled departure (2142) is going to be cosy…

 

[R G NOW.]

Hello, have not been on here for nearly 2 years now. The trains on the GWR were all stopped about lunchtime. I noticed on OTT They were abandoned at stations anywhere and cancelled.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I see Avanti have cancelled the 2025 and 2103 out of Euston to the West Midlands tonight. The last scheduled departure (2142) is going to be cosy…

There's a LNR at 2039 and 2109, I suspect those will bear the brunt, particularly after Northampton as it looks like it's 8 car as far as there then 4 come off and head back south - it's been set up wrongly and is showing on the PIS as "Birmingham New St & London Euston" - hope nobody ends up going north to go south by mistake!

I wouldn't want to be the guard of that if it gets to Northampton full and standing and they have to turf people off. WMT would do well to get another unit out to operate the 2240 to Euston and let it go north as 8-car.

 

[markymark2000]

Nothing has run west of Staines today apart from the Windsor services which for a while looked normal. Had my afternoon walk through Martins Heron, the tree dangling over the platform has been removed and everything looked clear on the line. Did eye a chap in orange walking along the line towards Bracknell presumably doing a final check for debris. My friendly ticket clerk had been twiddling his fingers all day and knew nothing. Surely unless there is major damage somewhere you would have thought some sort of service would have been going by now.

Trains were running in a number of cases, just few and far between. From how it looked (without the insider knowledge of actual trees down and whatever), SWR just couldn't be bothered. Where there were issues, Open Train Times had it marked on the maps where there were issues and you could see the line was open as a few trains were running).


Hampton court branch was open, services were random services which ended up being Dorking trains diverted. Why were they in place when the advertised timetable (for today was only for Surbiton - Hampton Court shuttles. Just run the shuttle.
Shepperton and Chessington seemed open all day. Services were random and plenty of delays though on those which ran. Generally, no delays on route and turnarounds at Shepperton and Chessington seemed decent, just seemed to be Waterloo causing delays and it seemed not wanting to set swap so that some of the delays could be reduced. Kingston to Barnes, line open, no trains. Hounslow Loop, line seemed open, no trains (trains advertised as running to Weybridge but I think there was a tree blocking the line towards Staines but the service could have ran Barnes to Staines).

When the lines reopened through Weybridge, the service was extremely limited.


Just seemed to be a case of 'We issues a do not travel warning, you want to travel, that's a you problem, we told you not to, we don't need to provide you with a train'.

 

[infobleep]

Trains were running in a number of cases, just few and far between. From how it looked (without the insider knowledge of actual trees down and whatever), SWR just couldn't be bothered. Where there were issues, Open Train Times had it marked on the maps where there were issues and you could see the line was open as a few trains were running).


Hampton court branch was open, services were random services which ended up being Dorking trains diverted. Why were they in place when the advertised timetable (for today was only for Surbiton - Hampton Court shuttles. Just run the shuttle.
Shepperton and Chessington seemed open all day. Services were random and plenty of delays though on those which ran. Generally, no delays on route and turnarounds at Shepperton and Chessington seemed decent, just seemed to be Waterloo causing delays and it seemed not wanting to set swap so that some of the delays could be reduced. Kingston to Barnes, line open, no trains. Hounslow Loop, line seemed open, no trains (trains advertised as running to Weybridge but I think there was a tree blocking the line towards Staines but the service could have ran Barnes to Staines).

When the lines reopened through Weybridge, the service was extremely limited.


Just seemed to be a case of 'We issues a do not travel warning, you want to travel, that's a you problem, we told you not to, we don't need to provide you with a train'.

I can't believe they would really act in this way.

Saying that I don't know why the rail replacement buses had to be stopped. Not everyone wants to go south of Petersfield or north of Guildford. Buses can go around trees blocking roads, although I accept buses and coaches are wider.

 

[miklcct]

What's wrong with SWR? Eastleigh was locked with all trains to Southampton shown as cancelled in JourneyCheck, forcing me to walk back to the Airport, but I saw a passenger train passed through the station non stop just now.

 

[DarloRich]

The 1910 Avanti from new street to euston is the fullest train i have ever seen. It is so full tue doors cant close!

People are unable to board and the train is still here!

It is a 9 car pendolino. All aisle full, every seat taken, people bursting out of every vestibule. I even asked if i could go in the bike space

 

[spyinthesky]

In this day and age of so many methods of communicating that the simple words of do not travel are misunderstood. Many seem to think that their travel is necessary and the ever growing circle of key workers that their workplace can do without for a few days.
I hope that those that chose to travel had a safe journey but for those that felt inconvenienced I have zero sympathy.

 

[DarloRich]

My big concern is that people on the packed avanti will notice the very much not packed lnwr train on the adjacent platform!

 

[The Planner]

The 1910 Avanti from new street to euston is the fullest train i have ever seen. It is so full tue doors cant close!

People are unable to board and the train is still here!

It is a 9 car pendolino. All aisle full, every seat taken, people bursting out of every vestibule. I even asked if i could go in the bike space

Computer is probably saying no. It was many years ago but I was on a Pendo that refused to go anywhere as it was overloaded at New St. No idea if that can still happen.

 

[Jimini]

There's a LNR at 2039 and 2109, I suspect those will bear the brunt, particularly after Northampton as it looks like it's 8 car as far as there then 4 come off and head back south - it's been set up wrongly and is showing on the PIS as "Birmingham New St & London Euston" - hope nobody ends up going north to go south by mistake!

I wouldn't want to be the guard of that if it gets to Northampton full and standing and they have to turf people off. WMT would do well to get another unit out to operate the 2240 to Euston and let it go north as 8-car.

Wouldn’t it be better if Avanti tried to source a unit rather than LNWR? It would be hoovering up their customers, plus the proposition of a rattler via Northampton isn’t exactly an attractive alternative, not least for the passengers heading to S&D and Wolverhampton who would have to change at New St to eventually get to their destination?