ECML/MML major power problems (09/08)

[ComUtoR]

Beyond resetting circuit-breakers or rebooting computers traincrew are not considered capable of doing very much useful with modern traction.

This is a little disingenuous.

'Modern Traction' is more and more software based. Gone are the days where you need to get down below the sole bar and start isolating various cocks and valves.

It isn't about whether of not the Driver is considered 'capable' or not. There is pretty much nothing else to do other than flip out an MCB. If I'm honest, I prefer it.

 

[Tio Terry]

This is one of the occasions when you can see a plus side to ordering new bi-modes for the MML. All electric trains grind to a halt whereas bi-modes have some ability to continue or get to safety.

Not a lot of help if the power failures have taken out the signalling though. Then there’s the problem of electric only trains blocking the lines ahead.

 

[ComUtoR]

Obviously in this case there’s the added issue that a batch of defective trains...

Is it a defect or by design ? We all seem to jump to the conclusion that everything is broken and faulty. They could have put the 700s into *low power mode.

The juice suddenly dropped out. Not sure that is the fault of a 700. With little information about what power was available, if VCB's tripped, pantographs blew, no power was available, units rebooted incorrectly, procedures not followed etc etc. I find it difficult to jump to any conclusion.

700s have been having changeover issues at City/Farringdon and through Neutral sections for a long time and have already caused incidents and evacuations. Nothing has so far triggered an RAIB investigation.


*where available.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

It should nowadays be possible to fix some faults on modern trains remotely from the service centre, much like Sky can fix their boxes remotely.

 

[Hadders]

We should not be in the situation where a power fluctuation causes an entire fleet of trains to sit down for 5+ hours, the effect being to strand not just passengers on those trains but also to completely shut down two mainline routes stranding their passengers as well.

All the other infrastructure in the country that suffered the same power fluctuations due to the power failure appears to be working normally. But our super dooper new trains are still not moving.....

 

[takno]

There is, of course, one overwhelming feature in favour of bi-modes and diesels, power supply whether they're moving or stationary

The stranded trains mostly appear to have power, and in fact the worst-affected appears to be 1E15, which is an HST. It's just stuck behind other stuff

 

[Hadders]

The stranded trains mostly appear to have power, and in fact the worst-affected appears to be 1E15, which is an HST. It's just stuck behind other stuff

The LNER trains didn't fail. They couldn't move because of the failed GTR class 700 trains ahead of them.

Did the 700s lose all power to lights, toilets, air con etc?

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

Is it a defect or by design ? We all seem to jump to the conclusion that everything is broken and faulty. They could have put the 700s into *low power mode.

The juice suddenly dropped out. Not sure that is the fault of a 700. With little information about what power was available, if VCB's tripped, pantographs blew, no power was available, units rebooted incorrectly, procedures not followed etc etc. I find it difficult to jump to any conclusion.

700s have been having changeover issues at City/Farringdon and through Neutral sections for a long time and have already caused incidents and evacuations. Nothing has so far triggered an RAIB investigation.


*where available.

This is a systemic failure that has caused 20-30 trains to sit down resulting in numerous on track evacuations let alone the 10's thousands of people being abandoned at stations. Trains need to be tolerant of a power failure rather than so clever they need a software engineer to attend to reboot them. If this was mid winter with dark evenings this would be a whole lot more challenging for the drivers to manage thats why RAIB should investigate

 

[Camden]

In recent weeks there have been major and pretty odd power outages in Argentina and Uruguay, Venezuela, New York and now here.

It's not surprising if trains struggled to cope, as I gather it wasn't as straightforward as power off/power back on.

 

[pompeyfan]

Am I correct in thinking SWR coped pretty well today with the only issues being a power outage at Clapham and CIS failure at Waterloo? Other than that everything ran reasonably (apart from the ‘normal’ issues)

 

[thenorthern]

Given that the power cut was semi-intentional in that the supply was not meeting demand so the National Grid deliberately cut off power to certain areas to protect the electricity network I would have thought the rail network would somehow be able to get power and not be affected by a power cut.

Power cuts are an odd occasion at my house as I have a uninterruptible power supply and backup generator so my house ends up the only house in the street with power which annoys the neighbours.

 

[Tom B]

Looks like some LNER services are going wrong road on the Hertford loop - 1Y88 for one.

 

[aag2110]

A friend currently on a very quiet 1P52 after waiting it out at Kings Cross, which seems to be only train to have left since 1800ish

http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/G46554/2019/08/09/advanced

Curious as to where the majority have gone considering 1818 and 1830 alone are often full and standing on Friday evenings. After some time staff at Kings Cross advising to go via Liverpool Street & Cambridge, but you’d have had to have decided not to wait around and headed over pretty quickly in order to catch the 19.28 latest to make the last train from Cambridge to Peterborough at 21.01.....

 

[takno]

Looks like some LNER services are going wrong road on the Hertford loop - 1Y88 for one.

They all seem to be going wrong line to Hertford. Presumably that train which has been standing at Watton-on-Stone all along is in the way.

1E15 appears to have backed up and is heading down on at Welwyn GC. Dunno if it's heading back to Stevenage to use the Hertford Loop

 

[Dren Ahmeti]

Given that the power cut was semi-intentional in that the supply was not meeting demand so the National Grid deliberately cut off power to certain areas to protect the electricity network I would have thought the rail network would somehow be able to get power and not be affected by a power cut.

There are no exceptions to load shedding, they’ll chuck anything and everything off the grid if needs be.

What NR and the National Grid probably have is a contract stipulating the levels of service (SLA - Service Level Agreement) defined to the smallest of hiccups.
Delay minutes accrued will be assigned to either NR (which will be reimbursed by the Grid) or the external delay code.

 

[Islineclear3_1]

They all seem to be going wrong line to Hertford. Presumably that train which has been standing at Watton-on-Stone all along is in the way.

1E15 appears to have backed up and is heading down on at Welwyn GC. Dunno if it's heading back to Stevenage to use the Hertford Loop

According to Open Train Times, 1E15 is approaching Knebworth

 

[bramling]

Is it a defect or by design ? We all seem to jump to the conclusion that everything is broken and faulty. They could have put the 700s into *low power mode.

The juice suddenly dropped out. Not sure that is the fault of a 700. With little information about what power was available, if VCB's tripped, pantographs blew, no power was available, units rebooted incorrectly, procedures not followed etc etc. I find it difficult to jump to any conclusion.

700s have been having changeover issues at City/Farringdon and through Neutral sections for a long time and have already caused incidents and evacuations. Nothing has so far triggered an RAIB investigation.


*where available.

Well, I’ve just got home. In actual fact I had a pretty sweet journey home in the circumstances, just four in the carriage, and I think all of them were railway staff of one sort or other, and roughly half an hour later than had my planned service run. Sticking my head out the door at the intermediate stops few alighted from the back of the train, so it seems the train slipped away barely advertised. One wonders if half the population of my town is still stuck in London, not much seems to have left KX since, and I believe mine was only the second GN service out of KX for many hours.

Couldn’t help smirking slightly at all the sat-down 700s and 717s as our 3x365 swept along with ease. Passing the two defective trains at Hatfield which still had punters on (a good four to five hours after coming to a stand) the conditions didn’t exactly look pleasant, although they were by no means busy.

I think you’d forgive me for being glad that we still have some 365s to provide some kind of service when ShamblesLink/ decides to stage one of its regular, er, shambles. Just another undesirable “feature” of these trains to add to the long list. Regular punters will know that they’re already not covering themselves with glory reliability-wise, with “cancelled due to a fault on the train” being the second most common message to appear on the CIS after no driver. Reliability should be picking up at this stage in the life cycle - so much for the comments on here “not much bothers them”.

 

[Mitchell Hurd]

I'm not sure if this has been said somewhere but I believe the 09:52 from Aberdeen to King's Cross is still stuck outside King's Cross (around 20 minutes away).

What concerns me is that on the East Coast Mainline, whenever there's a problem with the overhead line, power outage or a broken down train it nearly always seems to take anything up to possibly 5 if not 6 hours (maybe not quite that late but long enough).

GWR I'm pretty certain hardly have trains on the London Paddington lines (the section to and from Reading and Paddington) where if there's a problem like this, it usually takes up to around 2 hours which isn't bad. Or GWR turn a lot of trains around at Reading. But with the ECML, these issues usually (in a way) take over 2 hours.

I bet passengers on the stranded trains will want answers. If that was me, I'd want answers in pretty much every detail (if I emailed or wrote).

Then again (having said all this), I don't work on the railways so I guess there's more to it than think in this case.

 

[takno]

According to Open Train Times, 1E15 is approaching Knebworth

Obviously I'm watching it on Traksy, rather than OTT, but looks like it's in the right platform at Stevenage for the Hertford Loop

 

[takno]

I'm not sure if this has been said somewhere but I believe the 09:52 from Aberdeen to King's Cross is still stuck outside King's Cross (around 20 minutes away).

What concerns me is that on the East Coast Mainline, whenever there's a problem with the overhead line, power outage or a broken down train it nearly always seems to take anything up to possibly 5 if not 6 hours (maybe not quite that late but long enough).

GWR I'm pretty certain hardly have trains on the London Paddington lines (the section to and from Reading and Paddington) where if there's a problem like this, it usually takes up to around 2 hours which isn't bad. Or GWR turn a lot of trains around at Reading. But with the ECML, these issues usually (in a way) take over 2 hours.

I bet passengers on the stranded trains will want answers. If that was me, I'd want answers in pretty much every detail (if I emailed or wrote).

Then again (having said all this), I don't work on the railways so I guess there's more to it than think in this case.

1E15 is the Aberdeen train. It was pretty unfortunate in that it's been fully functional but stuck behind a broken Thameslink train at probably the worst possible place it could have been. The following trains have mostly overtaken it and headed on to Kings Cross, having mostly waited in station platforms.

The state of the electrification is bad, volume of traffic is high, and there is a preponderance of knackered old (or newish in the case of Hull Trains) trains. That means that there are more issues and more potential for things to fall apart than on the GWR. That said, I don't think the length of delays is a great deal worse on the East Coast.

 

[bramling]

A friend currently on a very quiet 1P52 after waiting it out at Kings Cross, which seems to be only train to have left since 1800ish

http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/G46554/2019/08/09/advanced

Curious as to where the majority have gone considering 1818 and 1830 alone are often full and standing on Friday evenings. After some time staff at Kings Cross advising to go via Liverpool Street & Cambridge, but you’d have had to have decided not to wait around and headed over pretty quickly in order to catch the 19.28 latest to make the last train from Cambridge to Peterborough at 21.01.....

Two trains left KX between about 2100 and 2200. Both 3x365 I believe, and both heading for Peterborough. The second, which was the one I was on, was very lightly loaded - with some carriages towards the front being completely empty. I’ve no idea if it got advertised at KX or if the station being semi-closed might have contributed to this. When I was there all the doors and gates were closed, but no one was actually stopping people from getting in and out through a couple of doors which were slightly ajar. I only found out my train was running by picking a random train and speaking to the driver.

Edit: the GN towel seems to have now been thrown in, with the CIS now showing a message suggesting they’re not not expecting to run anything else tonight. It seems what has run was mainly to get drivers back to home depots. Of course, quite apart from train and driver diagrams being shot to pieces and the “flagship” fleet of trains all sitting down at various random locations around London and the Home Counties, now they’ve run out of the 365s which happened to be at King’s Cross there’s not much to provide any kind of service with. One does wonder what became of all the evening peak punters, especially with the Midland route being screwed too.

 

[LowLevel]

Is it a defect or by design ? We all seem to jump to the conclusion that everything is broken and faulty. They could have put the 700s into *low power mode.

The juice suddenly dropped out. Not sure that is the fault of a 700. With little information about what power was available, if VCB's tripped, pantographs blew, no power was available, units rebooted incorrectly, procedures not followed etc etc. I find it difficult to jump to any conclusion.

700s have been having changeover issues at City/Farringdon and through Neutral sections for a long time and have already caused incidents and evacuations. Nothing has so far triggered an RAIB investigation.


*where available.

Whatever it is the 2000+ and steadily climbing delay minutes and 100 plus cancellations on the Midland alone are showing as TOC delays at the minute, whether that stays the case I don't know but that's a truly humongous delay bill for a TOC if it does.

 

[dubscottie]

So really you are saying we have barely enough, or insufficient, generating capacity because so many coal-fired stations have closed.

There is a problem. There is info (which I will need to dig out) that shows that the UK needs to import about 9% of its electric from France & Ireland during the day as domestic generation no longer meets demand.

Edit - You can see where the power is coming from in (almost) real-time here - https://www.electricitymap.org/?wind=false&solar=false&page=country&remote=true&countryCode=GB

 

[Dren Ahmeti]

Priority at the moment is to get the Up Hertford open - by moving 5J27 which has failed at Watton-on-Stone - as 1Z99 is still mopping up stranded passengers on the mainline and taking them to Hatfield, where buses await them.

 

[Tom B]

Radio 4 has a passenger alleging that they were told by staff that there were no trains that day, but that they could not be offered accommodation overnight as it was outwith their control. Is this the case? I thought that if there were no further trains that day, the passenger was offered accommodation or a taxi.

 

[Dren Ahmeti]

Radio 4 has a passenger alleging that they were told by staff that there were no trains that day, but that they could not be offered accommodation overnight as it was outwith their control. Is this the case? I thought that if there were no further trains that day, the passenger was offered accommodation or a taxi.

I’m just going to edit that bit out before the media jumps on it; there is potential for a tiny amount of services to run, but it’s all dependent on NR approving the VSTP’s, LNER actually having enough drivers and guards within hours, the Hertford Loop being cleared, and if the stranded units actually get moved.

No doubt there will be a lot of people in hotels tonight, at the TOC’s expense.

 

[Mitchell Hurd]

The 09:52 Aberdeen to King's Cross train I believe is at Stevenage or now diverting from there to King's Cross. Almost 16 hours some people would have been on that train!

 

[Tom B]

Sorry - my post wasn't in reply to yours, more a musing having listened to the midnight news bulletin.

I assume that drivers who are over hours can, in an emergency like this, carry on to the next depot but should be relived as soon as practical?

 

[dubscottie]

I would have thought the rail network would somehow be able to get power and not be affected by a power cut.
.

The book "Electrifying the East Coast" has a longer explanation but they have to be careful about where the railway gets it 25kv from and they need to make sure its separate from the grid.

Its to stop the railway 25kv OHLE becoming part of the 100kv grid should a fault develop in the national grid.

 

[Dren Ahmeti]

Sorry - my post wasn't in reply to yours, more a musing having listened to the midnight news bulletin.

I assume that drivers who are over hours can, in an emergency like this, carry on to the next depot but should be relived as soon as practical?

Oh good!
I believe the case is as you’ve described it; if the driver is willing to do that is another matter.