Where else in the world do people have to be routinely stuck for hours on trains which basically are air tight cans with no access to fresh air? I'm intrigued.
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Heat related issues (25 July 2019 and subsequent days)
- Thread starter londonmidland
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Where else in the world do people have to be routinely stuck for hours on trains which basically are air tight cans with no access to fresh air? I'm intrigued.
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R
RailUK Forums
OFFDN
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Within the past hour I believe 1C05 was signalled onto the closed up fast at West Hampstead and hit the damaged OHLE brought down yesterday afternoon. Lucky there was nobody working on it...
All services are at a stop again as a result. Avoid Thameslink I would say!
modernrail
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There seems to be a lot of passenger bashing going on through this thread. It is completely unjustified.
I travelled up from London to Liverpool to be with my Mum for an oncology appointment (diagnosis and prognosis) on Thursday. Having heeded the warnings I travelled up on Wednesday evening. For a variety of reasons my journey took 6 hours not 2.5. I took this decision and bought a new ticket despite no offer in advance from Virgin to allow me to move my advance fare. I have already spent £600 in rail fares to Liverpool this month.
Today after a further visit to the hospital I need to get back to London. It is 7.41am and Virgin has still not updated its website to say what is going on today. The message is still showing details for yesterday.
Many essential journeys occur in or out the peak. Many people fear being sacked if they are late or don't turn up. Many people have to pick up children of look after vulnerable loved ones.
The TOCs do need to raise their game and be clear on ticket acceptance in advance, espcecially when fares are so high. They do need to be honest about the state if their trains...if they are sending trains out without working AC they need to tell people who can then say..hmm to I fancy the risk of sitting on this train if it gets stuck.
Also the Government needs to send a message to employers on days like yesterday. Our national infrastructure won't be able to cope. That is life for various reasons. Let your emoloyees stay at home wherever possible. Don't penalise them for not being able to come in. Instead we have a confused and fragmented message from organisations that hold no sway with employers in any case.
However, even if this message was in place...doctors, nurses, firefighters, those looking after critical infrastructure, Conservative Mimisters who urgently need to stab each other and any sense of principles in the back...they all need to get somewhere as well if the rest of the infrastructure is going to function to at least a minimum extent.
As for lesiure travellers...the Government should perhaps consider declaring extreme hot weather days (forecast 35C or over for instance) where ticket acceptance on alternative days or a refund is automatically encouraged in the lesiure industry, and mandated for the railways.
I travelled up from London to Liverpool to be with my Mum for an oncology appointment (diagnosis and prognosis) on Thursday. Having heeded the warnings I travelled up on Wednesday evening. For a variety of reasons my journey took 6 hours not 2.5. I took this decision and bought a new ticket despite no offer in advance from Virgin to allow me to move my advance fare. I have already spent £600 in rail fares to Liverpool this month.
Today after a further visit to the hospital I need to get back to London. It is 7.41am and Virgin has still not updated its website to say what is going on today. The message is still showing details for yesterday.
Many essential journeys occur in or out the peak. Many people fear being sacked if they are late or don't turn up. Many people have to pick up children of look after vulnerable loved ones.
The TOCs do need to raise their game and be clear on ticket acceptance in advance, espcecially when fares are so high. They do need to be honest about the state if their trains...if they are sending trains out without working AC they need to tell people who can then say..hmm to I fancy the risk of sitting on this train if it gets stuck.
Also the Government needs to send a message to employers on days like yesterday. Our national infrastructure won't be able to cope. That is life for various reasons. Let your emoloyees stay at home wherever possible. Don't penalise them for not being able to come in. Instead we have a confused and fragmented message from organisations that hold no sway with employers in any case.
However, even if this message was in place...doctors, nurses, firefighters, those looking after critical infrastructure, Conservative Mimisters who urgently need to stab each other and any sense of principles in the back...they all need to get somewhere as well if the rest of the infrastructure is going to function to at least a minimum extent.
As for lesiure travellers...the Government should perhaps consider declaring extreme hot weather days (forecast 35C or over for instance) where ticket acceptance on alternative days or a refund is automatically encouraged in the lesiure industry, and mandated for the railways.
Is this the
1C05 0502 Derby to St Pancras International
East Midlands Trains service
?
If so, RTT is saying it got into St. Pancras at 0749 instead of 0653; almost an hour late.
-Peter
EDIT: A load of other services are running around 30mins late now due to this delayed service, if it is the one I think it is. I haven't checked every service but those terminating at Bedford are alright, and so are the couple of services which ran a few minutes after the delayed service.
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I agree with this 100%. You can't blame everything on the passengers. In countries such as Japan, they recognise that if their employees cannot get to work, they lose money, and these employees go to work by train. If someone needs to get to or from London to see a loved one, they need to get there. "Just go tomorrow" isn't good enough for some people. Imagine if someone is in a critical condition healthwise and the only way a loved one can get there is by rail - would you want to be the person on here who got angry at someone for trying to see their loved one for potentially the last time? No. I thought not.
-Peter
reddragon
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119 short forms on GWR due to heat related inspections!
a_c_skinner
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Apologies if this has been asked, I'm on a slow connection (camping) and it is a big thread.
Was the OHLE all due to sagging/loss of tension in OHLE? All the OHLE I see has tensioning devices at regular intervals so what has gone on? IIRC the old Liverpool St lines were not well provided with tensioners but everywhere else is. Tensioners are in contact wires not the catenary wire is that the issue? These temperatures are only a few degrees beyond normal summer and this chaos seems counter-intuitive on both grounds.
Was the OHLE all due to sagging/loss of tension in OHLE? All the OHLE I see has tensioning devices at regular intervals so what has gone on? IIRC the old Liverpool St lines were not well provided with tensioners but everywhere else is. Tensioners are in contact wires not the catenary wire is that the issue? These temperatures are only a few degrees beyond normal summer and this chaos seems counter-intuitive on both grounds.
Well as an aside another dog got on the tracks today as well. They have been able to deal with this one more quickly but some services are skipping chunks of stations into Waterloo.
Back to aircon matters, I boarded the 8:02 semi-stopping service to Waterloo from Woking. It starts here and the aircon is rubbish. It isn't busy but it's rubbish all the same. It's not putting out heat as far as I can tell, just not working very well. This I think people mistake for the heating being on.
According to a news alert I got (a very delayed one!) this morning, wires outside York were in a mess. The temperatures around the country yesterday were absolutely bananas to put it lightly!
I don't know a lot about the OHLE equipment, sorry.
-Peter
underbank
Established Member
I'm sure there were "some" people who didn't need to travel yesterday. But I suspect the vast majority felt they didn't have that option.
Last year, I booked a Wembley stadium tour as a consolation treat for my son (due to cancellation of a big family holiday due to my wife's cancer!). We pre-booked advance tickets, pre-booked a hotel, pre-booked the wembley stadium tour, both of the latter, being non cancellable, non refundable. The night before, Northern apparently cancelled the first train of the day (Sunday) meaning we couldn't get to Preston to catch the London Virgin train. I'm sure railway workers would just shrug it off and glibly tell you to simply go another day. But that costs money, another day off work, an unhappy son, and re-arranging everything again.
There won't be many people going to London on a whim, with nothing booked, just to do some random shopping or sight seeing, where they can easily cancel at the last minute and go another day with no consequences. Most people will have reasons, commitments, pre-bookings, appointments, connections to airports for holidays, etc., that just can't glibly be changed.
Sorry if it has already been posted, but LNER have said the following about delays yesterday: (from The York Press)
-Peter
And the following, again from the York Press, is from a passenger on a stranded train:
I know that there is probably not a lot that LNER could do, but surely saying "Do not attempt to open windows" is not the right thing to say. I know that it was probably very difficult for LNER, but at least trying to get people off the train in an orderly fashion (official evacuation) could have been completed earlier.
-Peter
E6007
Member
Try https://www.journeycheck.com/virgintrains/ for the latest info on Virgin trains. Usually more up to date then National Rail but not infallible especially for services delayed past midnight
Exactly. I never go "oh, might as well go on the train today, for a laugh". I always plan a day to exact minute in terms of train times; even when I go to a heritage line! If I was in your position, I would have been absolutely livid. As I don't live near London, I can't just go for a quick day out. When I go with relatives from their place, which is a lot closer, that's possible and if a delay happens (as it did once, last Summer I think), we have more of a chance of getting home! But not everyone can just go for a day out in the capital and those telling people just to "go tomorrow" can shut up.
-Peter
Also, may I ask in terms of the dog at Waterloo, how did it happen? What idiot would go running after his dog on an ELECTRIFIED LINE? Surely he knows that it's not safe. And if he doesn't, there are bigger issues here.
-Peter
-Peter
a_c_skinner
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Actually they were a bit hotter than we often get, but only a bit, only a few degrees (should be K of course as the SI unit of temp difference) hotter than we get every summer. Yet chaos. There is a chap from the RDG on radio 4 talking tripe at present BTW.
I suspect it was at Ashburys, which shut the Glossop line from midday yesterday. They already sag enough due to not having tension devices.
SilentGrade
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This is utter rubbish considering this has happened north of the station where the UF was open to traffic
Oh excellent. As much as I moan, we do have a jolly good railway system and it's only for a few weeks every year (or not even that) when it all goes, well, wrong.
-Peter
So is there a reason for the 1C05 being late? Or is it another issue? Or just coincidence that it is late when everything else is happening?
-Peter
SilentGrade
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Sorry I should have clarified that 1C05 did strike the OLE but suggesting it was signalled into a blocked line was rubbish
modernrail
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A thought on train A/C. Presumably failure rates are higher on a hotter day because the equipment is having to work harder to achieve the same set point and the equipment itself is more likely to overheat.
Counterintiutive as it is, might it be better to put the set point up a few degrees on really hot days, to reduce stress on the system and therefore risk of failure?
I ask this out of techy geekery rather than as a serious suggestion and it would be very hard to implement.
Counterintiutive as it is, might it be better to put the set point up a few degrees on really hot days, to reduce stress on the system and therefore risk of failure?
I ask this out of techy geekery rather than as a serious suggestion and it would be very hard to implement.
"Jolly" maybe but "good"? Perhaps compared with less developed countries, but take Switzerland as an example (where the heatwave has been even more severe yet the trains keep running as if nothing happened) compared with Switzerland UK railway system is a joke.
To continue on a Swiss note, that's what they do over there, they don't run the AC at full tilt but rather have it set to run at certain number of degrees below ambient, so when it's very hot the air inside is still warm but at least it moves.
I think it is relevant. The poor delicate flowers complaining about hot trains for a few hours would have been fighting on the Somme or the Normandy beaches, experiencing and witnessing horrors and traumas that people today could never imagine, if they were born a few generations earlier. I think the comparison is valid in that it offers some perspective and I stand by it.
I must admit that with aircon fitted units there are often HVAC faults that seem to be present on a lot of trains. If you stopped every unit running with minor HVAC faults you'd lose a good third of the fleet on some unit types.
Firstly, I'll question the use of the word "routinely" here. People are not "routinely" stuck for hours on sealed units in the UK.
Secondly, you can find AC trains without opening windows in many developed countries around the world. When the job goes up the wall and the AC packs up people are in exactly the same boat.
Trains with no AC in other countries tend to have opening windows but someone spending 30+ hours on one of them in 40 degree heat with a very slight breeze (let's take summer trains into and around Russia as an example) is extremely unpleasant and I'd wager that 4hours on a sealed pendolino when the job is up the wall is nowhere near as unpleasant an experience as some routine journeys in other parts of the world, opening windows or not.
Not quite , earlier this month when it was not even quite as warm the TGV to Geneva was suspended due to deformed rails just outside of Geneva .
Why do people do this all the time , clearly commuter trains experiencing weather related difficulties in other countries is not going to make national news in the UK but that does not mean it does not happen .
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