How was disruption handled in BR days?

[Andy R. A.]

Never had the 'Rose tinted specs' of past times, mainly as I kept a detailed record of events at work from 1975 onwards, and have put a lot of it, so far, between 1975-79, onto Facebook. Plenty of examples of what happened when things went wrong. The main thing through all of these was the fact that resources were 'pooled' rather than being scattered through different TOCs and Freight Operators, making it slightly easier to overcome problems.

https://www.facebook.com/WestCoastS...RxgJVMvfkCqLffjzyawAU8bGsyXAh1EZPMo2iqUTnZHGl
26.01.79. Points failure at Nuneaton, and 'De-wiring incident' at Tring. West Coast diversions into Paddington and the 'Inverness' into Marylebone.

West Coast - Southern Section N Gauge Model Railway

The saga continues, 43 years ago at the southern end of the West Coast Main Line at Euston PSB. Onto the Rest Day Relief shift, and back onto Late Turn Train Recorder duty. Two different disputes...

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07.11.77. Midland Line diversions into Euston.

West Coast - Southern Section N Gauge Model Railway

The saga continues, 43 years ago at the southern end of the West Coast Main Line at Euston PSB. Part 2 of the week of Early shift Broadcast. A Freight comes to grief at Wolverton, and the Broad...

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30.06.76. Tanker derailment Wolverton. West Coast diversions via the Midland Main Line.

West Coast - Southern Section N Gauge Model Railway

The saga continues, 43 years ago at the southern end of the West Coast Main Line at Euston PSB. Another week of Early shift Broadcast begins. A fire in Watford Yard kicks off the week, followed by a...

www.facebook.com

26.06.76. Luton accident. Midland Line diversions to Euston.

That's just a sample, there were many more instances of problems through the years. With the amount of material I've put up so far it would now probably take a year to read through it all.

 

[30907]

An incident from 1979-80 shows how little information was readily available.

I was a BR(S) telephone enquiry clerk.

On a normal day the Divisional Telexes would report significant out of course running, but this day there was severe disruption due to snow and ice.
These days, probably warranting a DO NOT TRAVEL.
An anxious customer phoned in, worried about his daughter who was travelling from the country up to London. The best I could tell them after checking the Telex was that her train had left Basingstoke an hour (or whatever) late and no, I had no way of knowing if it had reached Waterloo....possibly the staff on the concourse might know but I couldn't contact them, very sorry.
Customer info in times of disruption was certainly not good then - though I agree that the (relatively) unified system made re-routing passengers easier.

 

[Falcon1200]

Back in BR days we also had, in Glasgow at least, a telephone number which gave recorded details of disruption to suburban services. The only problem being that the message was recorded, by me among others, in the Control, and frequently had to be attempted several times, thanks to either stumbling or making a mistake, or, more often, someone swearing in the background! But at least we tried....

 

[Taunton]

BR's Prestel database was not an S&T function, but part of the Passenger Marketing department

That's a very interesting insight into those times, thank you. My supposition it was an S&T function was in part based on familiarity with the first computer/IT systems on ships, which were given to the Radio Officer, commonly with less than desirable results (especially as the first one such I had involvement with was not navigation or anything similar, but a computerised charging and billing system for all the bars and purchases cruise ship passengers made, etc).

Colleagues at university studying computer science were talking about this, and particularly Ceefax, in the early 1970s, and a couple at least went on to actually be involved, one at the BBC and one at that post office/telecom unit I described. Of all people, Prince Philip got involved at an early stage, and set up pages for Buckingham Palace with details that were shared among other private Prestel users.

 

[LOL The Irony]

I still can’t get my head around anyone expecting a partial refund due to no charting points or working Wi-Fi.

If they're advertised and they're not available, then I don't think it is wrong to ask for a refund. Using your logic, why should we refund first class ticket holders if they don't get a first class seat?

 

[ainsworth74]

To be fair the modern railway doesn't have newspaper trains to put you on. I've worked late night ECS trains in service to get people home though and on more than one occasion, just as an example of cooperation, the late evening XC Nottingham to Leicester ECS has run with an XC 170 and crew as EM'S 2L88 in the event of disruption.

It was only in the last twelve months that Northern, I think on multiple occasions (as it happened more than once), ran an ECS which was supposed to go down the mainline between Darlington and Newcastle instead via the Durham Coast (non-stop) in service to allow stranded LNER, TPE and XC passengers to reach Newcastle due to disruption in the Durham area.

 

[Beebman]

In the winter of 1982 I was commuting between Earley and Richmond on the Reading-Waterloo line when there was a heavy snowfall. In the evening at Richmond there was no sign and no info of any Reading train so I took a Windsor train to Staines in the hope of better luck as maybe something might turn up which had been diverted via the Brentford line. On approaching Staines I was very surprised to see in the Up sidings to the east of the station an 8-car EPB formation (4 x 2-car) with a driver and a ‘38’ headcode (Reading stopper).

This set did indeed pull into the platform at Staines just after the Windsor train had left and myself and a handful of other passengers boarded. It was great to see an effort had been made to maintain a service and that I was able to get home. (I also enjoyed the heavy arcing lighting up the countryside as it struggled up the incline to Sunningdale!)

 

[dk1]

If they're advertised and they're not available, then I don't think it is wrong to ask for a refund. Using your logic, why should we refund first class ticket holders if they don't get a first class seat?

I think the two things you state there are worlds apart.

 

[bramling]

The biggest difference - and this is only based on my memories of trips with my dad when I was a kid - is that a lot of the time you hadn’t the faintest idea what was happening if the disruption happened whilst you were waiting at an unmanned station.

No PIS, very few announcements, trains just didn’t turn up

Just thinking back to the 90s for a journey I used to do semi-regularly, commencing from a station which was unmanned after the morning.

No staff. No PIS. No screens. No mobile phone. No app.

If you were lucky, you got a long-line PA.

You waited til a train turned up, and if it didn’t then at some point had to decide whether to use a payphone to call a relative to come and pick you up.

We somehow managed, though!

 

[LOL The Irony]

I think the two things you state there are worlds apart.

The point is, both are advertised services not rendered, so it's not necessarily wrong to ask for compensation. Ok, such an action over wifi not working (unless you actually need it for work) would be frivolous and potentially time wasting for all involved, but it's still not wrong to ask.

 

[LAX54]

BR was one organisation, so there were no demarcations between different departments: everybody was working to the same aim and knew the aim was to get the passenger home. There were also all sorts of informal contacts that meant you could find ways of getting things done or keep others informed. You would normally try to keep ‘them above’ informed, but if you had to do something to get things sorted out and couldn’t get through, you did. You also felt that unless you did something really dashed stupid, if it was in the interest of getting the job done, management were unlikely to complain. Of course, there were times when it got even more chaotic because two members of staff had, while both trying to do their best, separately done things that combined to make things worse.

Remember, you did not not have mobile ‘phones and all the mod cons: a dialler ‘phone and a Control one was all that many signal boxes had, and I have worked at one main-line box where we didn’t even have a dialler and the Control one didn’t work in damp weather. And, with low pay rates, there always were those who couldn’t be bothered, but better rates doesn’t seem to have eliminated that problem.

On the Southern we had a dial phone, a Control phone and the good old circuit phone, not all boxes had a dial phone tho.

The SR had a booklet called a 'Circular 20' in times of strife, the book was dug out of the drawer, in that was a list of people that 'you' called to advise of the situation, the people you rang, also consulted the book, and advised the next on their list and so on.
Control called 'A' 'A' called maybe 'B & C', 'B' then called his list etc until all parties knew.

 

[2192]

And overridingly, none of this "acceptance" nonsense. If things went wrong, the expression was "any reasonable route".

"Any reasonable route" wasn't just for when things went wrong. It was the norm (if no route was specified/forbidden on the ticket) -- until it was changed by the privatised companies to "any permitted", and a complicated routeing guide with thousands of exceptions.

 

[Taunton]

"Any reasonable route" wasn't just for when things went wrong. It was the norm (if no route was specified/forbidden on the ticket) -- until it was changed by the privatised companies to "any permitted", and a complicated routeing guide with thousands of exceptions.

I wonder how the revenue attribution by route worked in older times, indeed pre-Nationalisation, when the Railway Clearing House used to apportion tickets between companies.

Prominent railway writer Cecil J Allen (actually an LNER employee) wrote that with a plain Swansea to London ticket he could arrive at Liverpool Street, taking the onetime LNWR route to Shrewsbury and Stafford, then changing to the former GNR service from there to Nottingham, Grantham and Peterborough, and finally the former GER line through Cambridge. But who got what share of the ticket, and how.

 

[Bald Rick]

Looking back, I don't think he had an ulterior motive other than wanting to help, but such help would not be offered now, nor would you accept it if it were.

Re staff offering stranded passengers a lift - it happens routinely now. I’ve driven several passengers to their homes myself!

 

[LowLevel]

Re staff offering stranded passengers a lift - it happens routinely now. I’ve driven several passengers to their homes myself!

It certainly does. I know passengers who'd do anything for some of the station staff on the routes I work after they've been rescued by them when rail replacement hasn't been available. I've done it myself in fact.

 

[Jim Jehosofat]

BR's Prestel database was not an S&T function, but part of the Passenger Marketing department. Two clerks (me being one of them between 1984-1993) and a head of section looking after the majority of the static information; with certain travel news pages being editable by the area/regional controls. Unfortunately, when you most needed input from those controls they were too busy trying to fix the disruption - the Prestel pages being seen by many of them as just an inconvenience with that odd looking TV in the corner taking up space.

For Ceefax and Oracle, there were two pages: one for current travel news and one for weekend engineering work. The current travel news page was edited by the Ceefax (BBC)/Oracle (ITV) staff, who logged into the BR videotex database and and re-wrote the content onto their own system. The weekend travel news page was a copy of the Prestel pages cut and pasted by the BR team into Ceefax/Oracle headers, and then uploaded onto the respective systems via a dial-up link.

I remember having a PRESTEL machine installed in the travel centre at London Charing Cross. We had our own page to update arrivals from Paris via the hovercraft.

Think the head of section at the time had the initials JM.

Didn't the BR pages on PRESTEL begin with 125?

 

[2192]

I wonder how the revenue attribution by route worked in older times, indeed pre-Nationalisation, when the Railway Clearing House used to apportion tickets between companies.

Prominent railway writer Cecil J Allen (actually an LNER employee) wrote that with a plain Swansea to London ticket he could arrive at Liverpool Street, taking the onetime LNWR route to Shrewsbury and Stafford, then changing to the former GNR service from there to Nottingham, Grantham and Peterborough, and finally the former GER line through Cambridge. But who got what share of the ticket, and how.

How many days did that take? !

 

[SargeNpton]

I remember having a PRESTEL machine installed in the travel centre at London Charing Cross. We had our own page to update arrivals from Paris via the hovercraft.

Think the head of section at the time had the initials JM.

Didn't the BR pages on PRESTEL begin with 125?

221 for British Rail on Prestel. Some screenshots here...

British Rail::Screenshots::Celebrating the Viewdata Revolution.

www.prestel.org.uk

 

[paddy1]

Not my council. You have to make an appointment. Then they can't see you for 10 days. That this message is conveyed on an App after 10 minutes of leafing through unnecessary pages, and "frequently asked questions" which only an imbecile would ask, is by the by.

Lol

 

[Failed Unit]

One of the rose tinted glasses memories was also good / bad depending on how you looked at it was holding of connections.

I have missed many connections at Newark Northgate because of a 10 minute delay on the mainline. Seen the local train close its doors as the guard opens the doors of the mainline service. This would not have happened in BR days and that connection would be held. However the negative to that was back in BR days I have waited at Lincoln for 40 minutes for a train that was held at Newark for a connection. So both policies impact passengers and I don't know how BR recovered the 40 minute delay. If I recall turnarounds were generally longer back then. But the holding of connections was a big positive under BR.

I was on more rural routes back then as well, but I do recall the use of replacement transport was a lot less frequent.

On thing I do find interesting now is at times TOC us a replacement bus for early morning engineering, but by the time it reaches its destination you would be better just waiting for the first train.

Communication at unstaff stations was impossible.

 

[Dr Hoo]

I wonder how the revenue attribution by route worked in older times, indeed pre-Nationalisation, when the Railway Clearing House used to apportion tickets between companies.

Prominent railway writer Cecil J Allen (actually an LNER employee) wrote that with a plain Swansea to London ticket he could arrive at Liverpool Street, taking the onetime LNWR route to Shrewsbury and Stafford, then changing to the former GNR service from there to Nottingham, Grantham and Peterborough, and finally the former GER line through Cambridge. But who got what share of the ticket, and how.

Drifting off thread in terms of 'disruption' and 'BR days' but it seems that the earlier companies could charge different fares for longer routes even under their own control. St Pancras to Oakham, for example had 'short+cheap+slow' or 'longer+more expensive+quicker' variants.

Not at all convinced that CJA could 'get away' with that. GWR Swansea-Paddington was a lot shorter and cheaper than many places that his convoluted trip would go through. Llandovery to Euston via Shrewsbury and Stafford was about 50 miles longer and so had a materially higher fare for instance.

You could, of course, book bespoke 'Circular Tours' that were assembled from 'single leg [mileage] pricing' with a discount applied on the total cost but then had to stick to your chosen route. The RCH would then divi up the 'legs'.

(That's how I understand it from old company timetables, Bradshaws and ABCs.)

 

[Taunton]

... holding of connections.

On Minehead to Taunton the branch services were arranged principally around main line connections on from Taunton, which they were timed to precede into there. The Up branch train could run late, commonly being delayed on the single line by a late down service, but the guard would identify who was a long distance traveller, if nothing else by their amount of luggage, possibly heading for the once-daily "Devonian" through to Bradford. At Bishops Lydeard they might shout to the porter "Call Taunton Up Relief platform inspector, hold the 'Devvy' a bit, six passengers for Sheffield", or whatever. Taunton inspector would call the signalbox to put the train in right behind the Devonian on the Up Relief platform, using the Calling On signal, and would station a porter there to grab the passengers and frogmarch them and their luggage forward into the rear door of the main line train. Guard and inspector oversee it all, door slammed, green flag, driver gives the Warship a bit more welly, back on time for Bristol arrival.

 

[WesternLancer]

On Minehead to Taunton the branch services were arranged principally around main line connections on from Taunton, which they were timed to precede into there. The Up branch train could run late, commonly being delayed on the single line by a late down service, but the guard would identify who was a long distance traveller, if nothing else by their amount of luggage, possibly heading for the once-daily "Devonian" through to Bradford. At Bishops Lydeard they might shout to the porter "Call Taunton Up Relief platform inspector, hold the 'Devvy' a bit, six passengers for Sheffield", or whatever. Taunton inspector would call the signalbox to put the train in right behind the Devonian on the Up Relief platform, using the Calling On signal, and would station a porter there to grab the passengers and frogmarch them and their luggage forward into the rear door of the main line train. Guard and inspector oversee it all, door slammed, green flag, driver gives the Warship a bit more welly, back on time for Bristol arrival.

wonderfully put!

 

[Failed Unit]

I do remember diverted HSTs through Lincoln when was younger. However too young to know how long it took them to sort it.

I understand it was easier back than then as all trains on ECML we diesel. But it was easier to find crew with route knowledge. However I don’t know if routes like Peterborough-Lincoln were cut as a result.

In engineering work the trains would call at Sleaford ( for Grantham) and Lincoln (For Newark and Retford). Something that never happens now. Lincoln with a more frequent direct service tends to get nothing as the trains pass non-stop.

 

[Bevan Price]

Although BR resources were far from unlimited, some termini sometimes had spare staff & stock that could be "stepped up" to work earlier than booked, to cover for a delayed incoming train. Hence, holding connections did not always mean knock-on consequences for the rest of the day.
Nowadays, some turnround times are ridiculously tight, and resources so lacking that one late running train can create problems for hours (or trains get cancelled, inconveniencing lots of passengers.)

 

[Gloster]

In the mid-1980s at Paddington for a few weeks there was a spate of problems, possibly due to a lubricating oil problem, resulting in HSTs having to be taken out of service and sent to Old Oak Common after arrival. The various supervisors were run off their feet sorting out the stepping-up of sets: this is not as simple as it sounds, as you have to check the fuel and maintenance intervals, arrange for toilet tanks to be filled quickly, get some basic cleaning done. However, the layovers that were on the rosters were reasonably generous, so this was generally possible. Although most of the staff would put their back into it and do their best to get the job done, being London you usually had a number who couldn’t be bothered to put any extra effort into it.

 

[Snow1964]

Basically disruption information was much harder to get as communication was more basic. Fixed telephones, no train public address etc. However as control would be busy during disruption, was a lot more making changes locally without waiting for instructions (adding extra stops etc).

But as others have stated, much more a get you on a train going roughly in right direction attitude, any train. None of the modern awaiting ticket acceptance to be agreed. If it was a mixed train with parcels and newspapers so be it.

And in the more rural parts, would even let you travel in cab or guards van of freight train to a main station, if alternative was stranded somewhere remote.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Basically disruption information was much harder to get as communication was more basic. Fixed telephones, no train public address etc. However as control would be busy during disruption, was a lot more making changes locally without waiting for instructions (adding extra stops etc).

In the 80s and 90s you'd often see a phone on the platform marked "This telephone may be used to obtain train running information from the signalman" which would be connected to the adjacent box. I think some may still exist in very rural places like the S&C, I'm fairly sure I saw one recently.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Basically disruption information was much harder to get as communication was more basic. Fixed telephones, no train public address etc. However as control would be busy during disruption, was a lot more making changes locally without waiting for instructions (adding extra stops etc).

But as others have stated, much more a get you on a train going roughly in right direction attitude, any train. None of the modern awaiting ticket acceptance to be agreed. If it was a mixed train with parcels and newspapers so be it.

And in the more rural parts, would even let you travel in cab or guards van of freight train to a main station, if alternative was stranded somewhere remote.

Someone I know who was an Asst Station Manager at a well known West Coast Station had many , worthy missed connections which called for action. The use of a rear cab on a parcels train was not unusual the train being signalled forward as a passenger train , (and Control advised) - and occasionally a light engine with the passengers in the rear cab with a minder. (not too far in the latter case)

Speaking for self , we missed the last South Wales at Reading but we had the pleasure of a ride in a BSK on the paper train via Bristol which worked well , and other passengers were given the use of a good waiting room , refreshments and importantly the key so they could rest safely for the rest of the night.

 

[MisterSheeps]

There was no snowflake generation, and far less contractual wrangling, so people just accepted that BR would try to do their best. 1978 i was heading back to Lancaster, bad snow at & north of Preston, Shap blocked, everything cancelled, platform full of students, BR rustled up an 86 & coaches to take us to Lancaster
Strikes were different, no information at unstaffed stations