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Major disruption on lines out of Waterloo (15/05)
- Thread starter yorkie
- Start date
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RailUK Forums
Are you there at the moment Yorkie? I know there are points issues at Woking, guess that is causing it. I came back on the Reading line this afternoon catching the 1550, it seemed pretty calm then. Some delays/cancellations on the Windsors due to a failed 455 at Longcross and we were delayed 15 minutes outside Staines but think the Reading side has recovered now.
Andy Pacer
Established Member
NRE reporting a tresspass at Wimbledon.
Lines have reopened but it is pot luck! See reports in Evening Standard. Our SWR driver at Clapham Junction told us the exact reason for the long closure of all lines at Raynes Park but I'll not say as this has not been publicly reported.
Did an event in London today. Thought it would be easier to take the train than drive to Central London...
Get off the tube at Waterloo and enter chaos. Looked at trying to go via Victoria to the coast and back up - SWR confirmed that was a "reasonable route", heard a train that could be useful to get us a bit nearer announced. Went for that, and been sat on it for the last 25 minutes.
Urgh.
Get off the tube at Waterloo and enter chaos. Looked at trying to go via Victoria to the coast and back up - SWR confirmed that was a "reasonable route", heard a train that could be useful to get us a bit nearer announced. Went for that, and been sat on it for the last 25 minutes.
Urgh.
TrainGeekUK
Member
- Joined
- 15 Jun 2019
- Messages
- 124
“Due to large scale disruption across the South Western Railway network customers are authorised to source their own taxi and claim them back through the customer services team between London Waterloo and Basingstoke.”
Not a nice evening. Thoughts to everyone involved and hope the incident was resolved without any problems.
Not a nice evening. Thoughts to everyone involved and hope the incident was resolved without any problems.
Vulnerable person up a gantry.
MasterPhillips
Member
- Joined
- 26 Jun 2019
- Messages
- 55
How did an incident at Raynes Park cause so much disruption on the Windsor side? Massive disruption on the Weybridge and Windsor Services
I thought it was either someone vulnerable or someone trying to nick something.
I hope the person gets the help they need.
This evening I purchased a ticket and then immediately found what I needed to do wasn't happening due to the disruption.
So I went to refund the train ticket only to find the ticket office at Guildford was closed.
Gateline staff weren't aware it was closed and there was no message on the windows.
I will sort out the refund in the morning. I was told the office opens at 6:30 am, although National Rail Enquiries claim 6:15 am. I don't trust NRE to be accurate.
Crews don't just work the main or the windsor side plus passing crews can't get to London to work their trains.
norbitonflyer
Established Member
An earlier post (No 6) reported a Weymouth service diverted via Twickenham. More trains on the Windsor side would inevitably have an effect on those supposed to be there.
Our son just got home - having been unable to get into Waterloo at all, he eventually got Tube to South Wimbledon and a bus.
Despite having free accomodation here he's had enough of SWR and is buying a flat siomewhere (anywhere!) else in London. Can't understand how his parents stuck commuting on SWR and its predecessors for almost their entire working lives!
If you'd bought an e-ticket (where available) from us, the refund would be processed immediately (it would then be down to your card provider as to when you receive the money, but there would be no faff and no queue)
I was lucky; I got to KGX at 1754, and despite slow running on the Victoria Line, and the closure of the direct Waterloo station exit, I was able to get to platform 1 in time for the 1803 which departed at 1821, and pulled into Surbiton at 1849, only 7 mins later than I'd hoped to arrive.
We hopped on the train as soon as we saw it had the green signal. It wasn't great conditions on board, but we only had to endure it for 28 mins.
I see there is still major disruption this evening, and some 'fast' trains made additional calls at Surbiton, Clapham Junction and presumably other stations too.
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So... We are making our way back the long way round after verifying that the route is valid as a "reasonable route", but will miss the last train back as we tried more direct alternatives at Waterloo that were not useful.
Journeycheck says that SWR will refund taxis on the Waterloo to Portsmouth route - hoping that that extends to this situation, we are going from Victoria to Havant to try and head back up that way.
Can we claim for a taxi reimbursement and delay repay, or is it an either/or?
The other wrinkle delay repay - last week I used a ticket booked through work's system that got caught up in the Hilsea signalling disruption. Today, I am caught up in disruption elsewhere, travelling in the opposite direction, and using Other Work's booking system. Is this risking triggering any "please explain" system from SWR that could end up with me starting a thread in Disputes?
Journeycheck says that SWR will refund taxis on the Waterloo to Portsmouth route - hoping that that extends to this situation, we are going from Victoria to Havant to try and head back up that way.
Can we claim for a taxi reimbursement and delay repay, or is it an either/or?
The other wrinkle delay repay - last week I used a ticket booked through work's system that got caught up in the Hilsea signalling disruption. Today, I am caught up in disruption elsewhere, travelling in the opposite direction, and using Other Work's booking system. Is this risking triggering any "please explain" system from SWR that could end up with me starting a thread in Disputes?
It would but if I go to a TMV, I don't need to bother looking up a timetabled journey and I can quickly purchase a ticket 4 minutes before the departure of my train.
Nothing against the forms ticketing site but it simply isn't allowed to offer the ability to buy tickets without reference to a journey planner.
May be most people don't want that but I do. I use the forums site when I do want to look up and book a perticular journey in advance but for simple walk up tickets I use a TMV.
You can claim for the taxi and your delay...I doubt you will get a please explain as there were delays both times.
We ended up getting a taxi provided.
Southern OBS said the 2340 to Guildford was cancelled, so talk to him for more information. He did some ringing around and we were told to use the help point to book a taxi. We found someone else needing to go back up the line as well, so we grouped together.
Help point first try:
We need a taxi.
Sure, let me look into that and put you on hold.
Disconnected after a while
Second try:
Got disconnected, taxi?
No, no taxi - use the public bus service
No, that isn't for another seven hours, and doesn't go to where we all need to go
Well, no taxi for you
Railway needs to make good and get us where we need to go
No we don't.
Third try:
Got disconnected. OBS said that control had liaised with SWR and allowed this. Other helppoint person said we could. Other one said we couldn't. Please help. Can't use bus.
Let me check.... Ok, booked.
Ended up getting through the door at gone 1 am!
Southern OBS said the 2340 to Guildford was cancelled, so talk to him for more information. He did some ringing around and we were told to use the help point to book a taxi. We found someone else needing to go back up the line as well, so we grouped together.
Help point first try:
We need a taxi.
Sure, let me look into that and put you on hold.
Disconnected after a while
Second try:
Got disconnected, taxi?
No, no taxi - use the public bus service
No, that isn't for another seven hours, and doesn't go to where we all need to go
Well, no taxi for you
Railway needs to make good and get us where we need to go
No we don't.
Third try:
Got disconnected. OBS said that control had liaised with SWR and allowed this. Other helppoint person said we could. Other one said we couldn't. Please help. Can't use bus.
Let me check.... Ok, booked.
Ended up getting through the door at gone 1 am!
Kite159
Veteran Member
Just shows how useless those help points can be, that a chocolate teapot serves more use
And this is why I'm very unwilling to trust the railway for longer distance journeys once it gets into the evening.
In the circumstances wouldn’t it have been easier just to hire your own taxi (perhaps from an app such as Uber or Bolt) and claim back later? SWR aren’t realistically going to have the staff to book individual taxis for potentially tens of thousands of people.
That’s probably what I would have done in order to get home quicker!
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SWR made it quite clear that customers were able to book and claim back taxi costs themselves.
theironroad
Established Member
- Joined
- 21 Nov 2014
- Messages
- 3,717
That's great for people who can afford to pay up front, but not everyone can or has a credit card etc available.
Even then, some of these claims have been known to take weeks or months to refund, especially when 000's people involved.
The TOC have a responsibility to get people to their destination.
We had initially looked to book a car, but then when we were told "SWR will sort that", it became a lot easier (in theory) than paying out and hoping for reimbursement.
We could have got a taxi from Waterloo. And paid a good three figure sum for it. And hoped we'd see that money again...
The amount of information that was being given out was poor - passengers kept asking us what was going on, as we were wearing A uniform. Not railway, but any port in a storm...
The Southern OBS was probably the person that gave us the most useful information out of any staff we interacted with
We could have got a taxi from Waterloo. And paid a good three figure sum for it. And hoped we'd see that money again...
The amount of information that was being given out was poor - passengers kept asking us what was going on, as we were wearing A uniform. Not railway, but any port in a storm...
The Southern OBS was probably the person that gave us the most useful information out of any staff we interacted with
As an observation from someone often caught up in SWR disruption...
I have the impression that one of the contributing factors is the complexity of diagrams for rolling stock and crew - e.g. mixing across both SWML / Windsor lines, as well as lots of mixing between individual routes on each line (i.e. rolling stock / crews serving multiple lines on a given day). This means that the impact of any disruption is amplified as it's far harder to isolate (and recover) the disrupted set of services from services on the rest of the network where the infrastructure is unaffected.
Is this a reasonable observation? And are the diagrams on SWR actually any more complex than those of other operators?
I have the impression that one of the contributing factors is the complexity of diagrams for rolling stock and crew - e.g. mixing across both SWML / Windsor lines, as well as lots of mixing between individual routes on each line (i.e. rolling stock / crews serving multiple lines on a given day). This means that the impact of any disruption is amplified as it's far harder to isolate (and recover) the disrupted set of services from services on the rest of the network where the infrastructure is unaffected.
Is this a reasonable observation? And are the diagrams on SWR actually any more complex than those of other operators?
Absolutely a reasonable observation, and no I wouldn’t say SWR are massively better/worse than other operators; only perhaps that they have more complexity to spread those diagramming arrangements out over; more incoming sources of issues as a result.
I'm not convinced that SWR could have done much more to avoid the disruption, given the reported incident and line closure. That said, we left Waterloo at 4:30pm via Virginia Water and had a single announcement to say that it was the 4:30pm train. There was quite a lot of panic in the carriage I was in when people thought they were on the wrong train. We then sat outside Woking for ~20 minutes - waiting for a platform due to the congestion (which I could see from OpenTrainTimes maps). Easily explainable over the tannoy but no announcements made at all. Quite disappointing.
Disruption was pretty bad, and didn't recover all evening, hours after the lines reopened. Had to pick up and drive home 2 sets of tourists in London from the bottom of the Northern Line after several trains in a row were cancelled. Seasoned commuters can be crafty and wait in the underground short cut underpass, ask for extra stops, or a use a nearby station. Occasional travellers are lost. Reminded me of my commuter days, coming out of the tube, and seeing a sea of people on the concourse, then a mad surge when a platform number was shown. Problem wasn't SWR's fault, but poor recovery was
And it repeated last night, fire near the line at Sunningdale (Chobham Common?) with nothing between Virginia Water and Ascot till close of service. They did eventually run a single train between Ascot and Reading but people coming from Waterloo were stranded at Egham not knowing what to do. OK, this one was definitely not their fault.