OHL fire Langley Junction (ECML) 17-04-25

[The Middle]

What on earth were they thinking putting passengers on trains that would (at best) arrive in Edinburgh at 4am, instead of booking them into London hotels?

Are you genuinely of the opinion that close to 1,000 hotel rooms can be found in London at no notice on a bank holiday weekend? Just consider the logistics of trying to do that versus running trains to destination.

 

[Magdalia]

Or atleast run a WGC - KGX shuttle in place of the Cambridge stoppers? They did the same from Letchworth - Cambridge. Just doesn't make sense to me..

The next neutral section south of Langley Junction is between Welwyn and Hatfield. I'd be surprised if there was any power at Welwyn.

 

[All Line Rover]

Are you genuinely of the opinion that close to 1,000 hotel rooms can be found in London at no notice on a bank holiday weekend? Just consider the logistics of trying to do that versus running trains to destination.

London hotel prices are considerably cheaper over this bank holiday weekend than a typical weekend (implying lower demand), so yes.

If I were on a train that is stuck for hours late into the night due to a fire, I would want to return to London, or at least be given that option. I booked a day train, not a sleeper train.

I am sympathetic to the on board staff too.

 

[Failed Unit]

Problem is how long are you going to be stuck for? If you knew it was going to be 5 hours+ would make other plans for sure. The people on the Edinburgh trains may have gone back had they known the length of the delay as soon as they stopped. I wonder how many people were on London - Edinburgh. Not done the Lumo but the LNER tends to empty out after Newcastle. Anyone from Peterborough or further north would have used other services. (Such as the 1900 which started at Peterborough instead)

 

[Scotrail314209]

Problem is how long are you going to be stuck for? If you knew it was going to be 5 hours+ would make other plans for sure. The people on the Edinburgh trains may have gone back had they known the length of the delay as soon as they stopped. I wonder how many people were on London - Edinburgh. Not done the Lumo but the LNER tends to empty out after Newcastle. Anyone from Peterborough or further north would have used other services. (Such as the 1900 which started at Peterborough instead)

The Lumo is pretty much the same (as are most Edinburgh trains after about 1700), still a high proportion of people but it’s pretty busy nonetheless.

 

[uglymonkey]

Presumably they closed the ECML to allow firefighters to fight the fire or drifting smoke?

 

[GordonT]

The 1S99 2027 Lumo caught up in the disruption last night has only just arrived at Edinburgh at 0650, over 6 hours late (367 minutes to be precise). The 1S30 1830 LNER is indeed still moving, currently approaching Longniddry as I type.

Slightly reminiscent of the railway races to the North of the mid-1890s with the Caledonian Sleeper representing the West Coast consortia and LNER and Lumo representing the East Coast counterparts.

 

[800001]

As someone involved, the priority was to get people home, in the midst of another terrible situation.

Whether it should have been that terrible is another (very good) question.

It's been a bad two days on the ECML.

As an aside, LNER currently have only three part-cancellations this morning, which given the situation is an exceptionally good result.

Knowing you and the other people involved in dealing with this last night, 3 part cancellations is a good result.

 

[bgrtmd225]

I live near to this incident and as my photos are doing the rounds through various groups I'll stick them here. These photos was taken from a road bridge and the Health Club next to the fire. Fire was contained in the 25kv conduit that feeds certain locations along the route. Once the fire was out, the section was fed from a secondary supply, and while feeing its own section had to cope with Langly Section. A reduced power procedure was in place for the rest of the night.

Presumably they closed the ECML to allow firefighters to fight the fire or drifting smoke?

A full isolation had to be taken prior to the fire service blasting water over the 25kv supply.

 

[Failed Unit]

I live near to this incident and as my photos are doing the rounds through various groups I'll stick them here. These photos was taken from a road bridge and the Health Club next to the fire. Fire was contained in the 25kv conduit that feeds certain locations along the route. Once the fire was out, the section was fed from a secondary supply, and while feeing its own section had to cope with Langly Section. A reduced power procedure was in place for the rest of the night.

Wasn’t there a similar incident with similar results at the same location recently

 

[bgrtmd225]

Wasn’t there a similar incident with similar results at the same location recently

I think so, although I believe this was a signaling power supply failure.

What caused Stevenage railway tracks to set on fire?

A blaze broke out on railway tracks near Stevenage Station earlier today, stopping services from Thameslink, LNER and Great Northern among many…

www.thecomet.net

 

[Geswedey]

When I was a Duty Manager at Liverpool Street and we needed to book Hotels late at night it was always a struggle and usually involved ringing several Hotels before we found anywhere and that usually was for not much more than 10 people, I recall one night we ended up sending a taxi to Bristol because we couldn't book a Hotel..

 

[Elecman]

This use of plastic cable route troughing appears to be causing problems in that if a fire occurs the containment seems to feed and allow the fire to gain hold doing more damage unlike concrete troughing

 

[800001]

When I was a Duty Manager at Liverpool Street and we needed to book Hotels late at night it was always a struggle and usually involved ringing several Hotels before we found anywhere and that usually was for not much more than 10 people, I recall one night we ended up sending a taxi to Bristol because we couldn't book a Hotel..

The issue also is usually you have one member of staff trying to book hotels for several hundred (angry) customers.

 

[Falcon1200]

A full isolation had to be taken prior to the fire service blasting water over the 25kv supply.

In similar incidents during my time on the railway, the Fire Service required not just the power off, which would be an emergency switch off between neutral sections and therefore a large area, but also the overheads to be earthed - Which the OHLE staff would have to do before carrying out switching to shorten the area without power.

 

[bgrtmd225]

In similar incidents during my time on the railway, the Fire Service required not just the power off, which would be an emergency switch off between neutral sections and therefore a large area, but also the overheads to be earthed - Which the OHLE staff would have to do before carrying out switching to shorten the area without power.

Absolutely, was witnessed last night too.

 

[Bald Rick]

In similar incidents during my time on the railway, the Fire Service required not just the power off, which would be an emergency switch off between neutral sections and therefore a large area, but also the overheads to be earthed - Which the OHLE staff would have to do before carrying out switching to shorten the area without power.

Yes that happened here. Local Fire & Rescue wouldn’t go anywhere near the fire until OLE off and earthed. Personally, I can’t blame them either!

 

[Richard123]

I live near to this incident and as my photos are doing the rounds through various groups I'll stick them here. These photos was taken from a road bridge and the Health Club next to the fire. Fire was contained in the 25kv conduit that feeds certain locations along the route. Once the fire was out, the section was fed from a secondary supply, and while feeing its own section had to cope with Langly Section. A reduced power procedure was in place for the rest of the night.


A full isolation had to be taken prior to the fire service blasting water over the 25kv supply.

That's a very clear photo. Fire in the 25kV autotransformer feeder, spread to the track feeders. Same thing happened two weeks ago.

There were similar fires and damage some months ago near Hitchin, but those were confirmed by cable thieves.

TfW have had other problems with their long cables. They are very good at sending power long distances, but add another asset to be managed and have caused some substantial disruption in recent months.

 

[Falcon1200]

Yes that happened here. Local Fire & Rescue wouldn’t go anywhere near the fire until OLE off and earthed. Personally, I can’t blame them either!

Indeed, can't take any chances with 25kV!

 

[Mcq]

Why isn't there an isolation point N of Hertford North so that Moorgate to Hertford N services could run and turn round.
This is the second time recently a failure on the main line has led to the loss of the Hertford Loop services.
I don't think that's acceptable and in my view points to a short sighted OHL design.
OHL is a potential massive 'single point of failure' that needs proper mitigation
I expect to get roasted for this

 

[Falcon1200]

Why isn't there an isolation point N of Hertford North so that Moorgate to Hertford N services could run and turn round.

I expect to get roasted for this

Not at all, it is a perfectly valid question! The separation of overhead line sections, and in particular neutral sections, can have major implications when incidents occur. As I mentioned in Post #45, an emergency switch off must be between neutral sections (so that a train cannot pass via a section insulator from a live to dead section, thus briefly energising the dead section). This will apply until overhead line staff can erect earths and carry out switching (most often at the lineside) to reduce the extent of the dead area.

In the incident being discussed here there is presumably no neutral section between Langley Jc and Hertford North, therefore that station, and indeed the route as far as the nearest neutral section, were dead. This dates I would expect from the original Great Northern electrification back in the 1970s.

 

[Mcq]

Thank you @Falcon1200 for the kind response.
Can I therefore ask - given the thousands of people that travel this line to HN at least - what would be the cost of retrospectively adding a neutral section - given the cost and inconvenience of cancelling the service for the period involved (twice).
And is that cost part of what should be incorporated to limit the scale of such an outages.

 

[Stephen42]

Thank you @Falcon1200 for the kind response.
Can I therefore ask - given the thousands of people that travel this line to HN at least - what would be the cost of retrospectively adding a neutral section - given the cost and inconvenience of cancelling the service for the period involved (twice).
And is that cost part of what should be incorporated to limit the scale of such an outages.

There is a neutral section just north of Hertford North listed in the sectional appendix. Some trains ran to Hertford North instead of Stevenage, trains continued at Hertford North relatively unimpacted for an hour longer than Watton at Stone or Potters Bar.

It's plausible the service withdrawal was due to other factors like drivers stuck on trains elsewhere, needing to terminate trains early for alternative stabling or focusing resources on stranded trains/ones held at stations.

 

[bramling]

Why isn't there an isolation point N of Hertford North so that Moorgate to Hertford N services could run and turn round.
This is the second time recently a failure on the main line has led to the loss of the Hertford Loop services.
I don't think that's acceptable and in my view points to a short sighted OHL design.
OHL is a potential massive 'single point of failure' that needs proper mitigation
I expect to get roasted for this

There is a TSC north of Hertford North, so (with the caveat that I haven’t looked at the isolation diagrams) I can see no technical reason why trains couldn’t work to Hertford North.

I suspect it’s the same reason as normal, namely that GTR seem to be incapable of managing a service during disruption, and their entire service seems to collapse. My suspicion is that the crew diagrams are way too fragile and they don’t have the resources to manage things.

 

[Mcq]

Thanks chaps for the clarification.
I suspect you're right about GTR
GTR's HN service seems as if its bound up with that of Welwyn.
Whilst I fully understand they use a common pathway after FP, is there a reason why disruption on the Welwyn service should cause disruption to HN's services?

A further question please -
Presumably for trains to have travelled to HN, then two things would need to happen before GTR could run -
1) The line would have needed to have been isolated N of HN
2) The signalman would need to know.
Question does anybody know if these two actions happened in this case before we blame GTR?

 

[Falcon1200]

As there is indeed a neutral section between Hertford North and Langley Jc, there would appear to be no physical reason preventing trains running to Hertford North from the south. Why they did not is another issue, as mentioned above!

 

[Mcq]

@Falcon1200 - so just to be clear, the section from AP to HN is permanently isolated from the section N of HN to Stevenage
- i.e. no specific action is required in an event like this, power remains on to HN and trains are free to run and reverse at HN including sidings?

So is it solely up to GTR to decide to do it, or are other agencies in play?

I'm trying to 'hone' my understanding so that due and appropriate pressure can be applied to GTR.

Thank you for your patience.

 

[Zomboid]

Deleted

 

[Haywain]

So is it solely up to GTR to decide to do it, or are other agencies in play?

Network Rail will determine whether the line is available for use, and for what type of trains (electric/diesel).

 

[Mcq]

Did Network Rail deem the line to HN un-available on this occasion - that's the heart of the matter.
i.e. who decided that trains couldn't run?