Passenger "Mutiny" Due To Missed Stop At Swindon

[LNW-GW Joint]

The article states that the train reversed to Swindon. Is there any RTT evidence for that?

Well retrospectively, you only get the last pass at each timing point, so yesterday's 1A58 shows the 97m lateness at Swindon when the train finally left.
In real time you might see the pass, stop, reverse and forward move again, as the journey progressed (if the stop was past the next timing point at Highworth Jn).

 

[nw1]

Nowadays the Telegraph is no more a source of truth than the Daily Expreß.

Lol - given the latter's apparent intense dislike of all things continental European, spelling it that way will really wind them up.

 

[alxndr]

Well retrospectively, you only get the last pass at each timing point, so yesterday's 1A58 shows the 97m lateness at Swindon when the train finally left.
In real time you might see the pass, stop, reverse and forward move again, as the journey progressed (if the stop was past the next timing point at Highworth Jn).

It was stopped between Highworth Junction and South Marston as I went past on a down train (as per signalmaps screenshot, time 1939). We were held at Bourton to let an up train crossover after they ran reversible around it.

 

[Townsend Hook]

The article states that the train reversed to Swindon. Is there any RTT evidence for that?

If the train reversed and returned to Swindon, RTT will have effectively overwritten the actual timing points the second time the train appeared at them.

 

[185]

I thought at first this may have been our (much maligned) footie fans, but Swindon were away at Brissel on the Saturday with a 3pm kick off - loads of time for them to get home that night.

 

[Sm5]

Fwiw..
1A58 was Rushey Platt 1905 3/4 putting it at Swindon c 1907.
1A29 BTM-PAD started short at Swindon p3 at 1910

if 1A58 entered p3, ahead of 1A29 it didnt leave much time for the ECS of 1A29 to position itself onto p3 and depart on time…

is that a clue ? where did the ecs of 1A29 originate anyway ? - did it ecs from BTM ahead of 1A58 ?.. there is no corresponding service terminating at Swindon in rtt.

following 1A29 into p3 was 1A90 from Camarthen arriving 1921 on time 11 minutes later, but departing 5 late at 1928…. By this time something got in its way, similarly a Parkway bound service from Paddington got delayed on arrival into p3 from London into Swindon at 1940.

I wonder if 1A58 was held awaiting 1A29 to depart, entered Swindon p3 and was stopped around Highworth jn, forcing 1A29 wrong road to Bourton (no rtt entries for this at Highworth) and inturn delaying 1B79 to Parkway, and sending 1A59 (penzance-London, also no rtt entries for this at Highworth/Stratton green) wrong line too.

 

[Falcon1200]

Given the cancellation of other Bristol-London services it was the right thing to put Special Stops on the Penzance; Of course it made that train very busy but with the cancellations that was inevitable, on this service or others. Where that process (apparently) went wrong will require investigation by GWR. And I don't think passengers can be blamed for operating the Passcom when the train passed Swindon without stopping, for all they knew they were being taken right to Paddington, 70 odd miles further on ! Why it seems to have been operated repeatedly is another thing.

As with many other TOCs, mainstream management is around only 9 to 5 Monday to Friday, otherwise it's left to minimalist control and other staff to carry out some simplistic orders, but told to show no initiative

NR and TOC Controllers are perfectly capable of making decisions, and using their initiative, without input from 'mainstream management', indeed that is much of the satisfaction and reward of the job.

 

[HowardGWR]

Fwiw..
1A58 was Rushey Platt 1905 3/4 putting it at Swindon c 1907.
1A29 BTM-PAD started short at Swindon p3 at 1910

if 1A58 entered p3, ahead of 1A29 it didnt leave much time for the ECS of 1A29 to position itself onto p3 and depart on time…

is that a clue ? where did the ecs of 1A29 originate anyway ? - did it ecs from BTM ahead of 1A58 ?.. there is no corresponding service terminating at Swindon in rtt.

following 1A29 into p3 was 1A90 from Camarthen arriving 1921 on time 11 minutes later, but departing 5 late at 1928…. By this time something got in its way, similarly a Parkway bound service from Paddington got delayed on arrival from London into Swindon.

given the track layout and signalling, it doesnt look like 1A58 would get in the way of very much nor does reversing look to be that hard, yet it took 90 minutes on a sunday with large gaps in traffic.

On your last comment, I wonder if pax kept pulling the comms, not realising that what they wanted had been arranged? Thanks for the tremendously helpful replies so far.

 

[alastair]

As with many other TOCs, mainstream management is around only 9 to 5 Monday to Friday, otherwise it's left to minimalist control and other staff to carry out some simplistic orders, but told to show no initiative, like once it was realised the stop at Swindon had been missed, stop it at Didcot. It's notable just how many, in fact virtually all, of these gross passenger-unfriendly events happen in the evening or on Sundays.

Are you sure that is actually true? During the recent TV series on GWR, I seem to recall a control room (ironically at Swindon!) staffed by apparently very authoritative controller-type people who had authority to manage situations completely. Surely they can't all be off-duty at weekends?

Also worth noting that operational problems with charter railtours such as last minute re-routings, arrangement of paths for relief locomotives in the case of a failure, are often sorted out in a highly professional way. Most of these are at weekends.

 

[ChrisHogan]

Fwiw..


is that a clue ? where did the ecs of 1A29 originate anyway ? - did it ecs from BTM ahead of 1A58 ?.. there is no corresponding service terminating at Swindon in rtt.

A pair of 387s from Cocklebury sidings. There were two pairs of 387s covering the Paddn-Swindon legs of the cancelled Bristols.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Given the cancellation of other Bristol-London services it was the right thing to put Special Stops on the Penzance; Of course it made that train very busy but with the cancellations that was inevitable, on this service or others. Where that process (apparently) went wrong will require investigation by GWR. And I don't think passengers can be blamed for operating the Passcom when the train passed Swindon without stopping, for all they knew they were being taken right to Paddington, 70 odd miles further on ! Why it seems to have been operated repeatedly is another thing.

An unannounced fail to call is a valid reason to pull it, as it creates entirely valid concern that there is a medical problem with the driver or train. Indeed, the Caledonian Sleeper runaway was stopped by the guard pulling it, albeit not due to a fail to call, which demonstrates what this could avoid.

Pulling it repeatedly out of anger once the train had been safely stopped is, however, rather silly and only made things worse.

 

[74A]

Perhaps the repeated pulling of the passcomm was due to passengers initially being told the train was not going back to Swindon ?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Perhaps the repeated pulling of the passcomm was due to passengers initially being told the train was not going back to Swindon ?

Quite possibly, and that is the counterproductive misuse I mentioned.

 

[Sm5]

On your last comment, I wonder if pax kept pulling the comms, not realising that what they wanted had been arranged? Thanks for the tremendously helpful replies so far.

the journalists knowledge of railways is open to interpretation too.
(its monday, this happened last night so its a rush story too).

From my above scenario.. Stop 1 could be outside Swindon awaiting 1A29, stop 2 could be the “comms cord” incident. Stop 3 could be repositioning to a signal to return.. there could have been further legitimate stops too in that sequence.

Weve only one side of the story to speculate from, but a tired journalist writing in a rush could translate all 3 of above into “multiple communication cord pulls” legitimately without railway knowledge.

At 2030 pm in Swindon, if you’d planned to be on the 1730 BTM for 1910 in PAD, possibly standing for 3 hours already, I could image tempers, hunger, humidity all could be an issue… the earliest they would have reached Paddington was 2200, on a stopping service from Didcot, from Reading.

 

[ChrisHogan]

The article states that the train reversed to Swindon. Is there any RTT evidence for that?

Stopped between Stratton Green and South Marston Junction. The two trains using the reversible (Carmarthen and following Penzance) used the Down Line from Swindon station to Bourton.

 

[robbeech]

Showing a different stopping pattern depending on what app you used. Really not sure what was going on

This is a crucial and very valid point. To be quite honest, in times of only minor disruption the whole thing goes to pot when it comes to apps, websites, social media pages and the likes, nobody has a clue, nobody can keep things up to date, and the conflicting information makes things much worse. And that isn't a dig at any individual group, person or website, it's just the overall disjointed nature of the system. The best course of action is always to look at PIS on the platform, and on the train, or ask a member of staff. Of course, as we see here, this is also not guaranteed to be accurate and can cause you more trouble than it is worth.

With the general attitude the railway APPEARS to take towards its customers nowadays, i think there is little wonder passengers have incredibly short fuses and these incidents escalate very rapidly. They're already p'd off that they're late, trains are cancelled, they've been told 7 things from 3 people, the website is wrong, they've had to pay for an SVR rather than an advance at a quarter of the price, they've been forced to book a seat to find that on the day they had to stand up anyway, then when the train goes passed their stop at line speed, there's little wonder they shout and cause chaos. It doesn't help, but the railway has brought it on itself in the first place and these incidents will increase in frequency and seriousness. It's in no way a justification for anything other that an initial passcom but these things WILL happen, we KNOW they'll happen, they should be in the risk assessment and steps should be taken to ensure the likelihood is minimised. Will a single thing be done? It remains to be seen (no).

 

[Starmill]

Quite possibly, and that is the counterproductive misuse I mentioned.

It's certainly the wrong course of action, but I wonder whether GWR would have actually tried their hardest to sort things out for these passengers? Clearly the train needed to set down at Didcot Parkway and GWR needed to offer a choice of a taxi to destination or the next train going back to Swindon to the people affected.

I have to wonder whether GWR would have coughed up for that to minimise any further customer inconvenience following a fairly serious failure of customer service, or if they would have actually just gone "go to Reading and come back" and damn the additional time that would take.

The customers clearly needed proper reassurance after the train didn't stop that the company would get the to where they were going with minimal additional delay.

 

[74A]

It seems the planned additional stops changed during the day. A recipe for confusion. Unfortunately on the 800 you can't insert extra stops so nothing to alert passengers or on board crew that the driver was unaware of the additional stop.

 

[43096]

NR and TOC Controllers are perfectly capable of making decisions, and using their initiative, without input from 'mainstream management', indeed that is much of the satisfaction and reward of the job.

They are also perfectly capable of making an utter mess of such decisions, where they are taken for pure operational convenience and inconvenience of the customer. And, it should be said, where staff on the ground were more than willing to do the extra to help passengers only to be over-ruled by control.

 

[pompeyfan]

Out of interest, was the train formed of 2x5 cars or a 9 car? There seems to be more and more occurrences of controllers and crew being unwilling to ask that crew go onto the ballast to perform acts such as changing ends to perform a wrong direction move.

 

[JN114]

To clear up some of the uncertainties:-

The train had previously been advertised as calling additionally at Swindon (and Chippenham), but those additional stops were withdrawn during the journey. It seems that that message didn’t get through to many/any of the passengers for some reason.

The passcomms were all operated after the train had passed nonstop through Swindon.

Initially the passcomms were because the train hadn’t stopped when it was meant to, then because the train was stopped out of course with no info as to why, then because the train was going to continue nonstop to Reading once the alarms were reset.

The traincrew were fully aware of the calling pattern, and the changes to it, throughout.

Eventually the decision was taken to withdraw the train back to Swindon to allow these passengers alight. A Swansea service was also diverted from Swindon via Box to pick up the Chippenham passengers off the Penzance and convey them to their destination.

The train terminated at Reading due to traincrew hours concerns for the return working to the West Country.

Set was a 9 car 802.

***

A sorry tale that I completely sympathise with the passengers on. Unfortunately I can’t opine further without falling foul of the social media police.

 

[duncanp]

To clear up some of the uncertainties:-

The train had previously been advertised as calling additionally at Swindon (and Chippenham), but those additional stops were withdrawn during the journey. It seems that that message didn’t get through to many/any of the passengers for some reason.

The passcomms were all operated after the train had passed nonstop through Swindon.

Initially the passcomms were because the train hadn’t stopped when it was meant to, then because the train was stopped out of course with no info as to why, then because the train was going to continue nonstop to Reading once the alarms were reset.

The traincrew were fully aware of the calling pattern, and the changes to it, throughout.

Eventually the decision was taken to withdraw the train back to Swindon to allow these passengers alight. A Swansea service was also diverted from Swindon via Box to pick up the Chippenham passengers off the Penzance and convey them to their destination.

The train terminated at Reading due to traincrew hours concerns for the return working to the West Country.

Set was a 9 car 802.

***

A sorry tale that I completely sympathise with the passengers on. Unfortunately I can’t opine further without falling foul of the social media police.

So if the train crew were fully aware of the calling pattern, and the changes to it, why weren't the changes to the calling pattern communicated to passengers?

If the previously advertised Swindon stop is withdrawn, there should have been an announcement at the last stop before Swindon, with information on alternatives for getting to Swindon.

 

[Sm5]

Surely the driver would have alerted the train manager who could have then have made a public announcement? Or did the driver forget to stop?

As for "dangerously overcrowded"....

Twitter has the answer, it seems several pictures of a at least 3 carriages loaded to full standing through the aisles, relating to a train matching the approx time, description and location, from angry passengers aimed at the GWR account.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FAylhK8WUAYS9Px.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FAy7C95XIAAiiVQ.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FAzC7FyXEAQc1l5.jpg

 

[JN114]

So if the train crew were fully aware of the calling pattern, and the changes to it, why weren't the changes to the calling pattern communicated to passengers?

3 Options -

1) Announcements were made, but not heard / listened to.

2) Announcements were made, but the PA was faulty so couldn’t be heard.

3) Announcements were not made.

I do not know which of the three options apply…

 

[duncanp]

3 Options -

1) Announcements were made, but not heard / listened to.

2) Announcements were made, but the PA was faulty so couldn’t be heard.

3) Announcements were not made.

I do not know which of the three options apply…

I have been on trains where there is a faulty PA system, so that the sound coming out of it is barely audible.

It could also be that people had their heads buried in their phones, or perhaps were listening to music on headphones, so that they didn't hear the announcement anyway.

I find it difficult to believe that the train crew would not make an announcement regarding a last minute change to the calling pattern.

 

[talltim]

Initially the passcomms were because the train hadn’t stopped when it was meant to, then because the train was stopped out of course with no info as to why, then because the train was going to continue nonstop to Reading once the alarms were reset.

I'd kinda forgotten, despite the name, that the passcom is for contacting the the crew as well as for stopping the train. In fact, I thought on modern trains it didn't automatically stop the train? Is that not the case on 9XX?

 

[ChrisHogan]

To clear up some of the uncertainties:-

The train had previously been advertised as calling additionally at Swindon (and Chippenham), but those additional stops were withdrawn during the journey. It seems that that message didn’t get through to many/any of the passengers for some reason.

Or to Network Rail's signalman who routed the train through platform 3.

 

[JN114]

I'd kinda forgotten, despite the name, that the passcom is for contacting the the crew as well as for stopping the train. In fact, I thought on modern trains it didn't automatically stop the train? Is that not the case on 9XX?

Driver can override the emergency brake, but should only do so for good reason - IE train going to stop in an unsafe place etc

 

[Sm5]

3 Options -

1) Announcements were made, but not heard / listened to.

2) Announcements were made, but the PA was faulty so couldn’t be heard.

3) Announcements were not made.

I do not know which of the three options apply…

Twitter offers the passengers opinions…

from the same person below, who claims Zero communicatioms, but later was communicated that the train was terminating at Reading… so that limits to 1 or 3, unless the comms were fixed as part of 2 between Swindon and Reading.

The train was meant to stop at Swindon but didn’t. After this happened alarms were pulled and we were held just past Swindon. We were held there for hour

@GWRHelp I appreciate that may have not been your fault but there was ZERO communication throughout all we were told was about alarms going off and are being held. If that hold up wasn’t enough we were then after being delayed told the train was terminating at Reading.

another passenger from Bath ( to London) offers…

To add insult to injury: train didn't stop at 1st station it was supposed to (Swindon) with no previous warning, so people could not get off; then stopped in the middle of nowhere

3) After 0 update for 30mns, they had the nerve to blame the passengers, announcing that the reason for the long stop is "people mistakenly brushing against emergency alarms". People are packed on the train like animals, what did you expect?!

and from Bristol..

18.22, it’s been a complete mess including not stopping at Chippenham after it was supposed to. I think it’s also just passed Swindon...59 crowd alerts. It’s dangerous

Oh also, absolutely no communication? Like nothing over the intercom

Theres at least 7 references to failure of stopping at Swindon.. passengers clearly thought it was stopping at Swindon, others Chippenham, even if the staff on board didnt.

I would also guess if passengers are reaching out to Twitter for help, its because they arent getting information from where they are / trying to attract attention to their plight.

I feel sorry for the GWR twitter team, nearly every tweet made includes the word “sorry”, which at the end of the day means very little to either party.

with 1830 1A29, and 1730 (1A27) and 1800 (1A28) all canceled, but 1A58 running in the path of 1A29 in this cicumstance, what would Bristol, Baths departure boards be saying ? especially as 1A59 wasnt scheduled to stop at either.., would it be displaying 1A28/1A29, could that have been the source of confusion ?

 

[pompeyfan]

I'd kinda forgotten, despite the name, that the passcom is for contacting the the crew as well as for stopping the train. In fact, I thought on modern trains it didn't automatically stop the train? Is that not the case on 9XX?

Lots of stock has the ability for the driver to kick a passcom brake application out. I would be surprised if IETs do not.