SWR - Do not travel - 11/6/2021

[boiledbeans2]

Was about to book a ticket on the SWR website. Noticed the SWR website is asking passengers to "please do not travel".

According to the website, it says there are multiple track circuit failures around the Surbiton area.

Anyone knows what happened? Before COVID, there were countless delays due to track circuit failures, and many complaints of rammed trains as a result. But I didn't see a "do not travel" during those times.

 

[voyagerdude220]

Looking at Real Time Trains, some trains were delayed by in excess of 4 hours. Looks particularly bad.

 

[pompeyfan]

The down slow has been closed most of the day with the down fast only open to emergency special working reducing capacity to about 4 trains an hour. Severe stock and crew displacement

 

[philosopher]

Is this likely to be sorted out by tomorrow morning as I have trip planned to Devon this weekend?

 

[Dr_Paul]

Looking at Real Time Trains, there have been some unusual diversions. Quite a few services normally routed through Surbiton and Guildford have been sent via Epsom, including some Alton services, which are presumably being reversed at Guildford and routed through Ash. Others have taken usual diversionary routes via Barnes, Staines and Addlestone to Woking, and some Shepperton services have gone via Richmond. I noticed that rail traffic across the Manor Road level crossing this afternoon was heavier than usual.

 

[galwhv69]

Looking at Real Time Trains, some trains were delayed by in excess of 4 hours. Looks particularly bad.

Looking at RTT, longest delay I found is 4h 45m. Seems very severe, I was travelling on the trams from Wimbledon around 10am, quite a few cancellations/delays and platforms were very very busy. Considering that it is still affecting services at this time, I very much doubt things will be fully back to normal by tomorrow morning. There was also mention of an e-rail bus service between Wimbledon & Hampton Court/Effingham Junction/Woking however I have not seen one both in the morning and evening when passing through.

Just looked at the SWR website : As of 00:25 the failure has been fixed

 

[pompeyfan]

Looks like lots of services were terminated short but the crew displacement at places like Bournemouth and Southampton is what crippled the service.

 

[yorksrob]

"Do not travel" is a fad beloved of the modern railway which forgets that it is a public service which has no business dictating when the public may or may not travel.

 

[The Planner]

"Do not travel" is a fad beloved of the modern railway which forgets that it is a public service which has no business dictating when the public may or may not travel.

You don't have to follow that advice, but don't complain if your journey goes down the toilet.

 

[pompeyfan]

If you get warned against travelling, and then still decide to, and your 1 hour journey takes closer to 5 I think there’s some personal responsibility there. Code black only gets issued after the on call director allows it. It doesn’t happen on a whim. Last code black I believe was a train fire in the morning peak at Vauxhall followed by an unrelated mass signalling problem at Vauxhall. I’m sure others will correct me if I’m wrong

 

[Lifelong]

If you get warned against travelling, and then still decide to, and your 1 hour journey takes closer to 5 I think there’s some personal responsibility there. Code black only gets issued after the on call director allows it. It doesn’t happen on a whim. Last code black I believe was a train fire in the morning peak at Vauxhall followed by an unrelated mass signalling problem at Vauxhall. I’m sure others will correct me if I’m wrong

Whilst I would agree with you for maybe a leisure traveller, yesterday I caught a SWR train before the disruption, to work. I have no alternative route home (believe me I would if I could) - a large proportion of the opprobrium directed at SWR is from people in similar positions to me, where Do Not Travel actually inflames rather than helps. And understandably so, particularly as one of the consequences in many people’s eyes is moving responsibility for the meltdown from the railway to the passenger...

 

[DelW]

Looking at Real Time Trains, there have been some unusual diversions. Quite a few services normally routed through Surbiton and Guildford have been sent via Epsom, including some Alton services, which are presumably being reversed at Guildford and routed through Ash. Others have taken usual diversionary routes via Barnes, Staines and Addlestone to Woking, and some Shepperton services have gone via Richmond. I noticed that rail traffic across the Manor Road level crossing this afternoon was heavier than usual.

As an aside, does anyone know if Alton trains did indeed run via the New Line and reverse in Guildford towards Ash? As far as I can see, that would mean either reversing on the main line south of the station (so in Chalk Tunnel) or doing multiple reverses (possibly using the north stabling sidings). Either of those would be quite disruptive of main line services.

However, I recall there was some major track relaying in Guildford last year, so it's possible that the layout allows moves that I'm not aware of.

Alternatively, they might have run via two reversals, at Guildford and Woking, both of which could be done at platforms.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Surely the point about ‘do not travel’ is akin the old advice of ‘when in a hole don’t keep on digging’. By dissuading some people on discretionary journeys from travelling at all it very much helps the whole system to cope with the rest who may already be ‘stranded in London’ (or wherever) struggling to cram onto remaining diverted services, emergency buses and so on.

Would some people prefer that the industry instead advised people to ‘travel regardless and why not ask your friends to come along too’?

 

[Watershed]

Surely the point about ‘do not travel’ is akin the old advice of ‘when in a hole don’t keep on digging’. By dissuading some people on discretionary journeys from travelling at all it very much helps the whole system to cope with the rest who may already be ‘stranded in London’ (or wherever) struggling to cram onto remaining diverted services, emergency buses and so on.

Would some people prefer that the industry instead advised people to ‘travel regardless and why not ask your friends to come along too’?

It is one thing to give travel advice. It is quite another to try and blame passengers for their inconvenience if they travel anyway.

Unfortunately a lot of people in the industry seem to think that by giving 'do not travel' advice you can magically escape all responsibility or liability.

 

[LowLevel]

Do not travel is what it is - as above, if it puts people thinking "will I/won't I" off then it is no bad thing.

I've mentioned before I was once working a train from the East Midlands to Liverpool and had a young lass on her way to Glasgow. It was the day the WCML was wrecked by awful weather a few years ago (one of the days perhaps wiser, but this was particularly bad - I think the ECML was also out?) and I told her what was going off and asked if she could delay her journey till tomorrow.

"Yes" she said, "but I'm going to give it a go anyway - I'm sure it'll be fine, even if it's buses or something". (I think the M6 was also shut).

I got home from work and sat down to watch the news and spotted her looking less than happy lying on the floor of Preston station for the night as there were no hotels available for miles.

 

[nw1]

You don't have to follow that advice, but don't complain if your journey goes down the toilet.

A more friendly way of putting it would be "There are severe delays in excess of four hours. If you travel, please expect your journey to take many hours longer than normal".

Some people might need to travel, or they might be going away for the weekend and might be prepared to put up with a severe delay if it gets them to where they want to go - eventually.

 

[CyrusWuff]

"Do not travel" is a fad beloved of the modern railway which forgets that it is a public service which has no business dictating when the public may or may not travel.

Usage has increased since Covid, with "Black" service (i.e. "Do not Travel") being declared in a number of cases that would previously have been "Red".

This is essentially due to the impracticality/expense of providing effective social distancing for unplanned replacement transport.

 

[JN114]

"Do not travel" is a fad beloved of the modern railway which forgets that it is a public service which has no business dictating when the public may or may not travel.

Put yourself in the operators shoes:-

There are no or very few trains running

There are more people already stranded *on* the network than you reasonably have a hope of sourcing replacement transport for.

You’re expecting potentially tens of thousands more people to show up to commence journeys.

What advice do you give?

A more friendly way of putting it would be "There are severe delays in excess of four hours. If you travel, please expect your journey to take many hours longer than normal".

Some people might need to travel, or they might be going away for the weekend and might be prepared to put up with a severe delay if it gets them to where they want to go - eventually.

But this is the point - it may not just be 4 hours. It may be 8, or 12. Where do you draw the line. Because at some point there is a crossover where “the railway” first has to enact its duty of care to those already stranded on the network for 4, 6 however many hours; over the hundreds/thousands pouring onto station concourses trying to travel as well.

There is not a customer-base sized fleet of coaches and taxis waiting on call to move everyone who wishes to travel; particularly from a station the size of Waterloo. As such, and as has often been the case in the past, the operator advises against travel. It means there is a fighting chance of those who ignore such advice actually travelling, and that the scant resources remaining can handle the load that is already there.

Consider the alternative - everyone come and travel, then midnight arrives and there’s 8000 people on Waterloo concourse and the last trains of the night have all run?

The truth of it is the public won’t react strongly enough to “friendly”.

 

[MotCO]

Put yourself in the operators shoes:-

There are no or very few trains running

There are more people already stranded *on* the network than you reasonably have a hope of sourcing replacement transport for.

You’re expecting potentially tens of thousands more people to show up to commence journeys.

What advice do you give?

I think this is more acceptable and informative:

A more friendly way of putting it would be "There are severe delays in excess of four hours. If you travel, please expect your journey to take many hours longer than normal".

Some people might need to travel, or they might be going away for the weekend and might be prepared to put up with a severe delay if it gets them to where they want to go - eventually.

This is my frustration. When there are delays on the railways, if they can say what the problem is, whether help is at the scene or on the way, and the minimum time before normal service is likely to resume would help passengers decide whether to wait, abandon, or seek alternative routes. Saying "Trains are delayed" tells you absolutely no information.

 

[pompeyfan]

As an aside, does anyone know if Alton trains did indeed run via the New Line and reverse in Guildford towards Ash? As far as I can see, that would mean either reversing on the main line south of the station (so in Chalk Tunnel) or doing multiple reverses (possibly using the north stabling sidings). Either of those would be quite disruptive of main line services.

However, I recall there was some major track relaying in Guildford last year, so it's possible that the layout allows moves that I'm not aware of.

Alternatively, they might have run via two reversals, at Guildford and Woking, both of which could be done at platforms.

1A65 ran via Epsom, I’m not sure how it shunted into the Ash line but the track layout at Guildford sadly does not allow access to platform 4 or 5 from the Cobham line.

Whilst I would agree with you for maybe a leisure traveller, yesterday I caught a SWR train before the disruption, to work. I have no alternative route home (believe me I would if I could) - a large proportion of the opprobrium directed at SWR is from people in similar positions to me, where Do Not Travel actually inflames rather than helps. And understandably so, particularly as one of the consequences in many people’s eyes is moving responsibility for the meltdown from the railway to the passenger...

This I have the upmost of sympathy for, you want to get home after a day at work and then have no way of getting home

 

[JN114]

I think this is more acceptable and informative:

I’m not unsympathetic; but that’s raising false hope. The inference is that you can complete your journey and “only” be delayed by 4 hours.

One of the very strict criteria for declaring “do not travel” is that the operator no longer has the confidence that it can reasonably handle all the passengers currently on the network and expected to travel to the end of their journey - so if we were to take your honest approach then it would be

“There are severe delays… …if you travel some of you may be delayed by several hours; others may not be able to start or complete their journey at all, and you may end up stranded at a station that is neither your origin or destination and we will be unable to accommodate you further by rail or replacement transport”

At which point, you might as well start with “do not travel” and follow it up with the rest; which is what they will have done.

 

[TEW]

1A65 ran via Epsom, I’m not sure how it shunted into the Ash line but the track layout at Guildford sadly does not allow access to platform 4 or 5 from the Cobham line.

1A21 and 1A23 did too. I would imagine they did a shunt via the tunnel at the country end. That's easiest as it avoids a triple reversal.
2A95 also ran via Epsom, but then went via Woking too so no shunt needed at Guildford.

 

[bb21]

It is one thing to give travel advice. It is quite another to try and blame passengers for their inconvenience if they travel anyway.

Unfortunately a lot of people in the industry seem to think that by giving 'do not travel' advice you can magically escape all responsibility or liability.

Who is blaming the passengers?

 

[DelW]

1A65 ran via Epsom, I’m not sure how it shunted into the Ash line but the track layout at Guildford sadly does not allow access to platform 4 or 5 from the Cobham line.

1A21 and 1A23 did too. I would imagine they did a shunt via the tunnel at the country end. That's easiest as it avoids a triple reversal.
2A95 also ran via Epsom, but then went via Woking too so no shunt needed at Guildford.

Thanks both for the confirmations.

 

[Horizon22]

I think this is more acceptable and informative:


This is my frustration. When there are delays on the railways, if they can say what the problem is, whether help is at the scene or on the way, and the minimum time before normal service is likely to resume would help passengers decide whether to wait, abandon, or seek alternative routes. Saying "Trains are delayed" tells you absolutely no information.

But sometimes there is no additional information with a known minimum time before the service is expected to resume to normal in a situation like this. What if 4 becomes 6? What if 6 becomes longer? "Normal" might be impossible before the end of the day and requires vast juggling around overnight to get stock and resources correct and possibly even some early morning cancellations the following day. Hence the advice for "do not travel"; it isn't something taken lightly.

Perhaps if you want to get into the semantics of it, you could suggest "strongly advised not to travel", but basically the operator doesn't want to put more people in a difficult situation that it needs to.

 

[MotCO]

But sometimes there is no additional information with a known minimum time before the service is expected to resume to normal in a situation like this. What if 4 becomes 6? What if 6 becomes longer? "Normal" might be impossible before the end of the day and requires vast juggling around overnight to get stock and resources correct and possibly even some early morning cancellations the following day. Hence the advice for "do not travel"; it isn't something taken lightly.

Perhaps if you want to get into the semantics of it, you could suggest "strongly advised not to travel", but basically the operator doesn't want to put more people in a difficult situation that it needs to.

But "strongly advised not to travel" does not provide any information as to when things might get back to normal. It may be impossible to travel for 1 hour, 2 hours, 6 hours etc. I would like to know when things are likely to get back to normal, accepting that 4 hours could slip to 6 hours if further faults / incidents etc emerge. If the message is that services will not resume for at least 4 hours, then I can take an educated view as to whether to hang around or try to find an alternative route. Without an indication of timelines, I am completely in the dark and do not know what to do to get to my destination as easily as possible.

 

[dosxuk]

Without an indication of timelines, I am completely in the dark and do not know what to do to get to my destination as easily as possible.

Would you rather no indication of timeline, or a timeline that constantly changes (but reflects the belief at the time of the message)?

Personally, I prefer the simple "everything is broken, we don't know how long it will take to fix it" message to "everything is broken, it'll be two hours, sorry one hour, maybe three hours, try tomorrow?".

 

[MotCO]

Would you rather no indication of timeline, or a timeline that constantly changes (but reflects the belief at the time of the message)?

Personally, I prefer the simple "everything is broken, we don't know how long it will take to fix it" message to "everything is broken, it'll be two hours, sorry one hour, maybe three hours, try tomorrow?".

But not knowing how long to fix tells me nothing. It could be 5 minutes, it could be 5 hours. I would rather "at least 4 hours", which gives me a clue as to what I should do. It is the not knowing that is the problem, not the fact that the times could be updated, but this is covered by using "at least" four hours.

 

[JN114]

But not knowing how long to fix tells me nothing. It could be 5 minutes, it could be 5 hours. I would rather "at least 4 hours", which gives me a clue as to what I should do. It is the not knowing that is the problem, not the fact that the times could be updated, but this is covered by using "at least" four hours.

But the railway didn’t know either, hence the messaging that was put out. They can’t say “at least 4 hours” if they don’t know whether it’s 5 minutes or a week.

Trains that were running, were running up to 5 hours late. Most trains though were not running at all. And there was no indication as to exactly what the cause was; and therefore how to fix it; until virtually close of service.

The conversation in this thread has somewhat diluted the messaging down to a single phrase; and that’s been run with as the gospel truth of what happened. But in practice there was a lot more messaging around what was going on and what was being done to fix things; indeed there was a great thread on Twitter by NR Wessex, that SWR shared.

The overarching advice however was, paraphrased, “we don’t know how long this will take, please do not attempt to travel”

Again I ask; if you’re SWR - you have -no idea- how long this will take, you’re cancelling a majority of your trains and know that you’re going to get hundreds if not thousands more passengers than you can hope to source replacement transport for - do you really encourage people to rock up to Waterloo at 11pm with the promise of “it’ll only be 4 hours”?! As that is what you’re advocating…

 

[MattRat]

I hope this gets fixed by the 28th......