Thameslink meltdown 02/10

[flitwickbeds]

The core (St Pancras to Blackfriars) of Thameslink is in meltdown this morning, with all power switched off between all these stations.

Trains north of the capital are terminating and starting at St Pancras or Finsbury Park; trains South of the river are starting and terminating at East Croydon.

Is there any other piece of railway infrastructure in a major city (single lines, different types of power, so critical to the running of the timetable) which is so vulnerable to something going wrong in that section which would result in mass cancellations for hours on end?

 

[FlippyFF]

https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/service_disruptions/232319.aspx

"Can you tell me more about the incident?

The 22:56 Brighton to Bedford service developed issues with the pantograph (the equipment on top of the train that draws power from the overhead lines). This train is at a stand at Blackfriars while specialist technicians work on the issue. The pantograph issue has also caused damage to the overhead lines.

The 23:11 Horsham to Peterborough service has experienced power issues at Blackfriars and this train is also at a stand whilst engineers work on the issue.

The emergency services have now finished dealing with an incident at City Thameslink."

(Edit to change URL)

 

[Minstral25]

Hardly any Thameslink services running south of the river - everything Thameslink at Redhill is completely cancelled. The meagre Southern services cannot hope to cope with passenger numbers.

Cannot understand if this broke last night why they can't set up services to terminate at London Bridge or Blackfriars, especially as its all third Rail to those stations so overhead problems shouldn't be an issue but no everything is cancelled. There appears to be no contingency.

 

[Ianno87]

The core (St Pancras to Blackfriars) of Thameslink is in meltdown this morning, with all power switched off between all these stations.

Trains north of the capital are terminating and starting at St Pancras or Finsbury Park; trains South of the river are starting and terminating at East Croydon.

Is there any other piece of railway infrastructure in a major city (single lines, different types of power, so critical to the running of the timetable) which is so vulnerable to something going wrong in that section which would result in mass cancellations for hours on end?

Lots

Castlefield corridor
Cardiff Central - Queen Steet
Partick
Haymarket-Edinburgh

I could go on...

 

[Antman]

All Sevenoaks via Swanley services appear to be cancelled with Victoria/Ashford services making additional stops at Eynsford and Shoreham.

 

[Failed Unit]

Interesting working as a result. 0739 London Kx - Peterborough. Stopping at Hornsey and Harringey.

I must admit I don’t understand the explanation. Brighton - Bedford service develops a problem with its pantograph at Blackfriars? How? It is on 3rd rail.

guess I should be happy ATO isn’t used this morning and our trains still use kx.

 

[Saint66]

Interesting working as a result. 0739 London Kx - Peterborough. Stopping at Hornsey and Harringey.

I must admit I don’t understand the explanation. Brighton - Bedford service develops a problem with its pantograph at Blackfriars? How? It is on 3rd rail.

guess I should be happy ATO isn’t used this morning and our trains still use kx.

I believe the OHLE actually came down at City Thameslink.

 

[ComUtoR]

Line is now open, services being reinstated, disruption expected to 1400

 

[gazthomas]

Yes the OHLE is down at City Thameslink.

As I write this I'm on a completely full service into St Pancras, I count myself lucky that I got on a train as they're running south every 15 mins, all stations with oddly no fasts.

I have always thought the core was extremely vulnerable and I can't understand why it would take so long to repair, as an IT guy we practice disaster recovery scenarios all the time.

Second day of disruption, there were issues at Elstree and Borehamwood yesterday afternoon.

 

[Failed Unit]

I believe the OHLE actually came down at City Thameslink.

Ok. The train must have gone back to Blackfriars. Thanks. The explanation was odd.

 

[Failed Unit]

Yes the OHLE is down at City Thameslink.

As I write this I'm on a completely full service into St Pancras, I count myself lucky that I got on a train as they're running south every 15 mins, all stations with oddly no fasts.

I have always thought the core was extremely vulnerable and I can't understand why it would take so long to repair, as an IT guy we practice disaster recovery scenarios all the time.

Second day of disruption, there were issues at Elstree and Borehamwood yesterday afternoon.

GTR don’t have any plan Bs. I have noticed every incident causes major problems. The core fails a lot. You would expect they would have a slick plan to dust off when it does.

 

[BRX]

It was already a mess last night although perhaps due to an independent issue. All the sutton trains were cancelled for some time.

 

[SteveM70]

The core fails a lot. You would expect they would have a slick plan to dust off when it does.

It probably wouldn’t even need dusting

 

[TFN]

Cannot understand if this broke last night why they can't set up services to terminate at London Bridge or Blackfriars, especially as its all third Rail to those stations so overhead problems shouldn't be an issue but no everything is cancelled. There appears to be no contingency.

I do believe they started implementing some planning as services turning back at London Bridge. The 0800 to Horsham ran as well as 0805 to Brighton which I'm currently sitting on (with no toilets working and 8 car).

Just before my train left another inbound Thameslink came to London Bridge and everyone got off.

I think a simple plan of 2tph Brighton to London Bridge and 2tph Horsham to London Bridge (calling all stations between Gatwick and Purley) would've been a decent contingency plan. I know it wouldn't have been anywhere near enough and I don't know the logistics of planning train diagrams but surely they have to anticipate the core closing for ANYTHING.

 

[Saint66]

NR have tweeted some info on the incident - https://twitter.com/NetworkRailSE

It seems that along with OHLE issues, one of the ceramic insulators associated with the 3rd rail cracked and blew, damaging signalling in the process too.

 

[gazthomas]

Just before getting to St Pancras we were told that we're going through the core after all, so job fixed

 

[Surreytraveller]

GTR don’t have any plan Bs. I have noticed every incident causes major problems. The core fails a lot. You would expect they would have a slick plan to dust off when it does.

Can't really have a Plan B. Can't terminate trains in Kings Cross or London Bridge Low Level, as there's no capacity. All you could reasonably do is terminate in Blackfriars/London Bridge High Level/St Pancras Low Level, but that would all be dependent on what routes are open or closed.

 

[hwl]

Can't really have a Plan B. Can't terminate trains in Kings Cross or London Bridge Low Level, as there's no capacity. All you could reasonably do is terminate in Blackfriars/London Bridge High Level/St Pancras Low Level, but that would all be dependent on what routes are open or closed.

There aren't enough letters in the Alphabet to cover plan Bs.
There is a bit of spare capacity at London Bridge Low Level and Kings Cross will improve slightly post throat rebuild. The ability to turn around in Blackfriars/London Bridge High Level/St Pancras Low Level is very limited.

 

[hwl]

Cannot understand if this broke last night why they can't set up services to terminate at London Bridge or Blackfriars,

They can only do that for circa <50% of the services. The Gatwick via Redhill services are in the 50% that get cancelled as there isn't room for all of them.

 

[Bikeman78]

Can't really have a Plan B. Can't terminate trains in Kings Cross or London Bridge Low Level, as there's no capacity. All you could reasonably do is terminate in Blackfriars/London Bridge High Level/St Pancras Low Level, but that would all be dependent on what routes are open or closed.

I don't think the peak service along the ECML has increased much since May 2018 so it ought to be possible to run most trains into KGX. Off peak I'd ditch the Cambridge semi fasts and run half hourly PBO-KGX and half hourly CBG-KGX stoppers. The problem is the train crews work through from PBO to Horsham and vice versa.

 

[Bikeman78]

There aren't enough letters in the Alphabet to cover plan Bs.
There is a bit of spare capacity at London Bridge Low Level and Kings Cross will improve slightly post throat rebuild. The ability to turn around in Blackfriars/London Bridge High Level/St Pancras Low Level is very limited.

This should all have been looked at when the Thameslink upgrade was planned. If it only went wrong once every few years then people would just live with it. Unfortunately it happens more frequently than that. Even incidents off the core can cause meltdown because the crew don't sign all the routes so they get to St Pancras and cannot go any further. Hitchin to Peterborough suffers particularly badly because there is nothing else to serve the intermediate stations.

 

[Haywain]

Can't really have a Plan B. Can't terminate trains in Kings Cross or London Bridge Low Level, as there's no capacity. All you could reasonably do is terminate in Blackfriars/London Bridge High Level/St Pancras Low Level, but that would all be dependent on what routes are open or closed.

And to allow the capacity to turn trains round you need to thin out the service rather a lot.

 

[AM9]

And to allow the capacity to turn trains round you need to thin out the service rather a lot.

Surely, the degree of service reduction resulting from the occasional closing of the core proves just how much infrastructure is wasted when every train is terminated either side of it. Maybe the occasional inconvenience is justified by the much higher capacity that through-running brings to the route both north and south of the core. Expecting Kings Cross, St Pancras, Blackfriars and London Bridge to be expanded to cope with the expected growth (assuming there was even the land on which to expand) is delusional. You have to break eggs to make an omlette.

 

[Failed Unit]

Surely, the degree of service reduction resulting from the occasional closing of the core proves just how much infrastructure is wasted when every train is terminated either side of it. Maybe the occasional inconvenience is justified by the much higher capacity that through-running brings to the route both north and south of the core. Expecting Kings Cross, St Pancras, Blackfriars and London Bridge to be expanded to cope with the expected growth (assuming there was even the land on which to expand) is delusional. You have to break eggs to make an omlette.

It would be interesting to know how often the core is close. It does seem frequent although event like this are not. We have had flooding, signalling issue etc. But most frequently failed class 700 trains.

 

[ijmad]

And to allow the capacity to turn trains round you need to thin out the service rather a lot.

If they took a coordinated approach and thinned out some other south London services a little bit, such as Southern, to free up some platforms at London Bridge, could be managed better? Make everyone's commute a little more unpleasant / delayed rather than totally killing the Thameslink service that is crucial to many stations not served by other services.

 

[ijmad]

NR have tweeted some info on the incident - https://twitter.com/NetworkRailSE

It seems that along with OHLE issues, one of the ceramic insulators associated with the 3rd rail cracked and blew, damaging signalling in the process too.

How could the OHLE/3rd Rail issues be related? Or is it just a horrible coincidence?

Or perhaps the trains were being manually changed over at a slightly different place or something?

 

[Haywain]

How could the OHLE/3rd Rail issues be related? Or is it just a horrible coincidence?

I am only guessing but could this be caused by a damaged overhead cable hitting the 3rd rail?

 

[hwl]

If they took a coordinated approach and thinned out some other south London services a little bit, such as Southern, to free up some platforms at London Bridge, could be managed better? Make everyone's commute a little more unpleasant / delayed rather than totally killing the Thameslink service that is crucial to many stations not served by other services.

A lot of Southern services interwork between different routes at some point during the day so massive disruption till the end of service. Much easier to restore and recover service the way they have done it.

 

[BRX]

Surely, the degree of service reduction resulting from the occasional closing of the core proves just how much infrastructure is wasted when every train is terminated either side of it. Maybe the occasional inconvenience is justified by the much higher capacity that through-running brings to the route both north and south of the core. Expecting Kings Cross, St Pancras, Blackfriars and London Bridge to be expanded to cope with the expected growth (assuming there was even the land on which to expand) is delusional. You have to break eggs to make an omlette.

Yes, this always seems to get forgotten.

 

[hwl]

I am only guessing but could this be caused by a damaged overhead cable hitting the 3rd rail?

Or running line which would also explain the signalling equipment issues as the track circuit equipment would have been fried if the contact wire hit the running rails in the overlapping electrification area.