Sounds a bit like Reggie Perrin!
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What’s going on with Thameslink?
- Thread starter Jturner98
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I did. The disruption being experienced now was obvious to me way back in 2014. I spent a lot of time in the 2014-18 period boring friends with my predictions of disaster once Thameslink infected the GN. At the time I lived near to a station that would only have Thameslink trains from 2018. I moved house before it all happened.
The pre Canal Tunnel Thameslink was not exactly a success. I had an acquaintance who used Thameslink from the MML, and got frequent reports of major disruption and poor service recovery. So Thameslink were starting from a low base.
The Thameslink 2018 project was obsessed with the 24tph through the core objective. I never thought this to be achievable, but that's by the by now because hopefully it will never be attempted. In order to achieve the 24tph objective the planners piled more and more complexity and fragility into the timetable, the icing on the cake being the completely absurd Cambridge-Maidstone East service, which fortunately has never happened.
Bringing Thameslink onto the GN was always going to be more complex than the MML, which has 4 tracks all the way from Kentish Town to Bedford, lots of places to reverse, and long distance trains only going to/from the East Midlands and South Yorkshire. In contrast, the GN has two major bottlenecks, at Digswell Viaduct and Holme Fen, few places to reverse, plus services running to and from Scotland. If it wasn't possible to provide a resilient service on the MML, then it was blindingly obvious that the post Thameslink GN service would be at least as bad as the MML and probably worse. Thameslink does not work because it is too complex, too fragile and lacks resilience.
Regular disruption is engineering work, which is planned, but other perturbations to the service are frequent and unpredictable. Of course the service should be planned to be resilient when there is unpredicted disruption, and with contingency plans for recovery of normal service. The railway operates in the real world of extreme weather events, people going under trains and infrastructure failures, not some fantasy island where the timetable always runs perfectly.
I regret to say that I don't see any prospect of improvement. The railway does not understand where it is now, so it can't work out what it needs to do to get to the objective of providing a reliable service. My advice to anyone relying on Thameslink is to get a new job and/or a new house. If you can't do that, develop your own contingency plans for getting home when there is disruption, and learn some techniques to avoid getting too stressed by it all.
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bramling
Veteran Member
Sounds a bit like Reggie Perrin!
So three relatively minor issues on the GN itself, and the consequence is the entire outer-suburban service has completely collapsed.
A level crossing failure could be a majorly disruptive I’d have thought?
MML side in complete meltdown due to a fatality, sadly.
bramling
Veteran Member
From what I’m hearing, there seems to have been a complete meltdown of GTR’s control this morning.
Which may well explain the above if control were busy dealing with issues on the Midland side.
I guess this is what happens when someone combines three different railways into one. I really don’t envy GTR’s control, those guys must have an absolutely impossible job at times.
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Quite likely as it happened around 0615 and closed the whole line.
Indeed.
LU acceptance on the way home last night and back in this morning for me!
They’ve reported the following:
- A person was hit by a train earlier today between Bedford and London St Pancras International
- A points failure earlier at Finsbury Park
- Fault with the level crossing barriers earlier today at Royston
- There is an ongoing fault with the signalling system between Salfords and Coulsdon South. Some trains may be diverted via Redhill which will cause delays to services.
I believe GTR also has to deal with 5 different NR route controls, which can’t be an easy task either.
bramling
Veteran Member
Looking at this in more detail, the level crossing problem on GN appears to have been Litlington AHB?
Now with the pre-Covid timetable there would have been six morning peak Baldock-King’s Cross services, all of which are now missing from the timetable and unlikely to be returning any time soon. With everything now originating from Cambridge or Peterborough and most of the outers being Thameslink through services, you very quickly end up with the situation where there are no trains at all from many stations, which seems to have been what happened across large parts of the GN side this morning, no doubt then leading to massive pressure on control.
I’m off this week, thankfully, though I gave up on routinely using the train to get to London ages ago. The service simply isn’t fit for purpose now, late home one too many times…
I wouldn’t blame GTR for it, but one might reasonably blame those who thought this unworkable setup was a good idea.
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It did see somewhat like you had been. The issue is ultimately the lack of contingency - in the event of trains needing to be cut back, there doesn’t seem to be much capacity to actually do that, so whole trains are cancelled. And due to the number of “branches” of Thameslink, that’s a lot of things to go wrong.
Kings Cross / St Pancras / London Bridge / East Croydon / Finsbury Park don’t really have that much (if any) capacity for trains to be turned back and even if you do you’d probably have to start stepping trains up out of course which has the potential to wreck drivers diagrams too. It can be worked out, but only with the right amount of staffing and the right people, reducing complexity during disruption where possible, robust contingency plans and containing the disruption. The latter has seemed somewhat impossible today and I’m dubious on the other factors. Even the best control team in the world can struggle when there’s a service intensity that can’t be met and multiple key parts of the line are unavailable at the same time.
The Elizabeth line may run the risk of this too in through running, although there’s a lot less cross-working and only 2 branches east & west.
theageofthetra
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It's in an arch near Ewer St Jct. SE affected too after an earlier points failure had just been fixed. Nightmare morning.
This seems to me to the the fundamental problem. Too many trains converging on the core from very far afield, interspersed with many other services, and an inability to turn then short. The size of the network means it effectively transports disruption around the network very easily indeed. It’s amazing how quickly TL “contagion” can pick up a problem near Brighton and dump it on the MML or ECML.
It’s an inherent limitation of the system, rather than the fault of day to day control, but it can lead one to question whether it was too ambitious by design!
londonmidland
Established Member
According to frequent users of Great Northern and Thameslink services, there has been disruption to services near enough every day for the past two weeks.
Whether it is a Network Rail or GTR issue, something needs to be done regarding contingency plans.
Whether it is a Network Rail or GTR issue, something needs to be done regarding contingency plans.
I think it is an inherent problem really. If GTR could build and implement even more extreme / imaginative contingency plans like diverting into Cannon St or Victoria then that gives other options. Although I imagine other operators / DfT would shoot it down.
In principle it’s cheaper (you can’t build loads of new platforms in Zone 1) and better to use the platform capacity at far flung ends of the line and run everything through a central route. But you port the disruption across a much wider area. So as an example someone in Sussex has a severely reduced service because the overhead wires (which they don’t even have in Sussex!) have gone down in Hertfordshire. And a shuttle service isn’t practical. Don’t think GTR have done themselves too many favours with the route knowledge at their depots either. At least they don’t change at Blackfriars any more like they did in May ‘18!
It ultimately seems like a timetable too ambitious for the infrastructure available which has be at almost 100% availability, every day. During the Covid reduced service, things seemed to run OK.
I moved to Horsham from Three Bridges depot and in 2018 got asked to dump a unit in Cricklewood sidings due to no relief at Finsbury Park... no Horsham driver could do that now
Failed Unit
Established Member
When you look at recent days.
Saturday - Not enough volunteers
Sunday - ok
Monday - Fatality.
Tuesday - Wires
Wednesday - lots of issues.
Thursday - Strike
friday - Sunday service because of Thursday.
saturday - strike.
need a car anyone?
I could say 'picked a good day to work from home' but every day is a disaster currently, so I'm not sure I can claim any particular credit for foresight here.
My usual commuting train this week : 19 minutes late, cancelled, cancelled, cancelled (strike), cancelled (day after strike).
That's after last week, when it was cancelled two out of the three days I went to the office.
I said last week was the worst week for Ely-Cambridge services I can remember. Well, this week may well beat it
My usual commuting train this week : 19 minutes late, cancelled, cancelled, cancelled (strike), cancelled (day after strike).
That's after last week, when it was cancelled two out of the three days I went to the office.
I said last week was the worst week for Ely-Cambridge services I can remember. Well, this week may well beat it
bramling
Veteran Member
I think ambitious is putting it rather politely to be honest.
It should have been obvious that there were going to be severe problems with resilience, and it’s rather frustrating that the attitude from some people here seems to be that as long as St Albans gets its precious turn-up-and-go London service then the whole thing must work well for everyone else, when it clearly doesn’t.
I seem to remember a post some while ago, the originator of which no longer seems to post here, the gist of which was “I travel from Cambridge and I love Thameslink, when it falls over I can catch the GN fast services, and if all that fails I still have GA to Liverpool Street”. All well and good for those who have multiple options, but for those whose station doesn’t have that the whole thing is a disaster.
43074
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The TL service wasn't that substantially reduced though, only the peak Littlehampton, East Grinstead, Peterborough and Baldocks were removed. Most of them haven't come back.
Which begs the question as to why it’s so bad now. Obviously one answer is “drivers” but looking at recent weeks they’ve also had a disproportionate amount of rotten luck when it comes to infrastructure issues and fatalities etc.
Why are they only planning on running a Sunday service after strike days, anyway? As far as I can tell most/all other TOCs are advising of a late startup of services but then plan to run a full weekday service from mid-morning. Why can't GTR cope with that?
Passenger numbers may have had something to do with it, but also the services around Thameslinks (LNER, EMR etc) were substantially reduced.
That’s true the potential for conflicts and blocking back has returned (as it has everywhere)
Silver Cobra
Member
The sad part of this, for the Peterborough route specifically, is that the route actually has a more frequent service on the strike days than the day in between (2tph on Thursday/Saturday versus 1tph on Friday), due to the whole Sunday timetable thing for Friday.
Failed Unit
Established Member
I have asked the the same question. in particular why is the afternoon so poor.
That wasn't me. But my move before 2018 put me in that fortunate position, and that was one of the most important objectives of the move.
It was obvious. it was one of the main reasons why I moved.
Minstral25
Established Member
I have just been told by GTR that there is no platform space at London Bridge to set up a contingency services from Redhill route to London Bridge when these failures happen. Appreciate this morning there is also a fire at London Bridge but is that actually true?
Assume TL would use 10-15 and not 4/5 to turn round and head back south
Assume TL would use 10-15 and not 4/5 to turn round and head back south
bramling
Veteran Member
On the GN side they were running a Sunday service during the early part of Covid, and remember that this means no through Peterborough to Horsham. For most of the lockdown period the only GN through service was an hourly Cambridge to Gatwick.
To be honest, things soon went downhill on the GN side.
They did manage a few London Bridge turnarounds this morning for services off the Redhill route (and one at Blackfriars) but it isn't as if there is a platform free for this.
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