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What's going on at Harpenden?

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asylumxl

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Hi all,

My train earlier had it's stop cancelled at Harpenden and as such ran St Albans to Luton non-stop.

Online it says operational incident? The lights appeared to be off but this may be due to the bright interior of the 377s.

Cheers
 
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dk1

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Apparently trains can't stop at stations with no lighting at night. Seems sensible to me really!

Often an over reaction. Train lighting illuminates the station. Never understood this rule as a bus can drop me off on a country lane directly into a ditch. We are H&S crazy these days.
 

Mojo

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I've been on plenty of trains that have stopped at unlit stations; one within the past month which was an island platform.

Don't know the layout at Harpenden but perhaps power failure also affected DOO equipment and/or prevented the driver from checking.
 

hairyhandedfool

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Don't see many articulated lorries doing 110mph on a country lane at night or many four foot drops onto metal, concrete and stone either.
 

ralphchadkirk

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Often an over reaction. Train lighting illuminates the station. Never understood this rule as a bus can drop me off on a country lane directly into a ditch. We are H&S crazy these days.

Yes, there must also be request stops where it happens. However I can imagine large stations (I've never been to Harpenden so I've no idea what it's like) can be quite disorientating with no lighting.

Mojo's explanation seems the most likely.
 

dk1

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The DOO equipment is a valid cause. Everything else reminds me of a cotton wool state.
 

Eagle

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First mention of it on Twitter seems to have been at 18.12, just as it would have been getting dark. Apparently the power's been out in Harpenden for several hours now.
 

Bedpan

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The lights in the waiting shelter on the up side are on but all other platform lights are off (not sure about inside the main building housing the ticket office on the down side). The car park lights are on though so there's quite a lot of background lighting from there and also of course the town generally, so no problems with visibility when standing on the platforms despite the lack of lighting.

Also the information screens are working (although they just say contact NRE for info) and the DOO equipment is working.

Although the station is open and safe to wander around on, I'd say that it would be a bit risky to have loads of people descending the footbridge staircases all at once, so I can see why the decision has been taken not to stop trains. They could however close the footbridge and then run a limited service using the outside (up slow/down fast) platforms though.

I wonder what the "operating incident" was though, sounds as if it was a bit more than a run of the mill power failure.
 

ValleyLines142

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Apparently trains can't stop at stations with no lighting at night. Seems sensible to me really!

Not all entirely true; I was once on a train at Fairwater and the station lights had failed but yet the train still caused. This was the 1736 from Cardiff I believe, when it was getting dark early. The conductress did make an announcement saying please take care when leaving the station.
 

tsr

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I wonder what the "operating incident" was though, sounds as if it was a bit more than a run of the mill power failure.

Couldn't that just mean that somehow a fuse blew or an RCD got "tripped"?

If the information systems were turned on, but there was no real-time information, it certainly sounds like it wasn't a power outage as such - more an electricity fault to do with the lighting circuits within the station. Having said that, there was a similar fault with the passenger information systems on the North Downs Line one day at the end of December 2010, as a relay box in the Reigate area overheated and caught fire, and this also affected data transmissions (and power supplies, IIRC, between Redhill and Betchworth).
 

ChiefPlanner

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Of course , Harpendon passengers are always satisfied - I look forward to a rant in the Herts Advertiser this week.
 

dk1

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Of course , Harpendon passengers are always satisfied - I look forward to a rant in the Herts Advertiser this week.

Ha ha my Grand Parents live in Harpenden & always comment on the moaning minnies who commute. Trains every few minutes but always something to gripe about. Where does it get them??
 

Bald Rick

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Ha ha my Grand Parents live in Harpenden & always comment on the moaning minnies who commute. Trains every few minutes but always something to gripe about. Where does it get them??

A taxi from St Albans last night!
 

asylumxl

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Ha ha my Grand Parents live in Harpenden & always comment on the moaning minnies who commute. Trains every few minutes but always something to gripe about. Where does it get them??

Harpendonians like to bitch. Such a boring town they do need something to talk about in the independent organic (bourgeois) coffee shops...
 
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