I have heard via Facebook that announcements on the trains have stated someone has nicked "the track" and caused this.

Possible?

I've just come though this one.

I got a text from a friend at just after 15:00, I was near Farringdon;
no time to properly check what FCC were saying; the gen I had was
simialr to early posts nothing between WHP and StAlbans, and 90 min
delays between StPancras and Luton. I had no bus gen.

I got to Farringdon at 15:18, TL platforms barried off.

Experience tells me if something is running north of StAlbans by far
the best way is via Watford Junction even with the walk. Ths avoids
buses (for which queuing time can be substantial) and the subsequent
bus to train scrums wherver buses go to.

I made 15:35 Tring at Euston,






16:31 to St Albans, walk to City, about 17:12, 8car 319 at about
17:18 .

"D7666" wrote in message
...





I've just come though this one.

Snip

As those 319s arrived in Luton on DS a 222 on DF indicated Sheffield
arrived on DF - and Luton did a very very good move and held both
trains for each other with copious holding announcements and staff
dealing - there were numeorus passengers swapping both ways between th
2 trains. But I'll add this , the leading FCC person on duty in what
I'd at one time called the supervisors office was a long time exBR
man, one I've seen and spoken to at Luton many times over more than 20
years, he was coordinating the whole show by radio. Well done to him,
but I do wonder had it been one of the off the street fcc ones whether
they'd have worked it out.




--
Nick

Brings a lump to my throat reading that. I bet he was enjoying himself too

On Nov 11, 6:12*pm, D7666 wrote:


No sign of any buses at Luton.



Wandered by station to and from Sainsburys at 19:30 and 20:00 loads of
buses but none ding a lot ... possibly arrivals but no departures or
perhaps on standby, as a number of 319s trains seen.


--
Nick

On Nov 11, 6:13*pm, BumYoghurt
wrote:
I have heard via Facebook that announcements on the trains have stated
someone has nicked "the track" and caused this.

Possible?

Nonsense, stuff and piffle, or as I think we might start to say around
these parts, 'bum yoghurt'.

However I see others have a different definition for the
aforementioned phrase:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/defin...m=Bum%20Yogurt

Though I suppose those with ludicrous nicknames shouldn't really throw
stones...

"BumYoghurt" wrote in message
...

I have heard via Facebook that announcements on the trains have stated
someone has nicked "the track" and caused this.

Cable theft affecting the _track circuits_, or the power supplies for the
same?

The 'track circuits' being key to train detection for the signalling system,
so cable theft as usual means massive delays...

Paul S

On Nov 11, 4:12*pm, "Mizter T" wrote:
"Neil Williams" wrote:
Actually, scratch that:-

"East Midlands Trains services can now run between London St Pancras
International and Luton / Bedford"

So they're going to be quite busy, then. *Time to hire in some
locomotives and stock to ensure everything is 10-car?

That's almost suggestive of it being an OHLE power issue (EMT having diesel
traction of course) rather than a signalling issue - though I'd be wary of
jumping to that conclusion just yet - perhaps they've hashed the signalling
together enough to be able to run a service on the fast lines, who knows?

At 13:00 or so today there was an EMT 222 stopped and idling at Mill
Hill Broadway on the Up Fast line with its doors open ... Not quite
believing my luck at EMT finally running a commuter service to Mill
Hill after all these years I went over to the station to have a look
and the reason became apparent - there wasn't a single lit signal
visible in either direction (and one should be able to see 6 signals
from there - two blocks to the north and one to the south).

At around 14:30 an HST rolled along the down fast at about 10 mph and
at around 16:00 a 222 went through on the down fast at near enough
line speed (there may well have been a few trains in-between when I
wasn't looking out of the office window...); as of 16:30, FCC were
still not running any trains through Mill Hill.

On Nov 11, 6:12*pm, D7666 wrote:


I understand it is cable theft around Radlett



Or around Hendon, depending on who you listen to, anyway an area
outage.

Apparently they lost signals, signals control, power to signals and
points, and traction SCADA; in the case of the latter power either
tripped or was turned off as a result.

Does sound like cable theft.

--
Nick

Ha! Told you!

I also heard that is the reason for the big Barnes signal failure on Tuesday.

When I went through Barnes yesterday, there were two cheeky looking chappies in fluorescent jackets climbing onto the tracks through a hole in a wire fence, near the works that are going on there. I wonder if there is a big organised cable theft going on at the moment?

On Nov 11, 2:36*pm, "Mizter T" wrote:

The ongoing unreliability of the Thameslink route is the stuff of legend,
which is a great shame as it's such a useful service when it works
properly


Indeed.

And I share your concerns.

As I'm sure most uk.railway contributors must be fed up of reading, I
am a Luton / London Thameslink commuter, and while 60-80% of my
journies do not go south of West Hampstead on Thameslink I still get
hot by core problems.

Fridays incident is perhaps not so typical of the many recent events,
rather one more in the range of what can happen on any line.

But it still had symptoms of one major major issue with the service
that GoVia did have and FCC seem to have exacerbated and NR certainly
has - and that is lack of resilience.

Not only has the TL Project eliminated Moorgate forever as a rat-run
escape route, there are turnback restrictions at City TL, a crossover
is permanently removed at Farringdon because of the 12car works, and
at present the bays at Blackfriars are not there.

If goes on - when the route has 12car trains, can't turn back at
StAlbans - yes the platforms can take 12 but the turnback siding is
still 8. Can't turnback [either way] even empty 12car at Kentish Town,
because not only is the (well known) issue of not extending to 12car
for service a limit but the signalling is laid out for 8car dead.
Blackfriars bays - when these are open are they 8car only ? AIUI some
or all of them yes, which again means no 12car turn back.

StPancras high level was ruled out years ago. In the normal weekday
service - even off peak - there is no platform space there. You can
turn back in low lvel between SPI and Farringdon, but this is slow,
allegedly they won't turn more than 4 TPH there, but I don;t know why
its quite that low, I reckon 6 TPH ought to be feasible, but I'd need
expert advice on that.

All this is very important, because there will be many more 12car
trains than 8car. On the north side once in the open air, the only
actual stations where you can turn 12car in service recovery will be
West Hampstead, Luton and Bedford.

Now the knee jerk argument to this is the service pattern at them
moment only goes to Luton and Bedford, and thats where the TOCs have
made things worse. There is no train crew resilience. They are unable
to do short turnbacks (even ignoring cancellation penalties for doing
so) because crews are in the wrong places.

They only have 3 depots - Bedford Blackfriars and Brighton.
Blackfriars !!! That NBG to anybody when the core is closed.

When the GN route is connected I see this getting worse. because what
will start to happen is something will go wrong and say a NB GN bound
train will be in the core with a GN-side TL driver, the junction fails
and there no driver to take in on the ML route. This WILL happen.
Youve then got a situation where 8 of 24 TPH have lost the route
through the source failire, and 16/24 screwed up becaus eone train has
no knowledge.

If I were running it I'd have all crew know all routes, throughout,
and have appropriate diagrams, but I know thats expensive. I certainly
expect all GN crew to know at least as Cricklewood to dump a train,
and all ML crews to know Hornsey ditto, and things like Brighton crews
to know SE routes if they happen to be on a SB that needs to be dumped
at (say) Orpington. But if you look at precedence - that dispute this
time 2 years ago was all about the parsimonouos way they were going
about crew training on 377s and lack of crews for KO0.

I've been to 4 public lecture on TL project, 2 given by senior NR
people, one to IET, and despite reading this stuff in detail, and
every other TLP paper, I understand the tekkie stuff about ATO and 24
TPH and all the rest - but I fail to see where any of this works with
the way the previous and current TOC run the service and the lack of
resilience.

--
Nick