BREAKING NEWS!! Power Cut affecting Railways in the South East
 

In article , Peter Masson
writes
Where exactly is Hurst in Kent?

Dunno, my mapping software doesn't list it.
--
"It used to be that what a writer did was type a bit and then stare out of the
window a bit, type a bit, stare out of the window a bit. Networked computers
make these two activities converge, because now the thing you type on and the
window you stare out of are the same thing" - Douglas Adams 28/1/99.

BREAKING NEWS!! Power Cut affecting Railways in the South East
 

"Peter Masson" typed


"Wanderer" wrote in message
...

A system transformer failure ay Hurst in Kent, followed some 7 seconds
later by a fault on a 275kv underground cable between their New Cross and
Wimbledon substations.

Where exactly is Hurst in Kent?

AutoRoute found me a Hurst Green just south of Oxted. Didn't find me a
plain Hurst in Kent though. (There's one in Berkshire east of Reading,
north of Wokingham.)

--
Helen D. Vecht:
Edgware.

BREAKING NEWS!! Power Cut affecting Railways in the South East
 

asked question was "Well, what am I supposed to do?". My reaction would have
been "Get a life, chill out and use your feet or your brain". Luckily, the
Network Rail guy was more tolerant!

I swear I saw something on Five news this afternoon where a commuter
asked a policeman what to do, and he said "You could walk" :D

BREAKING NEWS!! Power Cut affecting Railways in the South East
 

In ,
Peter Masson typed:
"Wanderer" wrote in message
...

A system transformer failure ay Hurst in Kent, followed some 7
seconds later by a fault on a 275kv underground cable between their
New Cross and Wimbledon substations.

Where exactly is Hurst in Kent?


Staplehurst??





Bob

BREAKING NEWS!! Power Cut affecting Railways in the South East
 

On Fri, 29 Aug 2003 23:09:54 +0100, Bob Wood wrote:

In ,
Peter Masson typed:
"Wanderer" wrote in message
...

A system transformer failure ay Hurst in Kent, followed some 7
seconds later by a fault on a 275kv underground cable between their
New Cross and Wimbledon substations.

Where exactly is Hurst in Kent?


Staplehurst??

I was quoting National Grid's press release. Some of their substations do
use odd names though, not always directly related to geographic places.

BREAKING NEWS!! Power Cut affecting Railways in the South East
 

Wanderer wrote in message ...
On Fri, 29 Aug 2003 10:03:37 +0100, Tim Southerwood wrote:
snip

Someone should be getting their balls on the line for yesterday, but it's
not the railways as far as I can see.

Why? You and everyone are now paying the price for the privatisation of the
electricity supply industry, as well as the railways, and everything else
that previous governments refused to invest in properly. The ESI was built
up with a tremendous amount of fat in the system, but all of that was taken
out in the quest for profit and fat dividend payouts.

Strangely enough I knew it was a stupid idea at the time - but I
didn't get
a lot of say in the matter - and no, I've never voted Tory. But then
voting Labour isn't much better (I've never done that either).

But what can you do when you've got two right of centre main
parties...

cheers

Timbo

BREAKING NEWS!! Power Cut affecting Railways in the South East
 

"3518+3227" wrote in message ...
John Abbot wrote in message ...
Interesting. I thought the Underground still took its juice from Lots
Road
(ie its own dedicated power station). Or is that closed now?

Lots Road is closed, and is in the process of decommissioning. All LU
power supply is now taken from the National Grid, via a small number of
Bulk Supply Points at strategic points around London. Greenwich power
station is retained as a backup supply, normally unused.

Methinks, that in the investigation into what went wrong, the whole question of
how the LUL gets its power supply will be looked into. While I accept that
when the decision was taken to shut Lots Road, the question of "Can the National
Grid cope with this extra loading?" was probably looked into closely, maybe the
answers that they came up with were not widely broadcast, other than a bland
"The system can cope".

Perhaps, LUL (and should I add TfL here as well) could when the Lots Road site
is cleared, put the money from the sale of the site into some new investment in
the power supply. Though wasn't the Lots Road building listed?

Can an incident like this do much for the 2012 Olymipic bid for London? Cynic's
will say it won't, but all I'll say is that it won't go unoticed.

Trevor

BREAKING NEWS!! Power Cut affecting Railways in the South East
 

"Paul Weaver" wrote in message om...
Why? You and everyone are now paying the price for the privatisation of the
electricity supply industry, as well as the railways, and everything else
that previous governments refused to invest in properly. The ESI was built
up with a tremendous amount of fat in the system, but all of that was taken
out in the quest for profit and fat dividend payouts.

So eevn though investment in the grid has increased to unprecedented
levels since privitisation, even though the main problem with the tube
(more then a 30 minute delay - hardly unknown) seems to be the lack of
co-ordination between local area staff and the de-training of people,
your uninformed hyperleft views instantly blame "fat cats" and
"profits".

As for "there should be tripple redundancy" - I have a line from
Futurama I feel is appropiate

"It's pieced all 6000 hulls and we're leaking dark matter everywhere"

"The fools! If only they built it with 6001!"

They'll always be a situation where a failure could have been averted
with X+1 redundancy layers. The chance of 2 failures at the same time
by accident is pretty romte, or so the experts have said. To add
another layer (if thats possible), would

1) not protect against a cascade failure
2) cost a lot more to the country then a 40 minute power cut

Do you want to pay twice the price for your electricity (and increase
in prices for every industry that relys on electricity) to prevent a
40 minute blackout to a small area of the country every 15 years?

Given the apparent "chaos" (pubs were full), the major problem was
lack of organisation and planning, where were the extra coaches, where
was the co-ordination across the network and between train, tube and
grid, where was the emergency response plan?

Now you bring up coaches I've got to ask did the London bus service shut down
the way the one in NY did?

BREAKING NEWS!! Power Cut affecting Railways in the South East
 

Paul Weaver said:

Do you want to pay twice the price for your electricity (and
increase in prices for every industry that relys on electricity)
to prevent a 40 minute blackout to a small area of the country
every 15 years?

Depends where it is. In Cumbria we're used to power cuts of up to a
day, and we are prepared. If the trains stop it's no big deal here.
If you're deep underground in a hot sweaty tube train and you are
less than perfectly fit/healthy it could be serious. But these
individual problems can be designed out - we could run the tube
trains on fuel cells or whatever. Hospitals have their generators.
Stranded passengers could be put up in shelters/halls, or back at the
office. Businesses could move out of central London. These things can
be planned; it's not rocket science.

And I don't think 'layers of redundancy' is an appropriate model.
Load sharing might be.

--
=============================================

Chris Game chrisgame@!yahoo!dotcodotuk
=============================================

BREAKING NEWS!! Power Cut affecting Railways in the South East
 

"Chris Game" wrote in message
...
Paul Weaver said:

Do you want to pay twice the price for your electricity (and
increase in prices for every industry that relys on electricity)
to prevent a 40 minute blackout to a small area of the country
every 15 years?

Depends where it is. In Cumbria we're used to power cuts of up to a
day, and we are prepared. If the trains stop it's no big deal here.
If you're deep underground in a hot sweaty tube train and you are
less than perfectly fit/healthy it could be serious. But these
individual problems can be designed out - we could run the tube
trains on fuel cells or whatever. Hospitals have their generators.
Stranded passengers could be put up in shelters/halls, or back at the
office. Businesses could move out of central London. These things can
be planned; it's not rocket science.

And I don't think 'layers of redundancy' is an appropriate model.
Load sharing might be.

Chris, you're suggesting that the powers that be engage in some planning are
you??

As "Sir Humphrey" might say, "That's a novel approach, Minister".