"Joe Patrick" wrote in message ...
There has been a power cut, affecting the Tube and trains
BBC News Reports:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3189755.stm

Wow - I just missed that, having got the 18:57 from Victoria.

Not at all clear what happened. Various media reports are pointing to
a
massive failure either at Wimbledon or New Cross. Another report
mentions a failure in a 275kV ring around London. I'm not paying much
attention
to detail until someone with a clue make a statement.

Where I live (Sutton) was not affected (power comes from down south
perhaps?).
Where I work (S Kensington) wasn't affected either - or at least my
work place wasn't - I was dreading the prosect of finding serveral
dozen servers dead - but no, they're still there (phew).

I have a feeling that the de-regulation of the power indutry may have
something to do with this. There has been some fairly gross stupidity
evident in what used to be a very resilient power system since
de-regulation. If doubt I usually blame the Tories ill conceived
privatisation plans for most things -
and New Labour for not reversing them (but that's just me).

Then again, maybe it was a genuine fault or terrorist action - guess
we'll
find out soon enough.

At least, by all accounts, there was some fairly rapid evacuation of
parts of the tube this time, instead of leaving the poor sods to stew
in the tunnels.

Cheers

Timbo

"Tim Southerwood" wrote in message
om...

At least, by all accounts, there was some fairly rapid evacuation of
parts of the tube this time, instead of leaving the poor sods to stew
in the tunnels.

So quick that it appears that when power was available again (the grid
outage lasted about 40 minutes) passengers were being evacuated from trains
stranded in tunnels, so traction power could not be restored.

As was to be expected, though, a collapse of the service for a reason
outside the control of the railways was accompanied by a collapse of
information. The Connex website even managed to proclaim 'no major
problems'.

Peter

On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 22:27:11 +0000 (UTC), "Peter Masson"
wrote:
[...]
As was to be expected, though, a collapse of the service for a reason
outside the control of the railways was accompanied by a collapse of
information. The Connex website even managed to proclaim 'no major
problems'.

TfL's site earlier helpfully said that there was no travel information
because of the power cut. If they were able to upload a specific
message to the site, why wasn't anything useful posted? Shouldn't
they have someone on call to do things like this? Now they are
telling us to ask at a local station as most services are "affected".
A list of lines that have service, and a plea not to travel at all
would be more useful. I'm sure everyone on the ground is doing their
bit, but where's the coordination?

And as for the other train companies... Connex are still "running
well", though their train running pages are quite helpful. SWT's news
about the delays is two clicks away from the home page and should IMHO
be much more prominent. c2c useless. SouthCentral useless.
Silverlink - gave up. Of the TOC sites I looked at, only WAGN have
news about the power cut on their first page. National Rail has a
very nice obvious link to the current disruptions page, however once
you get to the page, the information about tonight's delays has gone!

Even though most people affected won't be in front of a web browser,
it depresses me how little use was made of the medium by the
operators.

Richard.

"Richard" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 22:27:11 +0000 (UTC), "Peter Masson"
wrote:
[...]
As was to be expected, though, a collapse of the service for a reason
outside the control of the railways was accompanied by a collapse of
information. The Connex website even managed to proclaim 'no major
problems'.

Connex are based on the South Bank, so I guess they would have been in the
dark for a while as well...

Mark

On Fri, 29 Aug 2003 09:34:34 +0000 (UTC), "Mark"
wrote:

Connex are based on the South Bank, so I guess they would have been in the
dark for a while as well...

We've been hit with a few power cuts at work recently, and minimal
disruption was caused because we all use laptops, while the telephone
system has backup batteries. We lost network connectivity, but could
have dialed up to the Internet if necessary (indeed, some people for
whom it was critical did so).

Assuming the telephone system was not affected, I don't see how Connex
(or indeed any other TOC) couldn't have uploaded a simple message in
the same situation.

Neil

--
Neil Williams
is a valid email address, but is sent to /dev/null.
Try my first name at the above domain instead if you want to e-mail me.

Assuming the telephone system was not affected, I don't see how Connex
(or indeed any other TOC) couldn't have uploaded a simple message in
the same situation.

Because that is too sensible
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