Transport Central

It all started on Sunday evening. The wires came down onto the track at Watford Junction causing all kinds of issues – every single train in and out of London Euston was cancelled. As I personally travelled on Sunday evening, I was witness to a complete lack of information and problems all over the railway network. Passengers were being diverted to London Marylebone to catch the train to Birmingham Moor Street and change there.

The Chiltern service connects reasonably well at both Banbury and Leamington Spa to CrossCountry’s Birmingham New Street and Manchester Picadilly service thus preventing the need for the walk from Birmingham Moor Street and New Street in sub-zero temperatures. This, was not mentioned however. There were delays en-route due to a trespasser on the line on the Chiltern route and big delays on the route via Coventry due to a cracked rail. 

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Newly elected London Mayor, Boris Johnson, announced the implementation of one of the key pledges of his election manifesto yesterday, for which London voted for by a majority of approximately 140,000 combined preference votes. It has, however, come under a sustained attack from unions fearing that their members will have to approach members of the public consuming alcohol to have to deal with it.

There will be no powers to deal with the incident until the Conditions of Carriage for London transport have been amended, a process which will take about a year according to The Times in a news article released this evening. There will, reportedly, not be regular patrols of carriages by Transport for London or British Transport Police officials but there will be the recruitment of 440 community support officers to assist with any disorder related incidents.

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The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) has approved the recently unveiled Network Rail delivery plan as detailed in March 2008. The ORR considers the delivery plan sufficiently robust for the completion of the modernisation work by the end of 2008. The aim of the work is to allow the number of services to run to increase by 30% and also allow for much improved journey times.

The work is going ahead in the way Network Rail desires despite protests from the Train Operating Companies that use the Main Line for its passenger and freight services. There will be disruption to routes at all bank holidays and most weekends until the end of the year meaning the challenge to passengers and the desirability of traveling via rail will be much reduced.

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Although the overhead line problems affecting the West Coast Main Line have been fixed, there is now another, separate issue affecting the area between Tring and Leighton Buzzard which all Virgin Trains to and from London Euston go through. This is causing delays of up to one hour and the odd cancellation.

A quick look at the live departure boards reveals that the London Euston to Liverpool Lime Street 11:07 is currently running an hour late, as is the 11:56 London to Glasgow service. These issues are also affecting London Midland causing delays of up to thirty minutes on some services. Network Rail have no estimate as to when a normal service will be resumed.

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A problem which impacted in a big way on the West Coast Mainline today brought misery to many hundreds of passengers waiting at Euston and other stations around the country for their Virgin Trains services. The problem was at Rugby where there has been an overhead line issue. Any other information about this is not available because the railway industry does not seem to like publishing this strange but amazing thing called information.

However, it has resulted in a large number of delays and cancellations which will affect services until the end of business today. Having a quick look at the London Euston live departure boards shows a number of cancellations into London Euston: 2100 from Wolverhampton, 2120 from Manchester Picadilly, 2122 from Manchester Picadilly, 2201 from Liverpool Lime Street, 2208 from Wolverhampton and the 2228 from Manchester Picadilly.

A Preston to London service has been substantially delayed with an estimated arrival time of 2243 when it should have arrived at 2128.  We can only imagine what the conditions will be like on this train!

Virgin Trains have said that tickets issued for today will be valid on services tomorrow and Monday 7 April.

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UPDATE: This action has been suspended pending further discussions. 

South West Trains are facing industrial action in the form of strikes due to Aslef members voting to reject a 4.5% pay increase. The strike action is planned for four days: 31 March, 1 April, 2 April and 3 April. South West Trains say they have met with the union informally today in an effort to avoid the action.

The company is planning to run a limited service and use replacement bus services for other services where possible. In a statement on its website the company’s Managing Director, Stewart Palmer, said:

“We regret the significant disruption this will cause to our passengers and we reassure them that we will do everything we can to avoid this strike taking place However if they do go ahead we will pull out all the stops to run as many trains and buses as we can.

“We are very disappointed that ASLEF has taken this decision as we believe that this is a very good offer in the current economic climate.”

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London Midland has gotten off to a relatively good start with a big rise in punctuality over the previous two periods (85% to a shave off 90%) which is something not seen that much under the previous operator. One can see that to be true when travelling on London Midland’s services as they seem to operate without issues and certainly good things are being said about them in the press.

London Midland is in the process of refurbishing its older trains at the moment with the first trains being rolled out on their West Midlands services (picture from londonmidland.com) over the next six months at the rate of one a week:

These are fairly standard three-car trains and will receive new seat covers, interiors and facilities for people with sight problems. These have also been ‘deep cleaned’ so they should be looking nice inside very soon too. Some of the carriages are receiving “intelligent sensors” to assist with the counting of passengers and identify overcrowding so something can be done about it. This sounds quite interesting and it will be good to know how well this works.

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RAIL 587 reports that Deutsche Bahn (DB) and EWS, which is owned by Deutsche Bahn since last year, have launched container freight traffic from Duisburg to Manchester using the Channel Tunnel.

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Due to the severe weather conditions, Virgin Trains have cancelled a large number of services in the morning today. You are advised to check alternative routes if possible or try to squeeze on those few trains still remaining if you must travel today.

The following services are cancelled:

• London Euston to Birmingham New Street: 07:08, 8:10, 9:10, 10:10, 11:10, 12:10
• Birmingham New Street to London Euston: 9:00, 10:00, 11:00, 12:00, 13:00, 14:00
• London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly: 07:35, 08:35, 9:35, 9:38, 10:35, 11:35
• Manchester Piccadilly to London Euston: 08:15, 09:15, 10:15, 11:15, 12:15, 13:15, 14:05, 14:15

The following services are expected to suffer problems:

• London Euston to Liverpool Lime Street: unaffected, delays of up to 60 minutes
• Liverpool Lime Street to London Euston: unaffected, delays of up to 60 minutes
• London Euston to Scotland routes: unaffected but heavy delays expected
• London Euston to and from Holyhead: route unaffected

East Midlands Trains’ customers are advised to check the announcement on the TOC’s website.

This is due to speed restrictions in force between 9:00 and 14:00 for the following Train Operating Companies: East Midlands Trains, First Capital Connect, First Transpennine Express, Grand Central, London Midland, Virgin Trains.

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Today has not been a good day for travellers on the railway network today with the West Coast Mainline effectively shut down in two major areas resulting in train crews and trains being out of place nationally.

The cause of the incidents at Shap between Preston and Carlisle and Hemel Hempstead between Rugby and London were both down to freight containers being blown off freight trains. Network Rail expect the line between Preston and Carlisle to be shut until Monday morning. The screenshot below is just a short snapshot of the train situation today with trains late up to two hours and more and cancelled.

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