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Post by Deleted on Jun 17, 2016 16:25:21 GMT
According to the BBC App there was a derailment at Paddington last night causing major disruption to services in and out of the station.
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Post by countryman on Jun 17, 2016 16:29:12 GMT
An empty train went through a red light 'causing an automatic derailment'(or close to that). What it really means is that the catch point did its job.
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Post by MoreToJack on Jun 17, 2016 16:50:10 GMT
Empty stock move from Reading passed a shunt signal at danger coming out of Royal Oak sidings into platform 1. Network Rail have confirmed as a Cat A SPAD.
The train was derailed out of the way of running lines by a set of trap points. These points worked as designed.
However, the train then struck an overhead line gantry, causing it to buckle and bringing the wires down on a number of lines.
It was this that caused most of the disruption, with isolations in place to Airport Junction and stranded electrics preventing any diesel services East of Slough.
Limited service today (and probably tomorrow too), with several cancellations and curtailments. Sleeper is replaced by HST at least until Sunday.
The disruption had knock on effects to the Tube, with both Paddington stations and Ealing Broadway intermittently opening and closing for crowd control purposes.
Not an LU incident, but can we please keep speculation etc. to an absolute minimum please, per rule 7.3. The above is posted in good faith and is accurate to what is currently in the public domain. The exact circumstances of the SPAD are unknown, with several possibilities being alleged. Until these are formally acknowledged (or otherwise) can they please not be reproduced here. Thanks.
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Post by Jerome H on Jun 17, 2016 19:39:41 GMT
A little side story.
A few days ago I found a whiteboard marker and wanted to test it, so I circled a random tube station on my framed tube Map and wrote no service. That station was ealing broadway, which is a bit spooky considering a lot of the articles say commuters were directed to Ealing Broadway, and told trains weren't running from there.
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Post by spsmiler on Jun 17, 2016 21:28:11 GMT
But why wasn't Ealing Broadway used as an emergency reversing point? *Surely* there will be disaster / emergency preparedness plans which allow for this during incidents such as this (or terrorism at Paddington)?
At least Ealing Broadway is 'reachable' (by train) from Central London!
I also think its appalling that Heathrow Connect passengers were left high and dry with no service. Even if only a shuttle from Ealing Broadway, or with Heathrow Express trains making extra stops at the nearest station to the airport which I think is Hayes and Harlington.
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If the reason why the above is not possible is because its not possible to switch off the overhead wires at Paddington without doing likewise at Ealing Broadway, then its a case of sheer lunacy.
Simon
ps: I dont expect the details about disaster / emergency preparedness plans to be known in the public domain. Only that they do exist and are invoked asap on the basis of minimising disruption experienced by the travelling public as best is possible.
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Post by MoreToJack on Jun 18, 2016 12:46:26 GMT
But why wasn't Ealing Broadway used as an emergency reversing point? *Surely* there will be disaster / emergency preparedness plans which allow for this during incidents such as this (or terrorism at Paddington)? At least Ealing Broadway is 'reachable' (by train) from Central London! I also think its appalling that Heathrow Connect passengers were left high and dry with no service. Even if only a shuttle from Ealing Broadway, or with Heathrow Express trains making extra stops at the nearest station to the airport which I think is Hayes and Harlington. Simply because trains couldn't access it. Electrics were blocking both the fast and slow lines east of Airport Junction. Until these could be moved out of the way there was no hope of running a diesel service. Naturally there were constraints as to what could be done with trains on the fast line due to the issue at Paddington. One of GWR's class 57 locomotives was used to move several of the trains but this was delayed due to driver availability. Isolating sections of the overhead to allow services to operate east of Airport Junction was eventually achieved but this takes time as the circuit breakers have to manually be operated on site. Therefore, the only real contingency available was to turn things at Slough/Reading with trains forward from there. Acceptance was in place on SWT via both the mainline and the Windsor side, as well as LUL and Chiltern. There will be contingency plans in place, and they will have been brought into use during the closure on Thursday. However, if the juice is off then it's quite blatant that the electric trains can't go! |
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Post by crusty54 on Jun 18, 2016 13:27:41 GMT
question has to be asked - "did the guy designing the overhead installation know about the catch points?"
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Post by John Tuthill on Jun 18, 2016 13:32:36 GMT
question has to be asked - "did the guy designing the overhead installation know about the catch points?" Does anyone know how much tolerance there is in the spacing for the overhead support gantries? Presuming that the catch points were installed prior to the O/H installation. |
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Post by Chris M on Jun 18, 2016 15:05:39 GMT
question has to be asked - "did the guy designing the overhead installation know about the catch points?" Does anyone know how much tolerance there is in the spacing for the overhead support gantries? Presuming that the catch points were installed prior to the O/H installation. I don't know how much tolerance there is distance wise between supports, but there are many options for how to support OHLE masts and gantries at any given point. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2016 21:31:40 GMT
In a case like this, who would respond to the emergency call? I was told before that LU's ERU can get called out to any rail emergency.
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Post by crusty54 on Jun 19, 2016 4:38:59 GMT
In a case like this, who would respond to the emergency call? I was told before that LU's ERU can get called out to any rail emergency. they do attend on NR sites. The overheads made it more complicated. |
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Post by superteacher on Jun 19, 2016 10:58:27 GMT
I've created a new thread in "Signalling and Track" for general discussion about trap / catch points, and moved some posts from here in there. This thread can then remain a discussion area specific to the Paddington derailment, with the usual proviso that we don't speculate on the cause. Thanks.
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Post by spsmiler on Jun 19, 2016 20:22:34 GMT
Thanks Jack.
Alas, given the time of day when the incident occurred, time (for staff to reach the required circuit breakers to allow electric trains east of airport junction to move again) was not a luxury the railway had if it wanted to avoid the worst possible disruption to passengers travelling back home after a day at work / trying to reach the airport or other journey.
Whilst I understand the reason why services (when they were able to restart) had to be thinned, I still feel that they were wrong to cancel the Connect services to Heathrow without making alternative arrangements, such as I said earlier.
I'll comment on Peter's photo of the catch point pointing to the footbridge support on the other thread.
Simon
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