Suspended 20/08/2024

Probably due to the automatic driving system being inflexible.

Do you think that manually driven trains can somehow swerve round the person?

It can be the opposite, At peak times, the line has more trains working than there are platforms. In addition to dealing with the actual incident, ensuring that the passengers on the remaining trains can reach a platform and alight will be the first step and this can be a time consuming process if trains have to be reversed to reach a platform. Then in order to set up a limited shuttle on the remaining sections of line, some of the excess trains have to be moved out of the way and to the Depot or sidings depending on which sections can still remain energised. Against this, the controllers have to weigh up when they expect a service to resume through the incident area and will try to avoid moves that might delay through running resuming.

A suspension between kings x and vic would usually result in trains reversing at Highbury back to Walthamstow there’s also the ability to reverse at Warren Street but as others have stated that depends on which current sections are off any stalled trains getting trains to depot to make space to move and also there’s always a chance certain moves are unavailable due to infrastructure failures (points being out of commission etc)

The incident was at King's Cross according to an announcement made at my local Overground station this morning, where we were being advised to stay on the train to Liverpool Street (which, as an aside, was extremely helpful because the driver was only able to share that information when the doors were about to open at Seven Sisters, giving those who hadn't checked in advance a helpful heads up).

This is likely to have made it quite difficult to run any sort of shuttle service - I did see that it was showing as Part Suspended between Seven Sisters and Victoria for a brief time before the decision was evidently taken to suspend the whole line, probably the right call. I took a leisurely diversion route via Liverpool Street and the circle line and by the time I'd gotten to Victoria, the line had just opened up to Severe Delays.

Agreed. Since the traction current would have to be off to deal with the casualty on track incident, bus couplers in substations would have to be opened to keep current on in other available parts of the line. That might well still not give a worthwhile section of line that could be used without all sorts of local crowding and operational management issues. The Vic line is normally operated as one single DC electrical section (48).

I read about a plan some time ago to couple multiple traction sections together during normal operation to help ensure Regenerated power is used more effectively - This may be the case on the Vic line - so isolating some sections is slightly more complicated (but may be handled automatically)

Unless things have changed since I was on the Vic, when there was an incident at Kings Cross there was normally two shuttle services set up Walthamstow to Highbury reversing south to north off Highbury southbound platform and Brixton to Warren Street reversing north to south by drawing forward from Warren Street northbound and T/op changing ends and bringing the train back onto the southbound platform.
Of course now most duty managers don't have the experience that the older ones had in running a service when the brown stuff hits the fan, it's most likely easier for those running the service from 'upstairs' to suspend and start again when the incident is over!