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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2009 10:42:31 GMT
I'm not on this morning, but I see the Circle is suspended inner rail dur to flooding at Paddington. I noticed last night there was a torrent of water p*ssing into the tunnel at a fair old rate on the Circle side of Praed St junction (inner rail wall). There was also quite a bit of ingress around the outer rail wall around the first signal OP? as you come over the points from either Paddington (i'm terrible at remembering numbers). Apparently the water board are doing some work to the street above. Just wandered why the Circle was suspended and not the District.  Either way if it continues at the rate it was going yesterday it can't be good for the brickwork or the lineside equipment. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2009 11:56:39 GMT
Just wandered why the Circle was suspended and not the District. Pure guesswork here, because I'm on annual leave  but the flooding may well have caused a signal failure and so it's not practical to have the usual frequency of trains going through and all applying the rule. |
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Post by upfast on Jan 15, 2009 17:01:15 GMT
Now that a thread on this sort of subject has been started, I was wondering (he we go!);
There is a regular cycle of checks to be made to track and signalling equipment, but how often and who checks the tunnel structures and how is this done?
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Post by upfast on Jan 15, 2009 19:15:31 GMT
Duty Managers usually carry out a PGI (Planned General Inspection) of an area allocated to them. This is carried out on a monthly or bi-monthly basis. They usually report any findings to the appropriate fault reporting centre, then a couple of weeks later they should go out and check to see if the faults have been rectified. Track patrols are a different kettle of fish. I doubt if these are even done on a regular basis now, unlike the nightly patrols in "the old days". But DMTs are not structural engineers! Though, granted they should be able to spot anything unusual or obviously wrong. Track patrols are carried out by P-way staff of course, whose livlehood is track! There is a cycle for visual foot patrol, ultrasonic walkalong gizmos and TRV work, but I haven't a clue what it is! |
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Post by upfast on Jan 15, 2009 19:30:06 GMT
Most likely OC! I'm not having a go at the DMTs. I'm just curious as to whether there are structural people out there routinly Maybe one of our Infraco correspondents will report back ;D ;D |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2009 22:09:56 GMT
Found out earlier that the water was being heated up by the pozzie rail this morning. Probably cleaner than the stuff we get out the teapoints around the line!
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Post by stanmorek on Jan 17, 2009 16:53:54 GMT
There is a regular cycle of checks to be made to track and signalling equipment, but how often and who checks the tunnel structures and how is this done? Tunnels are inspected by Civils. A mysterious and shadowry lot on LU. Sub-surface tunnels like most civil structural assets undergo superficial inspections once a year and principal inspections every 4 years. Every year thousands of assets are inspected by the Bridges & Structures Inspection group working to a programme of inspections and recorded in the asset database. High risk assets with cast iron elements or from the inspection engineer's recommendation special inspections can been done at 4 week intervals. Principal inspections of say brick arch tunnels involve close inspection using mobile scaffold access towers where defects are recorded on tunnel charts. On brick structures hammer testing is carried out for drummy areas where voids have formed between tunnel rings. Radar surveys are also carried out. Typical maintenance work includes mortar repointing, pinning and seepage grouting of brickwork. Maintenance is the responsibility of the Civils Area Manager who use the inspection reports and fault reports to help plan a programme of works on an annual budget with a contingency for emergency works. The Area Manager also carries out their own regular planned general inspection of area of responsibility. A duty engineer is also on standby for callouts from the engineering control centre. Tube tunnels are inspected and maintained by a seperate Deep Tube Tunnels group under Civils. However, inspection of a structure only tells us its condition. Load carrying capacity of a structure is determined by detailed structural calculations. This is done by a seperately to Inspections and Maintenance by Assessment Engineers. Under the PPP contract infracos are to required to carry out assessments of all civil assets by 2010. |
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Post by JR 15secs on Jan 17, 2009 17:49:44 GMT
Track patrols are a different kettle of fish. I doubt if these are even done on a regular basis now, unlike the nightly patrols in "the old days". Track patrols are done at the required times otherwise the railway would not be allowed to run. If you know anyone in the TAC just ask them. |
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Post by JR 15secs on Jan 17, 2009 17:57:27 GMT
Duty Managers usually carry out a PGI (Planned General Inspection) of an area allocated to them. This is carried out on a monthly or bi-monthly basis. They usually report any findings to the appropriate fault reporting centre, then a couple of weeks later they should go out and check to see if the faults have been rectified. ". The trouble with some DMT's is that they report what they see which is everything, even rails and associated equipment which has been put in place ready for the next BTR admittedly after the BTR some equipment is left longer than it should perhaps the Engineers train which should have collected the material was cancelled. |
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Post by JR 15secs on Jan 17, 2009 19:02:25 GMT
One of my collegues has just reminded me of the time a DMT reported a rough ride Hammersmith (D) 4 days after the event he had been told by a T/Op just before finishing his duty-he wanted the ERU to attend. His name is not to dis-similiar to a musical instrument beginning with B.
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Post by upfast on Jan 17, 2009 21:01:10 GMT
There is a regular cycle of checks to be made to track and signalling equipment, but how often and who checks the tunnel structures and how is this done? Tunnels are inspected by Civils. A mysterious and shadowry lot on LU. Sub-surface tunnels like most civil structural assets undergo superficial inspections once a year and principal inspections every 4 years. Every year thousands of assets are inspected by the Bridges & Structures Inspection group working to a programme of inspections and recorded in the asset database. High risk assets with cast iron elements or from the inspection engineer's recommendation special inspections can been done at 4 week intervals. Principal inspections of say brick arch tunnels involve close inspection using mobile scaffold access towers where defects are recorded on tunnel charts. On brick structures hammer testing is carried out for drummy areas where voids have formed between tunnel rings. Radar surveys are also carried out. Typical maintenance work includes mortar repointing, pinning and seepage grouting of brickwork. Maintenance is the responsibility of the Civils Area Manager who use the inspection reports and fault reports to help plan a programme of works on an annual budget with a contingency for emergency works. The Area Manager also carries out their own regular planned general inspection of area of responsibility. A duty engineer is also on standby for callouts from the engineering control centre. Tube tunnels are inspected and maintained by a seperate Deep Tube Tunnels group under Civils. However, inspection of a structure only tells us its condition. Load carrying capacity of a structure is determined by detailed structural calculations. This is done by a seperately to Inspections and Maintenance by Assessment Engineers. Under the PPP contract infracos are to required to carry out assessments of all civil assets by 2010. Thanks  That was the sort of thing I was after. One quick question, do these civils people report (or report their findings) to the Section Track Manager? |
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Post by stanmorek on Jan 17, 2009 22:20:00 GMT
There is no direct reporting line between track and civils until perhaps at vice president level. There may informal / ad hoc contacts but generally it's more like ships that pass in the night. When there are service disruptions civils, track and signals will be fighting over fault attribution.
Under private ownership, Metronet Civils work was contracted out to Trans4m though many ex-LU civils staff were seconded over. Metronet also had a seperate contract with Trans4m for its station refurbishments.
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but the flooding may well have caused a signal failure and so it's not practical to have the usual frequency of trains going through and all applying the rule.
