Infrastructure failures leave passengers stranded
Great Western and East Coast main lines were badly hit by a series of de-wirements in the run up to Christmas.
THOUSANDS of passengers were trapped for several hours after overhead wires came down near Ladbroke Grove, West London, on the evening peak of December 7.
Although the exact cause of the overhead line equipment failure has not yet been determined, seven trains were affected, impacting services on the Elizabeth Line, Heathrow Express and Great Western Railway.
On board one of the trains was Andrew Haines, CEO of Network Rail, who was trapped on a train with 980 other passengers (see also story on page 16). Without power, passengers on some of the affected trains were in total darkness and in the cold. Those on Elizabeth Line services also faced the prospect of no toilet facilities.
Many passengers were trapped for up to four hours, while some took a riskier approach, forcing doors open to exit the trains just to go to the toilet, frustrated at the time it was taking for rail staff to come and guide them to safety. Many had been heading into London for Christmas shows or office parties, while others on the Heathrow Express were travelling into the capital from the airport.
Widespread disruption
One of the trains involved was the 18.30 Paddington to Cardiff (set No. 802111) but numerous other trains were affected too. After several hours’ delay, and with the damaged wires removed from over the GWR unit, the train was allowed to reverse into Paddington under diesel power, where passengers were offered hotels or sent to Waterloo for services to Reading to connect with longer distance trains.
The incident resulted in 24 hours of disruption for trains using Paddington, with only a couple of lines repaired overnight for services the next day. It will take some weeks to disseminate the information from the Paddington incident, which is expected to review procedures regarding train rescue and evacuations.
A further issue with the OLE out of Paddington was reported at Slough on December 10, affecting in and outbound services. In addition to the OLE failures, the Great Western line between Paddington and Reading suffered four broken rails in eight days up to November 29. As yet the causes are undetermined.
The Office of Rail and Road launched a wide-ranging investigation into poor train punctuality and reliability in the Network Rail Wales & Western region at the end of November. The investigation will look at whether Network Rail is complying with its licence obligations, and the company could face enforcement action if it’s failing to meet them.
East Coast issues
The Paddington incident is one of several recent OLE failures nationally which have resulted in substantial delays – three of these were on the East Coast Main Line in a period of 10 days.
The first was on the evening of December 1, on a twin track section between Retford and the Tuxford Crossovers that left eight trains stranded either side of the incident, each waiting a turn to move after single line working was implemented on the up line. A few trains were also diverted via the GN/GE
Joint Line route via Spalding and Gainsborough.
This was followed on December 9, by another failure of the OLE at Corby Glen, south of Grantham, involving the 18.03 King’s Cross-Skipton formed of five-car ‘Azuma’
No. 800201. While more services were diverted via the Joint Line, the ‘Azuma’ stood for several hours while Network Rail disentangled the unit before it was allowed to proceed on diesel power to Leeds, where it arrived some six hours late at 02.19.
There was a third incident of OLE damage on the
ECML between Sandy and Biggleswade on December 11, emphasising the frailty of the East Coast electrification. This incident was caused by a broken registration arm.