Yesterday's disruption (20.10.07)

[suncloud]

It seemed to be a right mess yesterday on the central last night. With Severe delays being posted due to signal failure at Stratford both when i went in to town around 5 and came out around half 11.
Anyone know why the service never recovered, it doesn't usually take over 5 hours for these things to work themselves out.
They were also running most Central London Services to/from Hainault (via NP) with a shuttle doing Leytonstone Epping. I am not sure of the operational advantage of doing that.

[Deleted]

Isn't it just typical that faults and failures occur when I am on holiday!?!?! Mind you, I don't think I'd like the idea of risking being that late!

I ain't got a clue as to what happened, 'cept that I did hear of a signal failure at Stratford... Can't see how it can push a delay out to that length of time, unless it was a catalogue of problems with one being cleared, causing another...

[Chris M]

The journey planner was saying severe delays due to a signal failure at Stratford when I looked around 9:15 yesterday morning so I got a lift to Walthamstow and got the Victoria to Euston instead.

For a signal failure to last all day I guess it must have been seriously complicated to diagnose/fix or not just one signal that had failed.

[Tubeboy]

I will look at the report when I get to work Chris [1900], and post the basic details later.

[suncloud]

I didn't think it was worth diverting via Walthamstow yesterday, and it wasn't too bad... had a couple of 2 minute waits on the way in (as I had to change at Leytonstone) and it was busier than I might have expected (but there was also a lot of people heading out for rugby too)... then about a 9 minute wait on the way back, which is not unknown that late anyway. There were Epping branch trains going through as I came by (and no Hainaults!) I assume by then they were trying to get trains in the right beds for the night.

[Chris M]

I had to get to Euston for an 11:17am train and the journey planner was advising taking a bus to Walthamstow (from Leytonstone iirc) as the quickest route.

[suncloud]

Fair enough... I was travelling later in the day and only to Liverpool Street. If it had been Euston I was aiming for I may well have gone via Walthamstow (especially if someone would drop me off there, it has been done frequently!)

[Tubeboy]

Right!

0543: Bethnal Green-loss of signal diagram-severe delays.

Overnight the Central control centre lost signalling indications, signals started to clear "on the ground", technical staff were in attendance.


0800: Trains were still losing their trip data, wrong destinations, and therefore wrong signals were being cleared-severe delays.

0825: Failure of the Westrace inter-site comms system, causing loss of indications on points and signals being unableto clear in the Leytonstone area, repeat failures at 0925 and 1038.

1130: Special service introduced as technical officers changed cards without resolution, fibre optic cable problem is suspected.
Severe overcrowding on all trains.

1902: Mile End site now reporting correctly, all other sites including Stratford correct at 1930.


There was a fire alert at Holborn, and a security alert at Oxford Circus as well! A bad day for the Central!

[Chris M]

Cheers for that Tubeboy.

Do you know if it was a firbe optic cable problem in the end?

[Tubeboy]

It doesnt say Chris, it might come up on today's one [report] which wont be available until the early hours.

[Deleted]

It would appear that this is happening far more frequently these days...

[c5]

It was to do with "Signalling Cards" I understand!

[Tom]

The Westrace Data link is a 3pr individually screened cable. It was recently renewed between STR and LIS - I was involved in the work at one stage.