London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

https://metro.co.uk/2023/12/08/thousands-stranded-cold-dark-london-trains-hours-power-cut-19944985/

by epstein • 3 years ago

86 90 3 years ago

metro.co.uk

michaelt• 3 years ago

Some frustrated travellers even smashed their way out the cold, dark trains and walked down the tracks to escape after getting stuck for more than three hours.

It's a shame train operators don't feel able to make the common sense decision to give the passengers the option to walk before the three hour mark, without requiring them to "smash their way out".

Obviously, some passengers won't be able to make the trek, and it's not without danger, but given the choice between walking over some slippery rocks and spending 4 hours without access to a toilet, I know which I'd prefer.

YawningAngel2• 3 years ago

I was in a similar situation on a London train (different line) this month. The problem is that the operators genuinely do not know how long things are going to take. I agree that the TTR is obviously unacceptable, but the whole service is run on a shoestring budget and is constantly cancelled or late, so there isn't really the capital available to do better.

bombcar• 3 years ago

When you have a situation like this you run a worst case scenario and put in effect immediately.

Whether that is telling passengers that busses will be there in two hours or whatever, you work it out.

If something like this happens in a winter storm, it can become deadly.

MichaelZuo3• 3 years ago

Transport for London has a budget of over 10 billion pounds, how is that a 'shoestring budget'?

samus• 3 years ago

That doesn't justify letting passengers sit in the dark for 3 hours. Most riders probably expect to last their trip half an hour, with the usual variance already factored in.

martinald2• 3 years ago

What are you talking about with "shoestring budget?". Over £2bn was spent on electrifying the GWML, nearly £20bn spent on the Elizabeth line (which included further upgrades on the GWML), and completely new trains on nearly every service were bought (at extreme cost). There must have been >£5bn spent on this line in the last decade. Per mile, it is probably one of the best funded lines in the world.

GWML is having constant maintenance problems. I don't think this is a budget problem, I think it's NR totally dropping the ball on keeping on top of stuff. NR is extremely poorly run and wasteful; I know many people who used to work for them but left to rejoin via a subcontractor (at a hugely increased cost to NR), to do the exact same job, because NRs payscales are extremely concrete so they constantly lose vital people to this - this isn't a budget problem as they're actually paying way way more for the same staff this way.

Subcontractors are also eating them alive because they have no senior, experienced management (see above problem). You have people basically straight out of uni "project managing" subcontractors for 7 or 8 figure contracts, completely clueless.

midasuni6• 3 years ago

So people walk out after a 10 minute outage, then it’s fixed, but you can’t turn power on because a few people have decided to go for a stroll?

taway_6PplYu5• 3 years ago

yes, because what if one of those people is touching the power rail? What do we know about the demographics of the people walking? How do we know they all made it out, or is someone lying down somewhere on the track?

lotsofpulp• 3 years ago

Hence the different protocols needed for a 10 minute outage and a 3 hour outage.

cameronh90• 3 years ago

I find it entirely unsurprising that passengers take matters into their own hands. It can be a safety issue to be stuck on a train for a long time, and often there are no or very few updates from the driver while you are stuck.

In London, most times I get on the train, I’m expecting it to be a sub-10 minute trip. I may even be just wearing a t-shirt and shorts since I was heading to the gym. Others with health issues may not have brought the medication/food they need.

Similarly when this happens in summer, you can bet many people don’t have any water with them. I’ve personally been stuck on a broken down train during a 35c+ heatwave with no AC. Elderly passengers were showing signs of heatstroke and, with no communication, it does feel desperate.

jlg23• 3 years ago

Similarly when this happens in summer, you can bet many people don’t have any water with them.

When I lived there in 2010/2011, I regularly saw signs posted at tube stations "bring water, it'll be hot!".

rsynnott• 3 years ago

London trains are mostly third rail powered rather than overhead line, right? You really don't want people walking on one of those. Like, you don't want people walking on any train line, but particularly not one with a third rail.

seabass-labrax3• 3 years ago

It's very hard to tell with the Metro's haphazard writing style, but it sounds like the passengers walking on the lines were on the Elizabeth line. That's one of the Transport for London lines which uses overhead power rather than third rail.

vinay427• 3 years ago

These are mainline trains between Paddington and Acton Main Line which use overhead power lines, not a third rail as with Underground services.

yabones• 3 years ago

The old-style "tube" trains are all DC third rail IIRC, but the newer trainsets such as the Elizabeth and Thameslink are all overhead AC. So this would actually be one of the few metro trains where it would be remotely safe to walk the tracks provided all the trains were stopped...

tristramb• 3 years ago

It s probably also illegal. They could prosecute you for trespassing on the rail way if you are not supervised.

I used to commute into London before Covid and there were times when we were delayed so long that I thought we might have to resort to cannibalism.

RDaneel0livaw• 3 years ago

I'm frankly astonished it took people 3 hrs to smash the windows and get out. I'd have politely asked the operator to open it up and let us all out after the 1h mark and if they didn't I would smash the shit out of a window and crawl out. No chance I would sit in there for 3 hours.

setgree• 3 years ago

Are you British though…

tialaramex2• 3 years ago

But why smash windows? The doors aren't speed locked because the train isn't moving, so you can just use the emergency release on the doors and then pull them open. It's not trivial but neither is smashing a window, and the doors are closer to ground level (most adults should be able to sit on the door sill and lower themselves to ground level fairly comfortably)

stuaxo2• 3 years ago

Sure, though you have to shut down the whole line because it's not all overhead electrification, there are sections where tube lines run past and have 3rd rail electrification (and may even have been running).

The whole lot has to be shut down, you have to get all the people on all the trains to a safe place and then make sure it's safe before turning everything back on.

Not saying it's impossible, just that it's not the most straightforward.

hedora4• 3 years ago

Based on the photos, "smash their way out" appears to mean "open the door with the clearly marked manual override level", and "stranded" appears to mean "had to cross a couple tracks, and walk to the nearest gap in the fence".

The text of the article suggests they had to use the emergency windows / break stuff, and that they were stuck in a tunnel without a pedestrian evacuation route (which would be illegal even here in the US where we hate trains).

The real screw up was probably lack of training of the people on duty. They should have evacuated the train (i.e., opened the doors, and had conductors guide the passengers with flashlights) after an hour, at the most.

Symbiote3• 3 years ago

Britain obviously wouldn't build a new tunnel without an evacuation route, but the existing tunnels can be 100 or more years old and lack them.

brnt• 3 years ago

It's not that common sense. The railway is responsible for its customers, and a lot more bad stuff can happen with people walking on the tracks than in stuck in cars. Getting cold and hungry is not the same as injury or worse.

The tracks may still be in use by other trains, it fact it may be how help and alternative transport arrive.

midasuni6• 3 years ago

“New”

That rail line, and Ladbroke Grove in particular, dates back nearly 200 years.

seabass-labrax3• 3 years ago

That's referring to the Elizabeth line, which opened in 2022:

"Trains stopped running between London Paddington and Heathrow Airport in the rush hour after damage to overhead cables, shutting down the £19billion Elizabeth Line and causing major disruption to National Rail and Heathrow Express services."

This point notwithstanding, it's not clear whether the 'cold and angry' passengers were those on the Elizabeth line - I doubt it, as the class 345 trains used on it have at least a 190Ah battery in each car that should stop the temperatures from getting too uncomfortable.

miyuru• 3 years ago

the class 345 trains used on it have at least a 190Ah battery in each car that should stop the temperatures from getting too uncomfortable.

mentioned in the article

"Eventually, the battery backup running the train’s heating and light services ran out, and passengers were left in darkness for another hour-and-a-half until the evacuation came."

blibble• 3 years ago

you can see in the picture it's a 345

you can also see it's at the throat leading out of paddington, i.e. the Great Western main line

midasuni6• 3 years ago

The failure was on the GWML, it affected services to places like cardiff, Devon, Oxford, as well as the “Elizabeth line” branded trains running on the line.

There’s nothing new about the line. Obviously the overhead power wasn’t there in 1840, and indeed the rails were at a different gauge, but the failure was in the GWML, on a Paddington to Cardiff express on the Down Main. The failure was on a track the Elizabeth Line trains don’t even use, however due to the type of failure a massive section of overhead power had to be shut off

Cyphase3• 3 years ago

Off topic, but the phrasing of the headline[0] caught my attention. Shouldn't it be, "Thousands stranded in dark for hours as London trains see power cut"? Is this not as clear cut as I'm thinking? Maybe it's a British English thing?

[0] In case it changes for any reason, it's currently, "London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours".

ryanjshaw2• 3 years ago

It seems to muddle cause and effect. IMO it should read "Thousands stranded in dark for hours after London trains lose power."

Cyphase3• 3 years ago

I agree actually; that's even better. I was only referring to ordering around the "as".

jareklupinski• 3 years ago

rn the Headline for me shows "Passengers cold and angry after four-hour powercut on new £19,000,000,000 rail line"

please stay clear; the basilisk is feeding

Cyphase3• 3 years ago

That's the headline visible on the page. The <title> is what we're discussing here.

seabass-labrax3• 3 years ago

I think there's some rather below-the-belt plagiarism going on here:

Metro:

  The rush hour service lurched to a stop last night and left passengers onboard the crowded carriages for hours, as the driver drip-fed what little information they had to passengers.
  
  Eventually, the battery backup running the heating and lighting ran out, and those on board were left in darkness for another hour and a half until the evacuation came.

BBC:

  Commuter Mikey Worrall described the train as "lurching to a stop" and then a long, several-hour wait in semi-darkness as the driver drip-fed what little information they had through to passengers.
  
  Eventually, the battery back-up running the train's heating and light services ran out, and passengers were left in darkness for another hour and a half until they were evacuated from the train.

rad_gruchalski2• 3 years ago

Or a reprint of an official statement.

jameshart2• 3 years ago

I would love to imagine a world where the TfL official statement said that they ‘left passengers in darkness while the driver drip-fed them information’.

PR guy’s last day, maybe.

dheera• 3 years ago

Meh. It's a factual article about an unfortunate event, there isn't much room for creativity here, and everyone is piecing together the facts from information shared with each other.

I'd rather the reporting about things like this spread as fast as possible rather than wordsmiths spending pointless hours figuring out how to reword the same fact to sound "original".

If it was a creative piece or a documentary I'd agree with you, but this is just a dumping of facts.

binarysneaker• 3 years ago

Not necessarily. Sometimes news articles come from a source such as the Associated Press and are rewritten or reworded before publication.

snvzz• 3 years ago

Eventually, the battery backup running the heating and lighting ran out, and those on board were left in darkness for another hour and a half until the evacuation came.

Did they really need the heating, with packed trains?

The engineer should have turned it off, or set it to something like 16C.

hedora4• 3 years ago

Welcome to our LLM-based news cycle.

paganel3• 3 years ago

And they want to move everything to run on electrical power (cars, heating), pure madness.

Btw, I've just had a half-hour power-cut here in downtown Bucharest, it was fun getting up all those stairs with two bags of groceries but at least I hadn't got stuck in the elevator.

tialaramex2• 3 years ago

The power was cut because another train trashed the power line.

At a societal level the attraction of electricity is that it's fungible. Wind, Nuclear, Gas, Solar, the electricity is the same. If you need Natural Gas then too bad, no matter how cheap and readily available the Solar power or Coal is, you've got to buy Gas at any price from anyone who'll sell it to you. Individually this is at most a minor inconvenience but for a whole country it means too bad now your foreign policy is decided by people who can supply the fuel mix you need.

paganel3• 3 years ago

Yes, I know that electricity transport/distribution is very fickle, that was my point.

stetrain• 3 years ago

Yeah I sure do hate how my electric car just coasts to a stop and leaves me stranded the moment there is a grid failure.

I just had to sit there and watch all those happy people in their combustion cars easily pumping gas at the gas station which also had no power.

Roads definitely never get shut down due to accidents either.

lm284692• 3 years ago

I hope you created a petition to mandate gas powered elevators.

I personally had a single blackout in my 30 years on this planet, I think that's a fair price to pay for 24/7 light/heating/water/&c.

paganel3• 3 years ago

It’s a tragedy that industrial policies as important as these are pushed worldwide by people as cushioned as your example is, and, yes, that is part of the madness I was writing about.

beardyw• 3 years ago

Singer James Blunt and TV star Rachel Riley were caught up in the carnage

Carnage? I think the Metro staff need to borrow a dictionary.

mnd9992• 3 years ago

As usual, his tweet on the subject is excellent - https://nitter.net/JamesBlunt/status/1733129524467163589#m

pvaldes• 3 years ago

Similar problems in Spain with trains. Third event in the last 12 days [1,2,3]. After a 2023 with a chain of problems that normally don't occur

Sabotage would be my first candidate. Too much coincidences and deja-vues floating around.

[1] Nov 26 2023: "Traffic cut off between Atocha and Recoletos. 37 passengers evacuated after the convoy derailed"

[2] Dic 5 2023: "Another derailment on the Madrid Cercanías cuts the Recoletos tunnel and causes significant delays"

[3] Dic 8 2023: "Third departure from the track of a train at Atocha station"

Looks like something directly copied from the Catalonian independentist playbook. This is very rare on Madrid, but small incidences designed to cause delays and chaos were not uncommon near Barcelona a few years ago.

London events may, or may not fall in the same category, but... yep; same day. Suspicious.

switch0072• 3 years ago

On another forum, someone who was stuck on one of the trains commented that staff were just walking past the carriages not attempting to convey any information to those stuck on board, which compounded the frustration.

Railway staff will complain about the people who got off the trains because we don’t have a customer focussed railway in any way shape or form. Staff are 300% safety focussed and will expect passengers to spend an indefinite amount of time on the carriage with no food, water or toilets.

It’s simply unacceptable for 7 trains (1000-5000 people) to get stuck on an extremely busy and well-funded part of the railway network in our capital city and there not be an army-style, rapid-response team dispatched to help the vulnerable. Senior management know that the British will just put up and shut up - we should be much more American in these situations.

A report will be produced, “lessons will be learnt”, then the gradual degradation of our railway will continue.

Edit: for context, regarding high expectations: a 23 minute journey in rush hour on this route is around £27 ($34)

London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

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