European Railroad Discussion > Power Outage UK trains - BBC story with an interesting pic

I read this story about the wide scale power outage and it’s impacts on the rail commute. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-49302996

Included in the story is a photo of passengers abandoning the train and walking along the tracks etc.   I get it that the juice was off, but I am assuming there are diesel pulled trains also....these folks could have been smooshed.   With the loss of signaling and power switches etc, did everything grind to a halt?   I would assume tracks were blocked by electric trains.  

Disclaimer, the photo contained in the article may cause loss of sleep, general nervousness and a plethora of rants from the stalwarts  
 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/10/19 14:40 by JohnM.

JohnM Wrote:
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> With the loss of signaling and power switches etc,
> did everything grind to a halt?   I would assume
> tracks were blocked by electric trains.  

Basically selected areas were completely down, no electric trains, no signalling so no diesels running, remeber we are far more risk averse than the US, so for a diesel to move with no signalling would probably take more time to organise than restoring power.
One reason why it was probably more catastrophic for the rail network is that Fridays in the UK are very high levels of travel and to happen at commute time even added to the amount of people travelling.
We also have a huge blame culture, when anything goes wrong anywhere somebody is trying to score political points and blame.

Alexander

Thank you!

Nice. LOL

According to the people who run it the power grid worked as intended and the power was back on in most places within about an hour max although some places took as much as 2 hours.

The question being asked now is why it took the railway so long to get itself working again once the power was restored. The weather won't have helped (it was windy and wet) but the consensus seems to be that it that was a side issue. There are reports that some of the latest electric trains on the routes out of Kings X and St Pancras needed a specialist to restart them; the driver was unable to do it.

The actual power outages on the grid system were fairly short lived. But, as mentioned, the entire fleet of class 700 electric multiple units failed to reboot as per the book. In all cases, a technician had to go with a laptop and reconfigure the electronics. Apparently in some cases, they got police escort to rush them through. chris - uk.

55002 Wrote:
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> The actual power outages on the grid system were
> fairly short lived. But, as mentioned, the entire
> fleet of class 700 electric multiple units failed
> to reboot as per the book. In all cases, a
> technician had to go with a laptop and reconfigure
> the electronics. Apparently in some cases, they
> got police escort to rush them through. chris -
> uk.

You just know there's a software/hardware/firmware change coming for those units!

I know other EMUs have had issues when the power has gone out unexpectedly--this isn't something limited to those sets. I think that it is something though that the newer the set the more likely there is to be trouble, as it is essentially a software issue. 

Regarding the people on the track, I don't know if this was an uncontrolled evacuation (i.e. passengers pulling the emergency egress to open the doors and just jumping out) or if the decision was taken to get the people off the train rather than sit for hours waiting for a technician. Having done train evacuation training it is a surprisingly long drop down to track level, but that doesn't stop people from doing it, especially when they are only a short distance from a station.

It doesn't mention it in this article, but this was the second day in a row of major disruption north of London. They day before there was a complete signal failure outside of Euston. I know all about it because I was on a train that sat in the Wembly area for 60 minutes! Just glad I wasn't trying to do the same trip the next day.