Thursday night disruption

[busman]

Thursday night disruption

I know faults do occur to the signalling infrastructure and we can’t hold a grudge to SE over this.

But the way the handle the situation at Victoria last night was farcical and a disgrace.

It is all well and good cancelling trains one after another without trying to put something else in its place expecting all wanting to go to the Medway towns and beyond to fit on a 6 car train to Rochester.

There was stock sitting in the station with drivers not knowing what they were doing. Why did no one take the bull by the horn and run a shuttle down to Rochester or Gillingham to get people part the way home . There should have been the capacity to do this path wise even if was stuck behind a stopping service part of the way.

[chapelwood]

Feb 1, 2013 8:28:30 GMT busman said:

There was stock sitting in the station with drivers not knowing what they were doing. Why did no one take the bull by the horn and run a shuttle down to Rochester or Gillingham to get people part the way home . There should have been the capacity to do this path wise even if was stuck behind a stopping service part of the way.

I am certainly not saying that things were handled as well as they should have been. The problem seems to have been a case of cable theft putting out the signalling. But in arranging a train to run to Rochester or Gillingham, Control would have to know what they would do with it when it got there. I suspect those drivers were based at Ramsgate. If the trains had been left at Medway and the drivers left to make their way back to Ramsgate you'd soon get Medway full of trains with no drivers, and later trains queueing on Sole Street bank. If those drivers had taken the trains back to Victoria they'd then be out of hours and have to go back to Ramsgate on the cushions (on overtime), with the trains for this morning's service at Victoria instead of Ramsgate.

So sorting out disruption is more than 'here's a train, here's a driver, here's a trainload of passengers - send them on their way as far as they can get'.

[busman]

Hi

Yes I agree they could not run a shed load of trains down to the Medway towns. But I think one of two could have been arranged.

[Neil]

I was stuck at Birchington (the other side of the problem)

The indicators (as ever) were useless - just saying delayed.

I got there in time for the 16.37. Saw the delayed notification and used the help point. I was told the next train was 17.25 - so I went back to the pub

I got back to the station about 17.20 to find the same delayed information on the indicator. Again, I used the help point to find out what was going on to be told that the next train was after 18.00. Just as I was heading back to the boozer the aforementioned 17.25 rolled in

I really don't have an issue with signalling problems - they happen. It does slightly get to me though that it doesn't seem possible to get up to date information when you are waiting on a station. SER tell me that the display information is driven by where trains are but that doesn't seem borne out by what happens. Info from help points is not their responsibility - and there was no sign of any station staff

Surely it is not beyond the wit of man on these electronic days to be able to get up to date and accurate information to stations..