Great Western Coffee Shop

This morning 464U, 0902 Southampton - Lawley Street, failed between Basingstoke and Bramley.  It was there (according to RTT) for 2 hours 56 minutes.  This caused a succession of cancellations for long-distance XC's and Basingstoke - Reading locals causing great inconvenience for many passengers.

There is a discussion to be had on what is a reasonable time for a failed train to be blocking a line before it is rescued. As I said above, there needs to be a plan, or if there is a plan maybe it needs revisiting.  Do NR and the TOC's think that it is acceptable and inevitable that a failed train (and I again qualify to exclude mechanical damage which may prevent movement) may block a running line for up to 3 hours? 

Maybe part of the problem is the diversity of rolling stock nowadays - long gone are the days when you could hang a Class 47 on to everything.   Maybe as I said above it's risk averse staff who are terrified of using their initiative.

I suggest a few desktop exercise would be good to explore the problems and opportunities around clearing failed trains on to-day's railway.

A bit of background to this one in that it wasn't the engine that failed but an air leak on one of the wagons.  Whether that should immobile a train for so long is a different matter, but it wasn't just a case of finding a replacement loco.

Fitters were sent from Southampton and once on site it took less than 30 minutes to effect repairs.  The fact a fitter had to come from so far away meant the repair time was around three times what it might have been had there been a fitter stationed at Basingstoke.  You can't have fitters at every station of course, though until the turn of the century most large stations had a 'Carriage & Wagon' fitter.  That was when there were more traditional freight and passenger trains running around, and many of them didn't exactly have a busy day most of the time. 

At almost the same time the 10:33 Paddington to Paignton HST came to a stand at Theale with smoke issuing from a power car thereby blocking both routes from Southcote Junction.

Reminds me of a holdup the other week at Westbury.   All three platforms blocked by trains - blockage on the West of England Main line (or whatever it's called) had two HSTs going nowhere, and the driver that thad bought her train into platform 3 had run out of hours.   Problem was ... her relief was in a train that had got stuck out at Hawkeridge Junction.  Solution was for the relief to get off the train he was on and walk into Westbury along the track ...

Back when I were a lad, in the days of a joined-up railway, a 50xxx failed on an up fast, between Castle Cary and the switched-out Bruton, quite close to the latter in fact.  I received a call from the secondman of the failed loco from the telephone at Bruton box and, after establishing that  an air-braked loco was needed, had a chat with the crew of a 47xxx loco that had, rather conveniently, just brought a train of empty stone wagons to berth in the Up Sidings at Witham.  I'd arranged with the secondman of the failed loco to call me back in five minutes, which he did, when I was able to set up the rescue, by sending the 47xxx bang road to collect the failed train, all precautions with protection and a reminder about the catch points were properly made.

My guess is that within 25 minutes of the failure, those passengers were on their way again, and I told Control about what had happened very much "after the event", but had been on the phone to the loco supervisor at Westbury before that, who arranged a more formal loco swap when the train called there.  I never heard another word about it.   It was just the way that we did things in the mid 1970s

Reminds me of back in the late 1970's. On a Class 50 hauled interregional train from Oxford to Preston held just after Coventry by a failed EMU ahead of us.  After about 30 minutes we drew up slowly to the failure, coupled-up and then propelled it to, I think, Birmingham International where we backed off it and carried on our way.  We might have been an hour down after all of that, but it made for good sport from a casual observer.

I don't know if this is wholly true but ;-

There was a Class 52 Western hauled railtour to "celebrate" the end of the Westerns on the Western Region, a decade or more before privatisation. This passed on the line near my home and I fotted it passing on the curve from Westerleigh Junction towards Yate. Just up the line at Charfield the loco hit a cow (the animal type, not the woman type) which had strayed onto the line. This disabled the engine.

That's the true bit.

A model engineer fotting the special from the back railway fence of his property enquired as to what was up, was told, and he ventured onto the line to see for himself and volunteered to effect a repair, went back to his garden shed, switched his metal turning lathe on and turned down a blanking plug he had in stock and returned to the disabled 52 with an adjustable spanner, removed the damaged pipe, fitted an old 10p in the pipe securing it with the blanking plug, the engine regained air pressure and continued with the railtour after a delay of about an hour without further incident.

That's the dogey bit but I have heard that story from three sources.

Life ain't today, it is almost impossible for a fitter to be dispatched from Reading "Train Care" to a failed freight even in Reading.  Back in the unified days of BR a fitter could have been dispatched from Reading Depot in a road vehicle with some common parts.


There is not a lot NR can do, NR does not have staff to deal faults on trains, in fact NR do not even re-rail derailed trains

13th Of Feb 1977 D1010 pulling the Western Requiem Railtour
I was on the trip.

That makes four sources but I thought it was 1023 "Western Fusilier" at the sharp end.

You might be right it's a long time ago and now you mention it I'm not certain I will have a look next time I'm in the attic and can get to the old photo albums.
http://www.sixbellsjunction.co.uk/photos/770220_1.jpg

But wasn't the railtour "The Western Finale".

https://picturethepast.org.uk/image-library/image-details/poster/DCHQ002276/posterid/DCHQ002276.html

That's the one that ran the day before ,the one that I was on from Pad to Bri, and looks like you have it right about it being the tour that hit trouble with cows, I left at Bristol because I'd bunked off school for the day !,and heard later from somewhere that a tour had run into trouble north of Bristol so putting two and two together I must of made five.

Makes a change, I am usually the one that puts three and three together to make five but I do confuse my 3 and 5 year old great nieces when I hold my hands up with my fingers and thumbs spread and ask them how many fingers have I got. When they say ten I say, no eleven, closing my left hand, one - two - three - four - five, then my right hand, ten - nine - eight - seven - six, thrusting my right hand forward, six and, thrusting my left hand forward, five makes eleven, confused looks both.

The damaged class 52 D1023 "WESTERN FUSILIER"

https://www.rail-online.co.uk/p138684853/h3A143FA7#h2e3d1b29

And another failure, this time the 07:08 from Basingstoke has sat down at Bramley and is currently still there (07:38)

Edit: On the move (07:46)

And another failure.

2D02 0600 Exeter St Davids - Bristol Parkway failed between Tiverton Parkway and Taunton. Driver reported two of the three engines being out of fuel. Third engine stalled climbing up to Whiteball summit.

Rescue set sent from Bristol but the driver of it doesn't sign beyond Taunton. Freight driver was available at Taunton to pilot but this wasn't authorised by GWR.

A driver was finally sourced and the rescue set coupled to 2D02 and brought it into Taunton 134 minutes late.

Knock on delays across the morning peak. A couple GWR services were sent via Yeovil. Many others, including CrossCountry were cancelled or started/terminated short.

Now, breakdowns happen, but to run out of fuel on a trains first passenger service of the day is a preventable failing. Its somewhat baffling that a train can be put into service with insufficient fuel.

I suppose TOC’s decisions on their rescue contingency plans (such as they are) are to some extent driven by the cost of a “delay attribution minute”.  If this was, say, increased tenfold, then maybe FL would think about having a mobile fitter somewhere between Southampton and the next location north which I presume is Lawley Street. 

This may also incentivise TOC’s to do mutually beneficial deals with each other – after all, a split air pipe on a FL wagon is not much different to a split air pipe on a stone wagon.  So – shock horror – a fitter at Reading could do get-it-moving repairs on different TOC’s rolling stock.  And of course a Class 66 is the same whoever operates it.

Maybe we need an RAC for trains.  Doesn’t this sound just what’s needed:

“With uniformed, fully qualified, expert mechanics on call 24/7, you'll have the confidence we'll be there when you need us.

“We'll fix you and get you on your way on average in just 30 minutes, it's no wonder 92% of members recommend the RAC.

On the East Coast Mainline they are called Thunder Birds, loco strategically located along the Route there is usually one berthed outside Kings Cross Box.  The West Coast also has Thunder Birds.


GWR has not generally had to rely on needing them principally because HST's have in effect 2 locomotives per train.


The Thunder Birds don't carry fitters as that would be a waste of rare and highly skilled workers

I wonder whether there is a UK equivalent of this service on SNCF where they provide telephone assistance to help resolve problems?  https://malignej.transilien.com/2016/10/03/depanner-train-telephone-pac-men-de-transilien/ (https://malignej.transilien.com/2016/10/03/depanner-train-telephone-pac-men-de-transilien/)