Major Disruption at Winchester 12/13 November 2014

[whole diary]

[SandTEngineer]

A bad day (or two) for the SWML^▸ (South Western Mail Line):

From the SW Trains website

Customer apology for the ongoing disruption
We are sorry for the significant disruption that many of you will have encountered between Weymouth, Bournemouth, Southampton, Winchester, Basingstoke and London Waterloo today.
This was caused by unexpected signalling problems between Winchester and Basingstoke which started late yesterday evening. We took immediate action to rectify the problem, including bringing in specialists to work closely with our engineers. Our teams have been working extremely hard overnight and will continue throughout today to try and repair the problem as quickly as possible.
There are multiple issues affecting signalling which means they are failing to work as they normally do.  As a result, we have introduced a process to enable trains to move past signals manually. This is obviously far slower, but essential for safety.
The number of trains able to run through the affected area has been reduced from ten per hour to three, as trains take between 30 to 60 minutes longer than usual to clear each signal section. As a result, our trains have been exceptionally busy and some have not stopped at certain stations to enable us to keep services moving.
We understand and appreciate that your journey today has been far more difficult than it should be and we are very sorry for this.
Our engineering team are continuing to work on resolving the problem, please check before you travel.

[John R]

Ouch! But fair play to them for the relatively detailed description of why there is so much impact to services. Doubt whether SHRUG will be happy though, even though it's NR^» (Network Rail - home page)'s problem.

[SandTEngineer]

Yes I posted it as I thought it was a very good explanation and far better than FGW^▸ (First Great Western) put out.  By the way it is a SW Trains problem as they are in alliance with NR^» (Network Rail - home page) so can't blame NR for the problems

[SandTEngineer]

....and a bit more detail from the SW Trains website:

Disruption to trains between Basingstoke and Winchester expected until the end of service today
Multiple track circuit failures occurred late yesterday evening and a specialist team joined our engineering team to investigate the problem. Work was carried out to replace multiple elements of the equipment to rectify the problem, but unfortunately this was not successful. The work has continued overnight and today to find the fault and will carry on until this has been repaired. Several modules and specialist equipment are being tested on site and will be replaced until we have repaired problem affecting the line. This will take some time to resolve.

Sounds quite serious

[tomL]

....and a bit more detail from the SW Trains website:

Disruption to trains between Basingstoke and Winchester expected until the end of service today
Multiple track circuit failures occurred late yesterday evening and a specialist team joined our engineering team to investigate the problem. Work was carried out to replace multiple elements of the equipment to rectify the problem, but unfortunately this was not successful. The work has continued overnight and today to find the fault and will carry on until this has been repaired. Several modules and specialist equipment are being tested on site and will be replaced until we have repaired problem affecting the line. This will take some time to resolve.

Sounds quite serious

If in doubt replace things until they work again I guess?   

[ChrisB]

XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) services were worse affected - some last night were over 150mins late....