If it's an August weekend, there must be a TGV on fire ...

[whole diary]

[stuving]

SNCF^▸ (Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais - French National Railways) have developed their own version of Sod's law, which is that something always goes wrong on a summer holiday weekend. The weekends in July and August are when the long-distance network is busiest. This year's speciality is fires, as on this Marseille-Paris TGV^▸ (Train a Grande Vitesse) (train 2916) that burst into flames this afternoon.
Reported (not in English) with this picture:


The last time was on August 2nd (a Sunday) and was nominally an AVE, but still an Alstom-built TGV, run jointly by RENFE^▸ (Spanish National Railways (Red Nacional de Ferrocarriles Espanoles)) and SNCF. This was at Lunel, near Montpellier, on the (scenic) route from Pars to Madrid.

As you can see that one was on 1500V DC^▸ (Direct Current), though as the second one was 25 kV that can't be a big factor.

That was on the biggest chass^-crois^ weekend, when the juillettistes going home fight their way past the ao^tiens going to replace them on the beaches. The same day, there was a TGV that hit a heavy farm tractor near Rennes. The tractor crashed through from a field and rolled down into a cutting. Followed by much head-scratching about what you could practically do to prevent that.

Then there was that catenary support hit by a car - 17th July, a Friday (reported in this forum).

I can vaguely remember at least on other spoiled weekend too.

[Adelante_CCT]

And to add to the woes in France:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11817679/France-high-speed-train-shooting-what-we-know-so-far.html

[stuving]

And here's another thing ...

Today Montpellier was struck by flash flooding, for the third time in a year (it happened twice in ten days last September). A TGV^▸ (Train a Grande Vitesse) was derailed by a landslip, which blocked the line from N^mes (and reportedly between Narbonne to Toulouse as well). This is not an LGV^▸ (Large Goods Vehicle) - there is a plan to build one which should be starting about now - but it is the main line from the Rhone valley towards Toulouse and Spain, and the main TGV route to Spain.

Reportedly the passengers were evacuated on another train, as they were stuck in a flooded cutting.

[Red Squirrel]

Had me confused for a moment - until I remembered there's another Montpelier somewhere...

[plymothian]

"The UK^▸ (United Kingdom) railway is shit, they never have these problems abroad..."

[stuving]

Today Montpellier was struck by flash flooding, for the third time in a year (it happened twice in ten days last September). A TGV^▸ (Train a Grande Vitesse) was derailed by a landslip, which blocked the line from N^mes (and reportedly between Narbonne to Toulouse as well). This is not an LGV^▸ (Large Goods Vehicle) - there is a plan to build one which should be starting about now - but it is the main line from the Rhone valley towards Toulouse and Spain, and the main TGV route to Spain.

I am impressed that SNCF^▸ (Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais - French National Railways) had the line open initially with one track by 07:00 today, promising full operation later today, since the blockage was at 15:00 yesterday. 

Incidentally, the storm struck Montpellier at 14:00 - so the rise of water to flood levels was fast. M^o France are reporting a new record rainfall rate of 110 mm/hr. Now that really is heavy rain.

[stuving]

This year, it's a holiday weekend, and it's back to fires again. OK, strictly speaking next weekend is the one with the big bad traffic jams, but this one is also rather too warm for spending hours in stations or packed trains. And the fire was in a big grid transformer on the Paris ring, not a railway one, but still very effective at closing the gare de Paris Montparnasse (again).
From Channel News Asia (!)

Fire blocks major Paris station at height of holiday exodus

Firefighters try to extinguish a fire of an electric transformer in Issy-les-Moulineaux, west of Paris, on Jul 27, 2018. (Photo: AFP /Stephane Delfour)

PARIS: A major fire in the Paris suburbs paralysed traffic in and out of the city's Montparnasse train station on Friday (Jul 27), just as thousands of French and foreign travellers head on their holidays this weekend.

The fire at an electrical centre run by the national transport network in Issy-les-Moulineaux, southwest of Paris, sent a massive plume of smoke rising into the skies.

The blaze, just next door to Microsoft's main French offices, prompted an evacuation of 2,500 people and caused a power cut to some 16,000 homes in the Paris suburbs, authorities said.

The fire shut down traffic just before noon at Montparnasse, the main station connecting Paris to west and southwest France, with rail operator SNCF^▸ (Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais - French National Railways) warning of heavy disruption for the rest of the day.
...

[Red Squirrel]

The blaze, just next door to Microsoft's main French offices, prompted an evacuation of 2,500 people and caused a power cut to some 16,000 homes in the Paris suburbs, authorities said.
...

They should have tried switching it of and then switching it back on again...

[stuving]

The blaze, just next door to Microsoft's main French offices, prompted an evacuation of 2,500 people and caused a power cut to some 16,000 homes in the Paris suburbs, authorities said.
...

They should have tried switching it of and then switching it back on again...

In SNCF^▸ (Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais - French National Railways)'s case, they seem to have had enough of getting the blame for whatever goes wrong. Since this time it's clearly RTE^‡(resolve)'s fault - it was their transformer fire, and their substation and cables in a tunnel that were destroyed - so they are talking aloud about claiming millions in compensation.

The story is that this was a 225/63 kV substation, and as well as one transformer going up (presumably of a pair), it took with it a load of switchgear and thirty 63 kV cables leading out to its loads. It is well over 2 km to the nearest point on the Montparnasse line, and may be a lot further to wherever the feed is.  RTE say the best they can do is to run temporary cables around the burnt-out section, at the earliest by Thursday.

In the mean time, SNCF do obviously have a back-up feed, but only at half power. Worse, they have no non-traction power to their local depot for Montparnasse, so can't prepare trains there. So from tomorrow they are limited to around half the number of trains they would run (on a very busy holiday weekend).

As usual there are politicos and journos complaining that they never imagined their electricity supply might actually fail and not come back on in a few minutes. I did hear that this kind of failure of a non-duplicated bit of the grid last happened thirty years ago - which sounds plausible. 55,000 domestic users also lost supply, and after 24 hours 7,000 were still off but due to be reconnected by the second evening.

And ... yesterday evening Gare de l'Est lost traction power for an hour due to a train fault. And Gare du Nord suffered similarly due to lightning, there being a lot of that plus pretty serious storms over Paris. That train's fault might well have been lightning-induced, I think, but the fire was too early for that to be likely.

[stuving]

Here we go again, on the last big holiday-travel weekend this summer ... but this time not in Paris. Yesterday the second unit of a TGV^▸ (Train a Grande Vitesse) derailed coming into Marseille Saint-Charles. Several tracks in the throat are still blocked, and will be into tomorrow (Sunday), but nine platforms out of 16 are still accessible. (English story from RFI.)

Priority to use that capacity is being given to TGVs, it being such a busy time for going home. It's a "through terminus" like Swansea, and can be by-passed, and is by some trains. TERs can terminate at one of the other city stations, though services have been reduced.

Recovery will not start until tonight, as they are still bringing in heavy kit, looking, and no doubt scratching heads. The last seven carriages plus power car need re-railing - evidently the bogies were given a free choice of track and no consensus emerged (rather like that HST^▸ (High Speed Train) at Laira).

[IndustryInsider]

Thanks for continuing ‘coverage’ of such events in France, Stuving.  Without you, unless we did the research ourselves, we might be led into thinking such events only ever occur in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom).

[stuving]

Thanks for continuing ‘coverage’ of such events in France, Stuving.  Without you, unless we did the research ourselves, we might be led into thinking such events only ever occur in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom).

Thank you for that.

As an aside, while quickly visiting a point (a long way) vertically above Marseille for that post, I noticed that the roundhouse next to MSC station had, since last year, lost its track and turntable and the tiles off its roof. So, is it being demolished?

Looking this up (having paused only to look up he French for roundhouse) it turns out it's not being entirely demolished. That was proposed by SNCF^▸ (Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais - French National Railways) in 2014, but refused by the city at planning. The building is now being restored, and will be used for garaging and light maintenance of smaller rolling stock (TERs). How that fits into a round building I can't imagine, but it sounds like it will survive only as a bit of a large new building. The turntable has been scrapped - but then big ones are very hard to move.

[stuving]

SNCF^▸ (Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais - French National Railways) finished removing the derailed train during the night of Sunday/Monday. There are several reasons why it took well over two days, despite being urgent, not just that it involved eight vehicles and happened on a platform line so access was largely from one side. It was a duplex (double-deck) train, so big and top-heavy, and the shared bogies present a more difficult lifting job, and also prevent each carriage being removed once rerailed to give access to the end of the next.

Repairing the track is predicted to finish by Friday, and until then disruption will continue. TGVs^▸ (Train a Grande Vitesse) are all running, though the ones to Nice/Toulon are using Marseille Blancarde instead of Saint-Charles. TERs are significantly reduced, to a peak-only service in some cases, though part of that is due to closures for engineering work (common in August).

So while the shared bogie deign is good for safety, making it almost impossible for carriages to overturn, it does have its drawbacks.

[stuving]

Today's not quite a peak travel holiday - that was last Saturday and next too (for winter sports) - but there was a demonstration from SNCF^▸ (Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais - French National Railways) of what happens when an overhead wire goes ping on your busiest high-speed line (Paris-Lyon). The answer, of course, is that having cancelled as many trains as possible, the rest (enough for the number of passengers) have to squeeze onto the surrounding "classic" network. This is 1500V DC^▸ (Direct Current) territory, but being on half power isn't likely to matter given the lower line speeds anyway. Typical delays on these trains, between Paris and all points south of Lyon, have been 3-4 hours.

Repair work started at 13:00, but rather than keep both tracks closed for a full repair they chose to reopen the intact one for alternating one-way use and will rewire the other one tonight. Obviously the longer-distance services thin out from late afternoon, helping with recovery, but arrivals in Paris are still very delayed. SNCF are warning of further disruption tomorrow, presumably due to out-of-place stock and out-of-hours staff.

I guess much the same would happen anywhere.

[stuving]

The canicules are out early this year, so ... there are delays due to precautionary measures for hot rails and the like. SNCF^▸ (Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais - French National Railways) also have a problem with droopy catenaries, which is a bit odd - I've not heard of it as a significant issue here. It arises with gravity tensioners, where the weight hits the ground and tension is lost. there has been a programme of modifications; presumably one more turn of wire round the pulleys and a bigger weight. But obviously there are still some places to do.

So, about Thursday night. An intercités train Paris-Bercy to Clermont-Ferrand was delayed for more than two hours by an attempted suicide, and finally set off at around 9 pm. At 22:00, near Montargis, it stopped for want of juice, and obviously the chillers went off. Initial reports from passengers said they were left alone with no food, water, or other help for hours; when rescued by another train it stopped everywhere and then finally arrived the next morning 11 hours late. Reports of the trouble said the wire broke and that it melted, and it wasn't clear if the heat was a factor. The rescue train was delayed because the other track was closed for works, and had to be de-possessed.

SNCF's story was different, saying that water and food were supplied by the local rescue services and the stranded were picked up as soon as possible. Today, as part of an apology, they add that driver error at a point of voltage change, combined with slack wires, was the cause. I'm not sure that's a whole lot clearer. They also say they have stopped selling TGV^▸ (Train a Grande Vitesse) and Intercités tickets to allow for train cancellations.

There is a voltage boundary near Conflans-sur-Loing, a few km south of Montargis. Oddly, it's from 1500V DC^▸ (Direct Current) to 25 kV AC (which is newer OLE^▸ (Overhead Line Equipment, more often "OHLE")) when going south.