Intercity Express Train (IET) failure, near Exeter, 13 September 2018

[whole diary]

[bobm]

Here's the said article mentioned by bignosemac:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-45519014

Hundreds of passengers were left stranded on a new GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) high-speed train for six hours after it broke down.

The 12:57 Penzance to Paddington service came to a halt at 17:15 just north of Exeter on Thursday.

About 400 passengers had to be assisted off the Hitachi 800 train with ladders and transferred to another train which took them back to Exeter.

GWR apologised to passengers via social media and said they would be offered a refund and a free ticket.

Continues...

Another story with basic details wrong.  The 12:57 from Penzance is a unit which goes as far as Newton Abbot.   The train in question was the 14:00 from Penzance.

Edit: BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) Article has now been corrected.

[broadgage]

Not long after midnight, to finally move it according to reports elsewhere.
Don't know what was done to the wretched thing to make it move, physical isolation of the brakes ? or some software update to release the brakes ?

Simply isolating or mending the air leak, would probably NOT suffice since even in the unit without the leak, "computer says no"

[martyjon]

Is there no way on these new super dooper plastic trains of releasing the brakes, the carriages have to be shunted at some times in their lives if only at their births and their funerals.

I recall many times when in my youth I saw the fireman of a steam train walk the length of the carriages pulling a string cord on carriages because a steam locos vacuum was different to a diesel locos vacuum. Even later when air braked stock was common it was not uncommon to see coaches being shunted and there was no operating brake on the coaches the braking power being the shunting locomotive itself, mind you shunting speeds were usually no more than single figures.

In yesterdays incident it wouldn't have taken long to establish that there was a total loss of air so evacuation should have been commenced earlier, a rescue loco summoned to the site and connected to the failed train then manually release the brakes on the delinquent train and move it to Tiverton Loop at 5mph.

No it seems to me that today if anything fails you first try this, when this fails you try that, when that fails you try something else and when something else fails you continue on an on through a list until you get to an end point which says something like "SCRAP IT".

When in employment we had fire drills, when the fire alarm went off you got out, you didn't wait till you smelt smoke, you didn't wait till the sprinklers went off, you didn't wait till you saw fire. YOU GOT OUT AS SOON AS YOU HEARD THE FIRE ALARM.

The railway industry still have a lesson or two to learn.

[broadgage]

There must be some way of releasing the brakes, probably by physical intervention at each brake. AFAIK^▸ (as far as I know) this is done when the new units are delivered. With the brakes isolated, nothing prevents the train running unhindered to its destruction.
It is therefore vital that the dead DMU^▸ (Diesel Multiple Unit) be coupled to an engine or other vehicles with sufficient brake force to prevent any such accident. In most cases, suitably braked vehicles would be required at each end.

[ChrisB]

Safer to stay on the train than evacuate is the rule of thumb.

Also Hitachi own the equipment, they would need to give permission....probably spent too long trying to sort it remotely, I reckon

[phile]

Here's the said article mentioned by bignosemac:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-45519014

Hundreds of passengers were left stranded on a new GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) high-speed train for six hours after it broke down.

The 12:57 Penzance to Paddington service came to a halt at 17:15 just north of Exeter on Thursday.

About 400 passengers had to be assisted off the Hitachi 800 train with ladders and transferred to another train which took them back to Exeter.

GWR apologised to passengers via social media and said they would be offered a refund and a free ticket.

Continues...

Another story with basic details wrong.  The 12:57 from Penzance is a unit which goes as far as Newton Abbot.   The train in question was the 14:00 from Penzance.

Edit: BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) Article has now been corrected.

Don't want to come over as pedantic but the 1257 ex Penzance is worked by the short HSTGi set

[phile]

There must be some way of releasing the brakes, probably by physical intervention at each brake. AFAIK^▸ (as far as I know) this is done when the new units are delivered. With the brakes isolated, nothing prevents the train running unhindered to its destruction.
It is therefore vital that the dead DMU^▸ (Diesel Multiple Unit) be coupled to an engine or other vehicles with sufficient brake force to prevent any such accident. In most cases, suitably braked vehicles would be required at each end.

But these IETs^▸ (Intercity Express Train) are driven by computer so if the computer says "No" that's it

[bobm]

Don't want to come over as pedantic but the 1257 ex Penzance is worked by the short HSTGi set

..usually.

[The Tall Controller]

Does anyone know when the failed train (by then devoid of passengers) was eventually moved?

I believe the fault was fixed and it set off to Stoke Gifford on its own power shortly after midnight.

[martyjon]

Safer to stay on the train than evacuate is the rule of thumb.

Not if I were on a train on fire.

[broadgage]

Nor with failed air conditioning on a crush loaded train with sealed windows. In hot weather conditions can rapidly become dangerous.

[IndustryInsider]

Also Hitachi own the equipment, they would need to give permission....probably spent too long trying to sort it remotely, I reckon

I would imagine that is pretty close to the truth.  Procedures for dealing with problems on the new trains will need to be fine tuned over time as confidence of staff (both maintenance and frontline) grows, but as we discussed with the Lewisham incident, IMHO^▸ (in my humble opinion) control offices need to manage the situation better and start the preparations for a full evacuation earlier, so when other efforts fail they can start an evacuation much quicker.

[a-driver]

An hour to get the fitter to the site, at a guess he would quickly conclude an evacuation is necessary once they discover it’s a split air pipe, however, it is a new train so they won’t know them like the back of their hands and it may take a little longer.  You also need to know the number of passengers onboard and their travel requirements.  This is easier to ascertain when they are still onboard rather than roaming around outside.  Once this information has been obtained you can then make plans for onward travel or accomodation. 
During this time plans will be made to move or evacuate the train as well as keeping other trains moving and staffed.  You also need to get staff to the train to aid in the evacuation.  This was quickly organised, I heard that staff living locally were contacted to ask if they would assist.
You need the fire service to commence a train evacuation.  Response time, over an hour as it’s not deemed an emergency. 
Evacuation of the train takes the longest, took over 2 hours to do last night. 
In any major event like this, events will be reviewed the next day.  There were things that went well, there were things that could have been done better. Lessons will be learnt
 
So for the brakes on trains, you can release the brakes manually so that all vehicles are unbraked.  There’s probably an emergency coupler onboard to allow an IET^▸ (Intercity Express Train) to couple to a locomotive too. The problem is, one locomotive would not have the braking capability to stop 10 unbraked IET’s vehicles.  Also, the RSSB^▸ (Rail Safety and Standards Board) will not allow this number of vehicles to be moved unbraked.  If the coupling was to fail in whatever way you would be left with 10 runaway vehicles, for obvious reasons, that probably won’t end well!  It’s either fix or evacuate.

[JayMac]

I started a thread about this incident on an IET^▸ (Intercity Express Train) Facebook group. There was a reply there from the Network Rail Incident Controller.

I managed this incident from start to finish on a NR^» (Network Rail - home page) perspective. Firstly the fitter was 90 minutes away after early diagnostics proved unable to fix. Single Line Working was ready to be implemented at 1825, just over an hour after after the train stopping. Upon the fitter being unable to fix it was deemed evacuation was the only solution left. The plan was to use the Fire Brigade. Their response was 60 minutes and the XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) Voyager to stop behind the failure and passengers detained via the Up Main cess to enable single line working to keep going. Underfoot ballast conditions prevented this so the Down Main had to be closed too. Evacuation although taking as long as it takes was the highest priority for the 389 passengers on board.

[ChrisB]

detrained, I hope!