Signalling problems between Didcot Parkway and Swindon 07/10/10

[whole diary]

[johoare]

From FGW^▸ (First Great Western) website...

"Line incident
Line problem between Swindon and Didcot Parkway.
Train services are being disrupted due to signalling problems between Swindon and Didcot Parkway.Engineers are working as fast as possible to restore services to normal. Short notice alterations, cancellations and delays of up to 90 minutes can be expected. "

It looks like there are big delays...

[johoare]

Current service updates..

05:40 Plymouth to London Paddington due 10:14
This train has been revised.It will no longer call at: Chippenham, Swindon and Didcot Parkway.This is due to signalling problems.

Last Updated: 07/10/2010 08:01
06:58 Swansea to London Paddington due 09:59
This train will be terminated at Swindon.It will no longer call at: Reading and London Paddington.This is due to signalling problems.

Last Updated: 07/10/2010 08:50
09:12 Bristol Parkway to Weston-Super-Mare due 10:03
This train will be started from Bristol Temple Meads.It will no longer call at: Bristol Parkway.This is due to an earlier train fault.

Last Updated: 07/10/2010 08:36
09:15 London Paddington to Cardiff Central due 11:23
This train has been cancelled.This is due to signalling problems.

Last Updated: 07/10/2010 08:27
09:30 Bristol Temple Meads to London Paddington due 11:14
This train has been revised.It will no longer call at: Chippenham, Swindon and Didcot Parkway.This is due to signalling problems.

Last Updated: 07/10/2010 08:43
11:15 London Paddington to Cardiff Central due 13:22
This train will be started from Swindon.It will no longer call at: London Paddington, Reading and Didcot Parkway.This is due to signalling problems.

Last Updated: 07/10/2010 08:51
11:55 Cardiff Central to London Paddington due 14:06
This train has been cancelled. This is due to signalling problems.

[Pedros]

Oh my giddy aunt, that was a painful journey this morning.  

Happily mooched on to Swindon station to get the 06.58 towards London.  Small delay leaving due to the Cheltenham bound train being delayed (nothing really unusal about that) Left Swindon a couple of minutes late, no probs, we can catch that up.  STOP...and much more stopping.  We got all of about a mile outside of the station and that was that for about an hour.  News from the TM^‡(resolve) was that some delightful chaps have stolen signal cables, so nothing was moving and that we were in a queue of 4 trains waiting to get through (Broughton, if memory serves correctly)  Anyhoo, I thought I'd get in some Autumnwatch and have a look at some leaves changing colour (disappointed how slow they were, barely saw any change at all)  So, after about an hour, and a lovely chat with a lady who had to do a presentation in the City in 40mins time, we were off.  Siddled past the offending signal and then hotfooted it from there onwards. I jumped off at Reading, fully expecting to have just missed my connection to Guildford, when low and behold, that train was running 3 mins late, which saved me a further 30 minute wait (Confusius, he say "not all delayed trains are bad")

In all seriousness, and I know that this has been covered many times before, but the theft of signal cable really gets my goat and I have some real sympathy for the train companies when this happens, but I cannot honestly think of how this can be prevented.

[willc]

Probably Bourton, which is just south of Shrivenham.

[anthony215]

I was caught up in this   when i was on the 03:58 Swansea - London Paddington which was on time at Swindon and left on time only to be held about half a mile or so from Swindon where we waited for a good 30 minutes.

This was made worse by our train suffering a spad near maidenhead which in total caused my train to arrive into London Paddington at 08:30 nearly 1 hour late.

[Chris from Nailsea]

That's an interesting - and rather serious - claim, anthony215.

Could you possibly quote a source for suggesting that there was a SPAD^▸ (Signal Passed At Danger) incident, please?

[anthony215]

well not long after we left reading and were apporaching maidenhead, i had my head slightly out of the droplight window and just as we were apporaching a signal gantry going pretty fast i felt the train give  sharp jerk and rapidly slow down before coming to a complete stop. After waiting for probably only a couple of minutes the train manager spoek over the tannoy and said that the  signal has  suddenly changed to red just as we were approaching it and that the driver had to await instructions from the signalman and that we may be delayed.

It may not be classed as a spad but i supposed since the signal sudenly changed to red and the train passed it then to me i would have called it a spad but i may be wrong (hopefully some members may be able to correct me on this?)

[SDS]

COA^▸ (Change Of Aspect) (Change of Aspect) not a SPAD^▸ (Signal Passed At Danger). If the train passed the signal it would only then be a Cat B or C SPAD. As the driver was not relived of duty I guess the train didn't SPAD.

Still it kinda screws you up if a green signal suddenly reverts to a red in front of you at 125mph.

Could be one of many things that caused it, Track Circuit failure or somthing making the section occupied, signaller pulling back,