Equipment Failure and Snow closure of EXD - Barnstaple and Okehampton 21112024

[whole diary]

[RailCornwall]

Last updated

21 Nov 2024 at 15:17

Train operators affected

Great Western Railway
Route(s) affected
Between Exeter Central / Exeter St Davids and Okehampton

Description
A points failure at Crediton means lines between Exeter St Davids and Barnstaple are blocked. Services between Exeter Central / Exeter St Davids and Barnstaple will be cancelled.

Additionally, heavy snow between Crediton and Okehampton means the line is closed. Services between Exeter Central / Exeter St Davids and Okehampton will be cancelled.

Disruption is expected until the end of the day.

[plymothian]

As of the last update at 14:00, there have been 8 passengers stranded on a train on the Okehampton line for 6 hours.  The rescue train of Network Rail personnel had only managed to get 3 miles from Crediton.

[PhilWakely]

As of the last update at 14:00, there have been 8 passengers stranded on a train on the Okehampton line for 6 hours.  The rescue train of Network Rail personnel had only managed to get 3 miles from Crediton.

Passengers were rescued by the fire brigade, but the train (2R52?) is still stranded.

An additional problem earlier was that the main road from Crediton to Exeter was blocked by a lorry, stuck on the hill through Newton St Cyres.

[RailCornwall]

Train stopped and stranded at ......

Sampford Courtenay!!!

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/fD1nG5VPJus

[AMLAG]

The weight of heavy snow is known to bring trees and tree branches down and if allowed to grow unchecked ( as has been the case on many mainly secondary lines for several years) problems as experienced today in numerous places on the Okehampton and North Devon lines
are inevitable.
Network Rail, through ‘Mitigation’ directives from over powerful Natural England has in last year or two had to spend hundreds of thousands /more than a million pounds acquiring land ( including over the odds prices paid for good agricultural land) adjacent, or in at least one case a few miles, from the Crediton to Okehampton line.
This former mainly agriculture land is being planted with thousands of mixed species trees, with it is understood non degradable plastic tree guards.

If only some of this money had been spent to remove the obvious safety hazards these trees pose, which are very evident to railway staff and passengers, along in particular the
13 mile ‘tree tunnel’ between Coleford Jn and Okehampton, then cancellation of train services as experienced again today could have been avoided.

 

[grahame]

We are sorry for the disruption to your journey this morning.
-
Snow fall earlier had caused a points failure at Crediton which prevented us from running trains on the line between Exeter and Barnstaple. The snowfall has also caused a number of trees to fall on to the railway. We currently have a train running along the line from Crediton to Okehampton with Network Rail staff who are inspecting the line and removing the trees as they find them. Once that is done they will then use the train to inspect the line between Crediton and Barnstaple. Once that inspection is complete we hope to be able to start running trains, but at this time we do not have an estimate for when this will be.

[Bob_Blakey]

RTT^» (Real Time Trains - website) shows 2Z01 - the 3-car 158958 - travelling from EXC to BNP^▸ (Barnstaple station (in the context of the railways)) and currently being between Cowley Bridge Junction & CDI. Presumably not a figment of somebody's imagination.

[bradshaw]

Updated on X/Twitter just now by Network Rail Western

  Heavy snow means that no trains are able to run to Barnstaple until noon, or Okehampton until 4pm

[Mark A]

Was it a thing when both routes - north and south of Dartmoor - were open thoughout, that, depending on the wind direction, weather would occasionally close one or the other, but it was more unusual that both would have to close?

Mark

[PhilWakely]

We are sorry for the disruption to your journey this morning.
-
Snow fall earlier had caused a points failure at Crediton which prevented us from running trains on the line between Exeter and Barnstaple. The snowfall has also caused a number of trees to fall on to the railway. We currently have a train running along the line from Crediton to Okehampton with Network Rail staff who are inspecting the line and removing the trees as they find them. Once that is done they will then use the train to inspect the line between Crediton and Barnstaple. Once that inspection is complete we hope to be able to start running trains, but at this time we do not have an estimate for when this will be.

I think somebody at GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) needs a geography lesson............. I was at Polsloe Bridge this (Fri 22nd) morning waiting for the 08:47 service to Paignton. As the automated announcement for the imminent arrival of the service was broadcast, the additional message "This train may be disrupted after Exeter St David's due to adverse weather conditions between Exeter St David's and BARNSTAPLE" was added.

[AMLAG]

This is regretfully nothing new and has been going on intermittently for several weeks; thus giving misleading and confusing information to passengers on the information screens on stations and scrolling screens on local trains.
GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) and its Contractors seem unable to completely rectify these problems.