"Mizter T" wrote:
[...]
That's almost suggestive of it being an OHLE power issue (EMT having
diesel traction of course) rather than a signalling issue - though I'd be
wary of jumping to that conclusion just yet - perhaps they've hashed the
signalling together enough to be able to run a service on the fast lines,
who knows?

Network Rail tweets:
"St Pancras: Power restored. Disruption continues, for which we are very
sorry. Service information: http://bit.ly/sT3zWK @EmTrains @FirstCC"
http://twitter.com/#!/networkrail/status/135025991801249793

The nature of the power failure is unspecified.

On Nov 11, 4:12*pm, "Mizter T" wrote:
"Neil Williams" wrote:
Actually, scratch that:-

"East Midlands Trains services can now run between London St Pancras
International and Luton / Bedford"

So they're going to be quite busy, then. *Time to hire in some
locomotives and stock to ensure everything is 10-car?

That's almost suggestive of it being an OHLE power issue (EMT having diesel
traction of course) rather than a signalling issue - though I'd be wary of
jumping to that conclusion just yet - perhaps they've hashed the signalling
together enough to be able to run a service on the fast lines, who knows?

At 13:00 or so today there was an EMT 222 stopped and idling at Mill
Hill Broadway on the Up Fast line with its doors open ... Not quite
believing my luck at EMT finally running a commuter service to Mill
Hill after all these years I went over to the station to have a look
and the reason became apparent - there wasn't a single lit signal
visible in either direction (and one should be able to see 6 signals
from there - two blocks to the north and one to the south).

At around 14:30 an HST rolled along the down fast at about 10 mph and
at around 16:00 a 222 went through on the down fast at near enough
line speed (there may well have been a few trains in-between when I
wasn't looking out of the office window...); as of 16:30, FCC were
still not running any trains through Mill Hill.

"Mizter T" wrote:
http://www.jcheck.com/firstcapitalconnect

---quote---
Owing to signalling problems between Cricklewood and Radlett all lines are
blocked. Train services through these stations may be subject to
disruption on all routes at short notice. Disruption is expected until
23:45 11/11.
[...]
---/quote---

More info from NRE he
http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/service_disruptions/sa34a55203f2481ca1845d3fc436cc1b/details.html

The NRE page said and is still saying "Journeys between London St Pancras
International and Luton may be delayed by up to 90 minutes", whilst the
JourneyCheck message said and still says that "all lines are blocked" -
looking at FCC's Twitter stream, the latter message would appear to be
correct and nothing's moving through the affected area, e.g.:
http://twitter.com/#!/FirstCC/status/135006922691723264

That doesn't stop LDB from promising trains that seemingly can't run, for
example the St Pancras LDB is showing trains to Luton and Bedford...
http://ojp.nationalrail.co.uk/service/ldbboard/dep/STP

....whilst the Mill Hill Broadway LDB still suggests services are running to
and from the station (when it actually falls within the portion of the line
that's supposedly blocked)...
http://ojp.nationalrail.co.uk/service/ldbboard/dep/MIL

Also, haven't seen this before (but maybe I've just never looked for it) -
on the NRE 'Service alterations' page, under the "Ticket Acceptance /
Alternative travel routes" heading, this is one of the bullet points:

---quote---
* Local Buses between Welwyn Garden City and Luton (Route 366) and Potters
Bar and St Albans (Route 84). Please note, you will need to purchase a
ticket for this journey and request a refund from First Capital Connect
---/quote---

Not so much "ticket acceptance" as 'ticket non-acceptance', though it's
undoubtedly an "alternative travel route" though.

Wonder if this might all be the work of cable thievery? (Though on the busy
MML, in the middle of the day?)

On Nov 11, 2:36*pm, "Mizter T" wrote:

The ongoing unreliability of the Thameslink route is the stuff of legend,
which is a great shame as it's such a useful service when it works
properly


Indeed.

And I share your concerns.

As I'm sure most uk.railway contributors must be fed up of reading, I
am a Luton / London Thameslink commuter, and while 60-80% of my
journies do not go south of West Hampstead on Thameslink I still get
hot by core problems.

Fridays incident is perhaps not so typical of the many recent events,
rather one more in the range of what can happen on any line.

But it still had symptoms of one major major issue with the service
that GoVia did have and FCC seem to have exacerbated and NR certainly
has - and that is lack of resilience.

Not only has the TL Project eliminated Moorgate forever as a rat-run
escape route, there are turnback restrictions at City TL, a crossover
is permanently removed at Farringdon because of the 12car works, and
at present the bays at Blackfriars are not there.

If goes on - when the route has 12car trains, can't turn back at
StAlbans - yes the platforms can take 12 but the turnback siding is
still 8. Can't turnback [either way] even empty 12car at Kentish Town,
because not only is the (well known) issue of not extending to 12car
for service a limit but the signalling is laid out for 8car dead.
Blackfriars bays - when these are open are they 8car only ? AIUI some
or all of them yes, which again means no 12car turn back.

StPancras high level was ruled out years ago. In the normal weekday
service - even off peak - there is no platform space there. You can
turn back in low lvel between SPI and Farringdon, but this is slow,
allegedly they won't turn more than 4 TPH there, but I don;t know why
its quite that low, I reckon 6 TPH ought to be feasible, but I'd need
expert advice on that.

All this is very important, because there will be many more 12car
trains than 8car. On the north side once in the open air, the only
actual stations where you can turn 12car in service recovery will be
West Hampstead, Luton and Bedford.

Now the knee jerk argument to this is the service pattern at them
moment only goes to Luton and Bedford, and thats where the TOCs have
made things worse. There is no train crew resilience. They are unable
to do short turnbacks (even ignoring cancellation penalties for doing
so) because crews are in the wrong places.

They only have 3 depots - Bedford Blackfriars and Brighton.
Blackfriars !!! That NBG to anybody when the core is closed.

When the GN route is connected I see this getting worse. because what
will start to happen is something will go wrong and say a NB GN bound
train will be in the core with a GN-side TL driver, the junction fails
and there no driver to take in on the ML route. This WILL happen.
Youve then got a situation where 8 of 24 TPH have lost the route
through the source failire, and 16/24 screwed up becaus eone train has
no knowledge.

If I were running it I'd have all crew know all routes, throughout,
and have appropriate diagrams, but I know thats expensive. I certainly
expect all GN crew to know at least as Cricklewood to dump a train,
and all ML crews to know Hornsey ditto, and things like Brighton crews
to know SE routes if they happen to be on a SB that needs to be dumped
at (say) Orpington. But if you look at precedence - that dispute this
time 2 years ago was all about the parsimonouos way they were going
about crew training on 377s and lack of crews for KO0.

I've been to 4 public lecture on TL project, 2 given by senior NR
people, one to IET, and despite reading this stuff in detail, and
every other TLP paper, I understand the tekkie stuff about ATO and 24
TPH and all the rest - but I fail to see where any of this works with
the way the previous and current TOC run the service and the lack of
resilience.

--
Nick