Virgin Trains along the Chiltern Line - Sunday 25 August 2013

Engineering works are taking place today that will significantly affect Virgin Trains Operating out of Euston.
This means that for much of the day one train an hour, in each direction, will be diverted via the Chiltern Line.

Virgin Trains
Sunday

• Some trains are diverted to run between London Euston and Birmingham International, Birmingham New Street and Crewe via High Wycombe, Leamington Spa and Coventry
• Trains between London Euston and Birmingham New Street / Wolverhampton and Manchester Piccadilly will run to an amended timetable
• Until 12:00 trains will not run between London Euston and Rugby
• After 12:00 trains will not run between London Euston and Milton Keynes Central

For those interested in such things, I have pasted below a snapshot of the anticipated time for all of the diverted trains to pass through Princes Risborough. Thanks to Tom Cairns and the Realtimetrains website.

If you click this link, you will be taken to the live version of the same data - Click away to your heart's content! The data should be retained for 7 days, after which it probably won't work any more.

As a consequence,Chiltern Railways services on their Mainline Route (Birmingham - Stratford-upon-Avon - Banbury - High Wycombe - London Marylebone) will have minor changes to their timetable. There will also be additional carriages on many trains as the planned closure on West Coast Main Line from Euston will mean additional passengers using their services.

___________________________

Virgin Trains through Princes Risborough

Sunday 25th August 201
(Click image to enlarge)

Edit: The original image has been replaced with one that shows what actually happened at Princes Risborough on Sunday 25th August 2013.

An idea for Chiltern Railways - How to improve the Wembley experience

Earlier today Saracens played Harlequins at Wembley Stadium. Kick off was at 15.00, though the pre-match entertainment started at 14.15.The whole event was great fun and a fantastic family afternoon out. I am not going to talk about the result!

Wembley Stadium has a spectator capacity of 90,779. In the event there was an official attendance at the match of 83,761 which was a world record for the number of spectators at  club Rugby Union match.

Chiltern Railways have a station at Wembley Stadium. Compared to Wembley Park underground station (which is designed to cope with several tens of thousands of spectators very quickly), Wembley Stadium station is a relatively sleepy backwater. It is however an integral and important part of the public transport infrastructure of the stadium.

Despite having a special timetable in place and laying on extra trains and carriages, the service received by Chiltern Railways' passengers on the way to the match today was shocking. I accept that it is always difficult to accurately predict passenger flows, but the level of overcrowding on trains was dangerously unacceptable and a very poor reflection on the railway company.

For quite some time now, Saracens have been putting out regular announcements as to how many spectators were expected to attend the event. On Wednesday they stated that 'only a few hundred tickets remain on sale' and none were available on-line yesterday.

It was fairly common knowledge that quite a few tickets had been given away. I think that means a lot of tickets were given away, but I don't know. Chiltern Railways seem to have taken this to heart - I have it on very good authority (please note that this is hearsay) that their plans took account of an actual attendance today of around 60,000 spectators.

I have no idea what percentage of event attendees travel to Wembley using Chiltern Railways, but one doesn't need the brains of a rocking horse to realise that a 23,000 underestimate will have led to several extra full capacity trains that it would seem were not planned for. Don't forget that, today, the Metropolitan Line is not running North of Harrow due to engineering works. I know that a lot of people drove down to Chiltern Stations - that is what people should do when they have to make alternative travel arrangements and cannot be described as unexpected behaviour!

My personal experience today is that the train I caught with three friends was standing room only from High Wycombe. Nobody was able to board at either Beaconsfield or at Gerrards Cross. The train was also made to stop at Denham (where nobody could get on), presumably because the waiting passengers could not board the previous train. We could only wave at a friend on the platform at Gerrards Cross, through the train window. She got to her seat at the stadium just over 1/2 an hour after us. She was not happy.

A couple of hours beforehand, I also witnessed passengers being unable to board trains as far out as Princes Risborough.

Many Chiltern Railways passengers were not happy.

I should say that after the match, when passenger flows are much easier to predict, things were much better. Yes trains were full, but boarding was possible and well managed. I also noted that Chiltern were using some (if not all) of their new Class 172 carriages which have fast acceleration and deceleration and are capable of travelling at speeds of up to 100 mph. We caught a four car Class 172 train home.

I cannot assist with any bright ideas as to how to accurately predict unpredictable passenger flows, however I do have one simple suggestion as to how Chiltern Railways could improve the passenger experience on Wembley event days.

My suggestion is that for a period of about three hours, two four car Class 172 trains should run a shuttle service between Gerrards Cross and London Marylebone, calling at Denham South Ruislip and Wembley Stadium only.

These trains could run as ECS (Empty Coaching Stock) from Marylebone back out again to Gerrards Cross, and each train could easily do the round trip in an hour. If these trains were to leave Gerrards Cross immediately after the 1/2 hourly 'fast' services from way up North, they would significantly reduce the match day experience of passengers from stations just outside London. With some decent publicity, Chiltern Railways could earn some decent goodwill from this.

My suggestion is not the entire solution (as I say, some trains were full from Princes Risborough), but it could perhaps help.

Let's face it, the railway company must absolutely coin it in on match days - how about putting on enough trains and in the right places?

Some weeks later.... The Chiltern Railways timetable

On 5th September 2011, Chiltern Railways introduced their new timetable. It marked the culmination of mega-spend on engineering work (£250m), months of weekend and late night travel disruption and a couple of weeks of blockade in August.

The result is an ambitious little train company, trying to run something approaching a four track railway on two tracks. The new timetable is bedding-in, just about, but whether it is actually fit for purpose is an entirely different matter. Since the company is no longer owned by its management, its ethos on day to day operational matters does seem to be driven a little more by the bean counters than ever used to be the case.

The view of many commuters in to London is that Chiltern Railways has de-prioritised them in favour of the longer distance (commercially lucrative and less captive) West Midlands to London market. Chiltern Railways does still however have some great staff working on the front line, trying to deliver the best possible service, often in difficult circumstances.

My train home

Since the new timetable came in, I now have a new favourite train home. I have caught it on nineteen separate occasions since 5 September. Of those 19 journeys, the train has arrived on time on 9 occasions. If one includes the generally accepted standard of three minutes or less late is 'on time', then the train has been on time on 16 of the 19 journeys.

The remaining three journeys were 14, 12 & 5 minutes late.

Every single journey was quicker than would have been the case before the new timetable was introduced.

I think I've been lucky, but in respect of my homeward journey from Marylebone, I am generally quite content. There are other things I could rant on about, but for now, I shall end on a positive note.

Every cloud has a silver lining (or two)

Cloud

Yesterday afternoon I blogged briefly on the personal impact to me of the effect of over-running engineering works in the Leamington Spa area. Or it was also described as a 'broken down train'.

I was on what should have been the first Chiltern Railways train to venture North of Bicester North after the end of the blockade at about 14:15. The train was the first one, the problem was that it left Bicester 50 minutes late, with the following Stratford-Upon-Avon service attached to its rear end. Both services were then terminated at Banbury.

It appears that the train that broke down was an engineering train. To be precise, a tamping train. It had a major mechanical defect and had to be rescued by a locomotive sent down from Coventry. The problem was that the rescue train was apparently sent in the direction of Birmingham International first (ie the wrong direction). This meant that the line was not cleared for quite some time.

My understanding is that single line working was implemented between Banbury and Leamington Spa. This meant that many trains were cancelled and all that remained were seriously delayed for much of the afternoon.

Replacement coaches were laid on, but they were seriously deficient in number. Hardly surprising, because the engineering works should have finished and the coaches should not have been needed. The picture above shows the scene outside Banbury at 16:00. There were lots of seriously delayed people. Shortly after this picture was taken, I think Chiltern Railways managed to run a Birmingham bound service, so hopefully many of the people shown managed to get on the train before it left.

Silver Lining

After a short but seriously heavy downpour at Bicester North, on the return journey, this rainbow was spotted from the platform.

Many camera phones were brought into use by the hordes of designer shoppers, who were all as delighted as I was to see such a bright rainbow.

An otherwise dreary afternoon was considerably brightened.

Second Silver Lining

During the course of the afternoon, I managed to take this picture of a Chiltern Mainline Class 168.

The train was thundering down the new Fast Up Line (towards London), at Princes Risborough, at what would have been the line speed of 85 mph.

Blogging on the overun

This afternoon's engineering works between Banbury have not ended well.

The Chiltern Railways website currently says 'over-running engineering works'. The National Rail website says 'broken down train in the Leamington Spa area'.

The 1415 departure from BCS (the first train due to run North of Bicester North) is currently sat in Platform 1. The 1438 service from Bicester North to Stratford Upon Avon is due to be attached to the back of the 1415, where both trains will run as one train through to Banbury, where the train will terminate.

Hopefully by then, the following Birmingham service will have caught up, so passengers will maybe get to where they want to. Probably without seats and with a delay of getting on for an hour. Hopefully. Maybe.

Edit: [15:05] The Stratford Upon Avon train has now coupled to the back of the Birmingham train. We are just pulling out, 50 minutes late. Next (and currently last) stop for this elongated train is Banbury.

Someone made a boo boo

So far as trains are concerned, this post is about as technical as I can get! Sorry.

Tonight there are no Chiltern Railways trains between Bicester North and Leamington Spa, from about now. This is due to engineering work.

The 2039 arrival into Bicester North (1N56) terminated at Platform 2 and then ran into the Bicester North Siding. It was then booked to follow the 2049 Southbound service (1H67) as empty stock, to Princess Risborough, where it was to run up the Aylesbury branch line to the depot.

Tonight it all went a bit wrong.

The empty stock train was allowed to run into Platform 2 at Princes Risborough, early, at about 2115. This was a bit of a problem as the 2116 departure from Aylesbury set off, on time, down the single track branch line.

There then followed what must be the most complicated shunting move I think I have ever seen, which I have attempted to illustrate below.

1. 1. Empty stock train ran into Platform 2 (Up Loop)
2. 2. Train reversed across the Up Main and across onto the Down Main
3. 3. Train reversed again back across onto the Up Main (using the new centre track as a siding)
4. 4. Once the passenger train from Aylesbury (2H72) has left the Up Loop towards London, and when the 2133 to Banbury (1U64) had cleared the Down Main shunt to the East of the station, the train then continued on the Up Main and crossed over onto the Down Main Shunt.
5. 5. The train will then have reversed again from the Down Main shunt, crossing back into the Up Loop (Platform 2) and continuing on to Aylesbury.

I bet the driver was cursing.

I did not actually witness moves (4) & (5), but logically that is what will have happened.

(Please click the diagram to expand it to a readable size)

Signalling Problems on Chiltern Railways

This post is based upon personal experience, supposition and guess work. Bits of it may not be based on fact, but here goes. Sources are a combination of me, the Chiltern Railways website and the National Rail website Live Departure Boards.

Chiltern Railway soft launched their new timetable today. The little table that you can hopefully see shows my personal experience of using my friendly little railway company today.

It does not make pretty reading, when you consider that the new weekday timetable kicks in in about seven hours. These delays were all caused by railway infrastructure issues (not train breakdowns).

It would appear that, just over an hour ago, something caused the majority of trains South of Banbury to grind to a halt. Or not leave their starting stations. A few trains seem to be moving now, but some are terminating short and there have been some cancellations. The reasons are either 'Emergency Engineering Works' or 'Signalling Problems'.

A lot of people need to cross their fingers very hard that whatever has gone wrong is sorted good and proper by the morning.

Sleep well.

High Wycombe has gone all kinky

Last week, in a post about a particular aspect of Chiltern Railways' Evergreen 3 engineering work, I made passing reference to the set of crossover points that were due to be replaced to the immediate West of High Wycombe station.

In a bi-party exchange of comments, I then drifted slightly off topic and allowed my fingers to start typing words relating to line speeds. I apologise for such a display of utter geek-dom. Regrettably I am unable to promise that there will not be a repeat of something similar.

Anyhow, here is a repeat of my comments relating specifically to the replacement crossover:

The purpose of replacing the points north of the station is to increase the Up (London bound) line speed through the station (through platform 3).

This has been done by 'de-prioritising' the points, reducing the Up to Down line line speed across the points (into Platform 2) from 40 mph to 25 mph.

This picture [click it for a larger version], taken earlier this evening shows the new points. The Up Line (towards London) is on the right, while the track on the left is going towards Princes Risborough & Birmingham, with trains traveling away from the camera.

The points were replaced at some point during the last eight days. While I do not have 'before and after' pictures, I can tell you that the previous crossover followed a straight line whereas the new points have a very obvious kink to them. That is why I described the new crossover as 'de-prioritising' the points.

Trains can now travel much faster into High Wycombe station, however to cross-over from the Up to the Down line, trains can only now travel at a maximum 25 mph.

There are literally dozens of seemingly innocuous pieces of engineering such as this built into the Evergreen 3 project. Each one is safety critical, each one probably incredibly expensive and each one contributing to the journey time savings that many passengers will hopefully see from next week.

I am not a mouth piece for Chiltern Railways. While I hope that all goes well with the launch of the new timetable, many commuters are expressing disquiet about the number of trains due to stop at their stations.

The railway company is hoping to deliver shorter journey times and more seats, this is at the cost of fewer trains at some stations. What this could mean in practise is that commuters have less flexibility as to the timing of their journeys. Only time will tell - I hope that I am being overly pessimistic as to the impact of the new timetable on Heartlands commuters.

It looks as though I was overly optimistic

Last night I posted as to how well advanced the Chiltern Railways track replacement work was, out in my part of rural Buckinghamshire.

I spoke too soon, for it seems as though the commissioning of the new signalling system is taking rather longer than was hoped. The actually engineering work seems pretty much done - nobody wants a train to crash into the back of another because the driver saw a green light when it should really have been red.

Chiltern Railways have dusted off a contingency plan for Sunday (when trains were supposed to have started running again on the line through High Wycombe). Those planned trains will no longer run.

So far as I can see, this is a summary of what will be happening this Sunday (28th August 2011):

•  Hourly train service from Aylesbury Vale Parkway to Amersham. Passengers will have to transfer to London Underground services there which will be train to Northwood, bus to Wembley Park and train again to Baker Street;
• Hourly train services from Birmingham to each of Bicester North and Oxford;
• Bus services from Bicester North to West Ruislip (for connection to the Central Line*)

* Don't forget, it's the Notting Hill Carnival this weekend.

Details of the changes, along with timetables, may be found on the 'Changes' page of the Chiltern Railways website.

That's messed up my plans for Sunday!

Chiltern Railways Trains Now Moo-ving

A brief update as I currently have no Internet connection.

Following the earlier bovine incident, trains seem to now be running.

The railway company are clearly doing their best to get everyone home.

The passenger experience has been bad and there are many grumbles, particularly from those who were stranded at Gerrards Cross.

It'll be interesting to see how the overnight recovery goes. Trains will be all over the place and there is supposed to be engineering work taking place.

Chiltern Railways - Cattle Problems

No, nothing to do with overcrowding.

Trains are currently seriously disrupted / at a stand, due to cattle being struck on the line between Gerrards Cross and Seer Green & Jordans.

Not the most straight forward of incidents to recover from at the tail end of the evening rush hour.

Coaches are being rustled up between Princes Risborough and West Ruislip, to try to get people mooving.

Where possible trains from up North are being diverted via Aylesbury and then down the Metropolitan Line.

It looks as though the 'shiny new train (Class 172), which entered service yesterday, will probably not get back to London for a while, as it cannot travel down the Metropolitan Line.

It will be interesting to see how this affects tonight's Late Night engineering work.

I do hope all the people involved in the incident are - it seems that the same cannot be said for at least one silly cow.

Other train operators are accepting tickets via reasonable alternative routes.

** I am not Chiltern Railways **

Updated @ 2013 on 9 June

The Storage of Gas Cylinders

There has been much comment recently regarding the storage of gas cylinders near public transport infrastructure.

Much of this has of course been as a result of a major fire at a scrap-yard in North London earlier this month. The particular scrap-yard is under the M1 Motorway and was so severe that the road had to be closed for several days.

Initially the major problem was that there were Acetylene cylinders thought to be involved with the incident. The London Fire Brigade doesn't like these particular types of gas cylinder as they can become exceedingly unstable and dangerous if involved in a fire. It subsequently transpired that the real issue was that the fire was so serious that the concrete structure holding the motorway up was seriously damaged. This took some serious engineering to repair enough to enable the motorway to be opened.

My local train station, which is in rural Buckinghamshire, has had lots of Network Rail engineers in attendance over the weekend. Actually, so far as I can tell, they were sub-contractors employed by Bam Nuttall. They worked hard for four days with their engineering work (though most of their work is not visible to mere mortals), and they made a fairly good attempt at clearing after themselves.

They've left just one thing. I don't think it's acetylene, but it is quite literally plonked in the middle of the car park. I wonder if it's been forgotten? I wonder if I should tell Chiltern Railways? I wonder if they'll be interested?

West Ruislip Depot Full

I noticed just now, while whizzing past on my Chiltern Clubman, that the Central Line's Ruislip depot is extremely full

All the trains are neatly lined up - I have never seen the depot with so many trains.
Ah! That'll explain it. Just checked - no trains West of Marble Arch

Have now just gone past chiltern's Wembley depot. That has just one 2 car Turbo (165) train and lots of Mk 3 stock. Ah! And that could be because for the first time in yonks, Chiltern are playing with a full train set this weekend.

For the avoidance of doubt, Chiltern Railways have no engineering work this weekend.

Yellow Lines

I travel from a small country station in Rural Buckinghamshire.

There will be no trains stopping at, or passing through, the station until Monday morning. This is perfectly normal - Chiltern Railways are currently spending lots of money to shave a few nano-seconds off my regular commute, so for the majority of weekends we have no train service near where I live. This ongoing engineering work means replacement buses running - we actually get more buses than we normally get trains.

Today the Chiltern Railways maintenance people have descended on the local station to take advantage of the lack of trains. They appear to have:

• Painted white lines along the edge of the platforms
• Painted yellow lines along the platforms
• Fixed lots of 'Stand behind the yellow lines' signs to the lamp posts along the platforms

I actually find this maintenance work rather sad. Yes, it makes the station look cared for and maintained, but really it is only being done for elf & safety reasons. We don't have masses of trains call at the best of times. We certainly don't suffer from over-crowded trains and the station could never ever be described as busy.

This isn't a rant - It's rather just a whimsical sigh. I like living in the country and, somehow, these signs of modern rules & regulations appearing in the heart of Rural Buckinghamshire just make me feel somewhat deflated. Sigh.

Soon, they'll be wanting to paint yellow lines down the road as well. Oh! I forgot - they do want to do that!

Chiltern Railways - Update

Chiltern Railways have just been given the OK to run trains through the South Ruislip area after the over running engineering works.

It's going to take a while to get things back to any sense of normality - a train has just left my local station on time, so they are obviously trying their best. I suspect a fairly important contingency plan has leapt into place this morning!

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work I go.

Sooner or later, it was going to happen

Chiltern Railways are currently going through transformational engineering works. Generally this means that weekend trains are significantly affected. Between now and the end of February, for example, there is only one Saturday or Sunday where there is going to be a normal train service running on the line through High Wycombe..

It's horrible, that is the disruption is horrible, but hopefully the pain will be worth it in the end.

Up until now, with the exception of a tiny number of very early morning trains, the months of weekend engineering works have had no knock on impact to the weekday train services.

No so today.

Currently Chiltern Railways have over-running engineering works, South of High Wycombe, with the line not expected to reopen until 0730. Services from Aylesbury to London over the Metropolitan Line are not affected.

I think it is going to be one of those days!

For the avoidance of doubt

Last night I was was clearly bored. There will be no repetition. I am not suddenly going to appear at an airport near you with a notepad and pair of binoculars.

Normal service will be resumed.

Very early this morning, the Central Line was suspended between North Acton and West Ruislip, due to over-running engineering work at Perivale.

All appears to be back to normal now as tfl are currently reporting a good service. A random check of the Live Departure Boards concurs with this message. Good thing really as the closure would have knocked out one of the three main train depots for the line.

Escalator Work at Oxford Circus

London Underground have announced that from next Monday, 19 April 2010, until summer 2011 Oxford Circus station will be exit and interchange only before 10.30 am on weekdays.

That means that before 10.30 am on weekdays it will not be possible to enter the station at street level to join the Central Line, the Victoria Line or the Bakerloo Line. The restrictions may also be implemented at other times if the station gets too busy.

It sounds bad, but the reality is that these restrictions shouldn't affect the majority of passengers. The access arrangements are being implemented to allow engineers to replace a bank of three escalators.

Doom Monger

One of my work colleagues, who is of the 'the glass is half empty' type, said to me on Thursday that the London Underground was 'virtually shut' this weekend due to Engineering Work.

I sort of poo-pooed him and, as if to make a point, travelled along a bit of the Central Line yesterday morning - it was working fine.

Today is different.

At present, only the Northern, Victoria and Piccadilly Lines are operating a normal service. All other London Underground Lines are either (i) totally closed, (ii) partially closed or (iii) partially suspended.

This image above is here to mark the position for posterity, though the clickable widget to the right should show the live position.

Happy Easter!

Over Running Engineering Works - EG3 v1.0

After a few weeks of relatively harmless week-night engineering works, the gremlins hit last night.

Early this morning, Chiltern Railways didn't seem to be able to run Up (London bound) trains between Princes Risborough and High Wycombe.

Inevitably a few trains were cancelled. Trains have been running through for the last hour or so, but there will still be some problems for a while yet, as a few trains will be in the wrong places.