A “major signalling fault across the whole route between London and the south coast” caused chaos for rail commuters travelling in to work this morning, with cancellations to rail services continuing into this afternoon.
Network fail: multiple systems were breaking down on the trains this morning
The Gatwick Express was cancelled, with Southern announcing at lunchtime that there might be a possible reintroduction of some services during the course of the afternoon.
Southern and Thameslink services from the south coast into Victoria and London Bridge and beyond experienced a kind of perfect storm of mechanical failures in the early hours of this morning, on top of the impact of a real storm.
The rail operators had already been on alert for wet and windy weather across southern England, where a yellow warning for “persistent rain” and possible flooding was in place.
But they were then hit with a series points and signalling failures, power outages and then engineers’ work bags among the causes of the disruption.
At 4am Southern issued a warning to passengers that, “Due to a major signalling fault across the whole Southern Network, no trains will be running until further notice.”
With morning rush hour approaching, the operators went as far as to issue the message: “If you are not yet travelling, please do not attempt to travel until further notice.”
The travel updates then came thick and fast. By 4.25am they were tweeting: “Network Rail are making their way across our network to rectify this fault. We have been informed that some signals are back in action and some routes are back open for travel today.”
Doomsday scenario: Southern warned passengers to not travel this morning
But five minutes later, there was confirmation that trains between Littlehampton and Victoria would not be running, and all services between Redhill and Tonbridge were cancelled.
The causes of all the service disruption was reported variously as a points failure at Haywards Heath and in the Hove area, as well as power failures at Hove.
This was all separate and unrelated to land slips and power wires being brought down that affected services to the west of London, between Reading and Paddington, the Heathrow Express and the Elizabeth Line.
By lunchtime, Southern’s public message system issued the following: “Network Rail have now rectified the points issue at Haywards Heath allowing some services to travel through the area. This is six trains per hour that are able to run through.
“Gatwick Express services have been reintroduced after being suspended earlier, however, there will still be amendments and cancellations into this afternoon.”
They also stated that Thameslink services between Brighton and Cambridge – the line that stops at East Croydon before travelling on to Clapham Junction and London Bridge – “have now been added back in to the timetable but may still be cancelled or amended”.
It’s probably fair to assume that tonight’s homeward journeys for Croydon commuters are unlikely to be smooth and problem-free.
Much as I love to have a poke at Southern Rail, the faults are clearly a problem for Network Rail who are responsible for making a decent track available for the trains of Southern Rail & Thameslink
According to the BBC, the original problem was caused by a power failure. As the bulk of the southern area is controlled by the centre at Three Bridges, knocking this out means no power to points and signals across the whole of this large area. Sudden loss of power can lead to various problems, which have to be attended to one by one when the grid power is restored. This takes time, and is the responsibility of Network Rail.
Once there is a functional railway to use, it is the responsibility of the train operators to provide the train services. In this case, early services had to be cancelled, with the result that crews and rolling stock were not in the right place for subsequent workings. Sorting out the resultant mess is a very difficult problem, and takes time, sometimes a long time.
Whether or not either NR or Southern/Thameslink did as well as they could have done is moot, though.
It’s very easy to knock both Network Rail and the train operating companies, but they really do have a difficult job to do. Unfortunately, at times, some passengers take out their frustration with the staff at stations, which is rather unfair.