Cock Up On The Communications Front

I had one of my regular trips to West Sussex the other day, to the eye hospital. For me the travelling is all part of the day, and I always look forward to it, although there is always the knowledge that everything can go belly up in a split second. And so it proved.

A good journey down, a productive hour taking videos at East Croydon, including completely missing an approaching new Thameslink Class 700 as I was focused on a 377 on an adjacent platform - most embarrassing - and a productive hospital appointment. In fact too productive as I was in with the consultant for ages discussing possible new avenues to explore, and that made getting back to London in time for my train back to Suffolk a bit of a rush.

However I made it to Liverpool St for the 2000 with around 15 mins to spare. Searched for the platform on the departure board, only to see it displaying that most dreaded of all platforms - platform cancelled. Deep joy - apart from anything else I would have to let the person picking me up from Darsham know that I would be late, but no real worries. Until I couldn't get hold of her. Never mind I'll keep trying - let's make sure the 2100 is running as I'd rather wait the extra time in London than on Ipswich Station. So having checked the midweek engineering work posters and seeing the 2100 terminated at Ipswich I tweeted Greater Anglia and asked them if the 2100 was running, only to be told that the 2100 was terminating at Colchester and I'd have to change. That would mean missing the last connection up the East Suffolk Line so another swift change of plan and I caught the 2030 out of Liverpool St and that's where the real fun began.

We got as far as the Olympic Stadium when we stopped. And waited.

Now people take the mickey out of us enthusiasts but there are times being one comes in very useful. Being a supporter of Railcam I get access to live running diagrams, so I quickly pulled up the Stratford diagram to discover we were stuck behind an empty train, which had stopped for no apparent reason as the line was totally clear in front of it. Cue the Conductor on the PA: "I'm sorry for the delay to this service tonight, which is being caused by congestion in the Stratford area". Excuse me? At the very point he made that announcement there was not a single train in Stratford Station, and in front of the empty train our line was clear to Ilford. Anyhow the empty train decided it had had sufficient rest and off it went, us following in its wake and that was the end of the excitement.

Until we got to just outside Maningtree where we stopped again at a signal instinct told me we shouldn't really be stopping at unless there were problems ahead. I pulled the diagram up again and sure enough a freight train was in front of us going nowhere fast. According to its schedule it had been there for around 20 mins. I told the people around me what I had seen and as I told them the PA crackled into life again confirming that indeed the freight train in front of us had failed, not just failed but had run out of diesel. Those locos have 1,400 gallon tanks. It had run out. We were stuck behind it. So we were told a rescue loco (known in the railway world as a "thunderbird") would be sent from Ipswich and drag the freight train out of the way.. No time scale was estimated.

Thanks to my Railcam diagrams I was able to see when the thunderbird left Ipswich, and follow its progress to the failed train. In the meantime the poor Conductor kept making announcements saying that they didn't know how long this was all going to take and in the meantime we would reverse back to Colchester. We started reversing as the thunderbird was within half a mile of the train it was rescuing. I was able to keep people in my coach updated far quicker than the conductor was.

To cut a long story short the thunderbird did its job  we got moving again, and I was treated to a taxi home from Ipswich, which Freightliner will end up paying for, arriving home some 2 hours later than planned. The person picking me up was contacted in the nick of time and stood down and all's well that ends well.

However it got me thinking. I'm pretty sure I was the only person on that train, crew included, who knew exactly what was going on. At first I thought the Conductor was lying through his teeth about Stratford, but if that is what control told him what reason would he have not to believe them. Now you hear time and time again that one of the main complaints about rail travel is lack of information when things go wrong. I got really irate when we were told the 2000 was cancelled due to an "earlier incident". What incident? What happened? The day before we had been told extremely quickly in graphic detail of the tragic mass shooting in Orlando. Yesterday the news broadcasters couldn't wait to tell us how poor Jo Cox was murdered in broad daylight. Yet Greater Anglia think we aren't grown up enough to know when someone has been hit by a train. It's not industry standard by the way - both Virgin Trans and Great Western say what the incidents are and treat their customers as grown ups. I found when I was a Conductor that if you tell people exactly what's going on they will accept it. People get a lot more irate a lot quicker if they are kept in the dark or treated as if they aren't entitled to know. That's a poor policy.

But the bigger question remains. If I could pull up on my phone wthin seconds the diagram of where we were and work out what was going on why couldn't the crew? Are we still in the days where the train crew have to call supervisors or signallers to find out what's going on? That's tortuous as for obvious reasons the very people you are trying to contact are busy trying to sort the situations out. I remember being berated by a passenger one evening when she complained I hadn't given any information out, when I was pacing up and down the platform on my phone trying to get the informatin she wanted to know. Of course then she compounded the situation by asking "Why haven't you made an announcement telling us you have no information" I very nearly turned into John Cleese as I explained that if I was making announcements saying I had no information I couldn't be on my phone trying to get information to announce!

But surely the crew should have access to the same diagrams I do, so information can be quickly ascertained, or at least a rough idea so passengers can be kept informed. If I was Greater Anglia I would be a bit embarrassed to know a passenger knew what was going on before my crew did. Perhaps all train crew should have access to Railcam and the diagrams. It is something I will be researching further as anything that improves customer communication has got to be a step in the right direction.