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London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

metro.co.uk

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Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#81

Post by paganel »

tialaramex wrote: post #44
paganel wrote: post #35

And they want to move everything to run on electrical power (cars, heating), pure madness. Btw, I've just had a half-hour power-cut here in downtown Bucharest, it was fun getting up all those stairs with two bags of groceries but at least I hadn't got stuck in the elevator.

The power was cut because another train trashed the power line. At a societal level the attraction of electricity is that it's fungible. Wind, Nuclear, Gas, Solar, the electricity is the same. If you need Natural Gas then too bad, no matter how cheap and readily available the Solar power or Coal is, you've got to buy Gas at any price from anyone who'll sell it to you. Individually this is at most a minor inconvenienc…

Yes, I know that electricity transport/distribution is very fickle, that was my point.

Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#82

Post by paganel »

lm28469 wrote: post #64
paganel wrote: post #35

And they want to move everything to run on electrical power (cars, heating), pure madness. Btw, I've just had a half-hour power-cut here in downtown Bucharest, it was fun getting up all those stairs with two bags of groceries but at least I hadn't got stuck in the elevator.

I hope you created a petition to mandate gas powered elevators. I personally had a single blackout in my 30 years on this planet, I think that's a fair price to pay for 24/7 light/heating/water/&c.

It’s a tragedy that industrial policies as important as these are pushed worldwide by people as cushioned as your example is, and, yes, that is part of the madness I was writing about.

Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#83

Post by MarcusE1W »

bobthepanda wrote: post #75
hedora wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly why I read the article! I wanted to see the statement from the train company explaining how they're fixing that!

There isn’t really a way short of fixing this short of building brand new replacement tunnels at great expense. You can’t really widen the tunnels, because the tunnel lining itself is the structure preventing water seepage, cave-in, etc.

It should also be noted that the London underground (the space underground, not the rail system) is extremely convoluted as people have been building stuff there for centuries.

Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#84

Post by uxp8u61q »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #62
uxp8u61q wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the cost for maintaining the infrastructure in 10x that, then it's a shoestring budget. You have to compare the budget to a baseline, you can't just evaluate it as an absolute. Yes, £10B looks like a big number, but what do you compare it to?

> Yes, £10B looks like a big number, but what do you compare it to? Other large cities with comparable transport infrastructure? You, or any passing reader, can just spend 30 seconds with a search engine and find dozens of papers, reports, presentations, etc... doing this kind of financial comparison.

Do you not understand rhetorical questions? I know what the budget should be compared to.

Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#85

Post by rad_gruchalski »

jameshart wrote: post #41
rad_gruchalski wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or a reprint of an official statement.

I would love to imagine a world where the TfL official statement said that they ‘left passengers in darkness while the driver drip-fed them information’. PR guy’s last day, maybe.

Or a reprint of some generic news report.

Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#86

Post by brnt »

michaelt wrote: post #2

> Some frustrated travellers even smashed their way out the cold, dark trains and walked down the tracks to escape after getting stuck for more than three hours. It's a shame train operators don't feel able to make the common sense decision to give the passengers the option to walk before the three hour mark, without requiring them to "smash their way out". Obviously, some passengers won't be able to make the trek, a…

It's not that common sense. The railway is responsible for its customers, and a lot more bad stuff can happen with people walking on the tracks than in stuck in cars. Getting cold and hungry is not the same as injury or worse.

The tracks may still be in use by other trains, it fact it may be how help and alternative transport arrive.

Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#87

Post by midasuni »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #14
midasuni wrote: post #5

“New” That rail line, and Ladbroke Grove in particular, dates back nearly 200 years.

That's referring to the Elizabeth line, which opened in 2022: > "Trains stopped running between London Paddington and Heathrow Airport in the rush hour after damage to overhead cables, shutting down the £19billion Elizabeth Line and causing major disruption to National Rail and Heathrow Express services." This point notwithstanding, it's not clear whether the 'cold and angry' passengers were those on the Elizabeth li…

The failure was on the GWML, it affected services to places like cardiff, Devon, Oxford, as well as the “Elizabeth line” branded trains running on the line.

There’s nothing new about the line. Obviously the overhead power wasn’t there in 1840, and indeed the rails were at a different gauge, but the failure was in the GWML, on a Paddington to Cardiff express on the Down Main. The failure was on a track the Elizabeth Line trains don’t even use, however due to the type of failure a massive section of overhead power had to be shut off

Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#88

Post by Symbiote »

nicoburns wrote: post #30
yabones wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The old-style "tube" trains are all DC third rail IIRC, but the newer trainsets such as the Elizabeth and Thameslink are all overhead AC. So this would actually be one of the few metro trains where it would be remotely safe to walk the tracks provided all the trains were stopped...

The Elizabeth line also has an actual walkway for emergency (and presumably also maintenance) purposes.

The newly built sections under central London, but lots of the Elizabeth Line is using older track.

Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#89

Post by Symbiote »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #63
yabones wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The old-style "tube" trains are all DC third rail IIRC, but the newer trainsets such as the Elizabeth and Thameslink are all overhead AC. So this would actually be one of the few metro trains where it would be remotely safe to walk the tracks provided all the trains were stopped...

If not all trains are stopped, aren't they in danger of collision if they remain on the train?

No, not in the slightest.

Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#90

Post by addicted »

danpalmer wrote: post #6
bombcar wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have a situation like this you run a worst case scenario and put in effect immediately. Whether that is telling passengers that busses will be there in two hours or whatever, you work it out. If something like this happens in a winter storm, it can become deadly.

> When you have a situation like this you run a worst case scenario and put in effect immediately. Almost all of the time it's not a worst case scenario though. Most of the time it's just that someone has dropped their phone on the track and trains have been asked to stop so that it can be retrieved. Worst case scenario management is expensive and dangerous (e.g. walking on tracks) because the net risk or net cost is…

I’d imagine when you’re minutes away from losing auxiliary power without any idea when main power will return that’s an easy trigger for worst case actions.

Here it seems people were waiting 45 mins to an hour after that happened.

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